Our Lingua Franca
Quite a brouhaha has erupted over the discovery that some are singing the Star-Spangled Banner in Spanish. President Bush promptly expressed his conviction that American patriotism can only be voiced properly in English. Yet it turned out that, during the 2000 campaign, he himself may have sung our anthem in Spanish. Mrs. Bush says she doesn't object. Expect another chorus of commentary about how Hispanic immigration is destroying the linguistic our heritage.
Buncombe, we say. An influx of Spanish speakers may be changing our language, as words like chipotle, siesta, and buckaroo enter the lexicon. English, however, has survived - nay, has been enriched by - a collision with other languages before, and there's no need to start a donnybrook or launch a vendetta. Ask your local bagel maker. Previous waves of Italian and Eastern European immigrants learned English. Likewise, data suggest that far from overpowering English-speakers, Hispanic immigrants are saying "adios" to Spanish.
An article in the Spring 2005 issue of The Public Interest has details. English may be a notoriously difficult language to learn, yet even among Hispanics who have immigrated to America, 24% are already bilingual. Among the children of those immigrants, 7% speak only Spanish, while the rest are bilingual. In families that have been here long enough for the original immigrants to have grandchildren, 78% of those grandchildren speak only English. Because large-scale Hispanic immigration is still a relatively recent phenomenon, most Hispanics in America today are part of either the first or second generations, but there is no reason to think they'll start avoid English forever.
The real question is whether Hispanic immigrants embracing America's bedrock principles, like the embrace of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." By singing the American national anthem in Spanish they're doing exactly that in the only way many of them, particularly the first-generation immigrants, know how. As far back as 1919, the Bureau of Education commissioned a Spanish version of the anthem; four Spanish translations appear on the State Department's Web site, and the Library of Congress offers several German-language versions, to boot.
When someone mentioned in the newsroom that there was a Yiddish language version of the anthem, one wag quipped, "Oy vey can you see . . ." Some will complain about a remix of the Spanish anthem that adds commentary on immigration laws. We're not losing sleep over it. We can see the leftist ideology eddying in the demonstrations that have erupted in recent weeks. But expressing political opinions in novel ways is also an American tradition. Defend the Constitution, seek policies to protect our prosperity, eschew dual language education in public schools, and the absorption of new Americans will take care of itself.
