"How do we remedy the Situation?"

Or, As Shara said later, this about "the paucity of langauge".


From: shara_thome@hotmail.com
To: ihentschel@austin.rr.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 6:46 AM
Subject: shara_thome@hotmail.com has shared: Theodore Dalrymple on the Gift of Language
....but how to remedy the situation? Dumbfounded here.
Theodore Dalrymple on the Gift of Language Source: austrolabe.com

For starters, let me say that I am "dumbfounded" by discovering there were so many Muslims living amongst the Aussies. But I suppose I shouldn't be, because Muslims can now threaten Danish cartoonists and cause ghetto riots in Paris. Be that as it may, that there is so much sudden concern for how to deal with the "Muslim problem" and the Muslim language(s), in places like down under and elsewhere, is perplexing. I say this because in Australia, where the concern for the Muslim invasion gets front page coverage while they slaughter, ignore and denigrate the aborigine; in the U.S. , where we sought to obliterate the native Americans and today force them into encampments, while still not dealing with our history of slavery and contemporary racism ( and the language obstacles involved there, bro); in Scandanavia the Nordic past is being ameliorated and watered down to appease the Muslim outsiders; in France they are busier worrying about headscarve etiquette than they are the quality of education and have almost foresworn the problems with the Moroccan and Algerian populations in favor of the Arab refugees; in England the disparities over Scots and the Irish have been put aside to worry about the employment and education requirements of the Muslim Indian refugees, and in Germany, the concern with Turks has displaced recognition of Jewish issues ...Nearly overnight, it seems, the world is obsessed with acclimating to, absorbing, yielding to and incorporting the culture and language of a people we regarded as ignorant, backward, infidel in nature,bloodthirsty and heathen, not so long ago.

Would that we were so afraid of the perils of rampant Christianity.

Note: In earlier centuries,the Spaniards (in particular), always solved the problem of cultural and linguistic assimilation by simply trying to make everyone Catholic. That insidious and predatory (and arrogant) practice, coupled with the Inquisition, has not worked out so well, except to make Mexico City a safe place for the Pope to visit. And I dare say that catechism classes for the masses of Muslims will not get very far.

As for your query, "but how to remedy the situtation?" , I am stubbornly and narrow-mindedly in the camp of Robert Frost, on this one. Disregarding for a moment the question of which tongue do you speak when you are in which land, "When in Rome" rings a bell. If you are visiting, simple attempts at the mother tongue are acceptable and errors easily overlooked, since everyone knows you are going home soon. But if you reside, more less permanently, in a land where the mother tongue is other than your own, it would behoove you to learn it and speak it as best you can ( and my bias is that Hispanics in America are not excepted). Anything less is a gesture of disrespect. But back to Frost:

Frost said (approximately) that "to teach a person to write is to teach a person to think". And thinking, real thinking (I think), is encumbent upon all of us. And if you think, you arrive at ideas. And if you have ideas you must find a way to express them. And for that you need words, and often new words. The current mood that has been identified in the U.S. as "anti-intellectualism"reveals how not thinking precludes new ideas: recent town halls are regurgitations of old thinking and old ideas and old words.

If our educational systems, world-wide, (to mimick Ms. Scheslinger) were to focus upon teaching and enabling children to think and to ask "why", to be inquisitive and become logical searchers and researchers of meaning, they would learn to use the proper, appropriate and substantive words required to promote better understanding. (I might suggest, at this point, that immersion in the Bible or the Quoran does not lead to this lofty end. Thinking requires a working knowledge of cause and effect, and neither of these includes a clue as to either.)

Hedges (as in the piece I sent you), Safire (too bad), Carlin (way too bad), Chomsky, Maher, Reich, Buckley and Vonnegut are all some examples of linguists (my broken record is playing, again) who took (and take) the time to find the words to express their ideas. To them, I say, "Right on!", and "Awesome!" (Think about those two expressions as they relate to cause and effect)

And there are enough people down under who speak that almost-South Carolina garble the Aussies call "English" that any self-respecting Muslim ought to be able to pick it up. Blimey. I'll have a Foster's.