Is it self-evidently a bad thing for English to be crowded out?
From the point of view of monolingual English-speakers, that is, most of the current population of the US, it'd be inconvenient. But given that that isn't going to happen, it's not relevant to much.
'Bilingual education' has strong overtones of poor immigrant kids being warehoused and not learning anything.
I always thought it had overtones of "Oh god, now we have to cave in to the liberals and, though it sounds bizarre, teach classes in a NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE! In AMERICA! What a waste of taxpayer money."
Is it self-evidently a bad thing for English to be crowded out?
From the perspective of many of those opposed to bilingual education, yes. There is the fear that allowing bilingual education takes us further down the slippery slope towards multiculturalism (also a self-evidently bad thing in those circles.) English is the One True Language of America, and anyone who thinks otherwise can go back where they came from.
I think all the explanation necessary is wrapped up in Gingrich's quote itself: the language of the ghetto. It's not about language and it's not about quality of education or quality of life, it's about the culture wars. It's a dense statement about the cultural/social/political/economic superiority of English-speaking culture in America (translation: honkies of the second-or-greater-generation variety) with a neat dollop of "assimilation demonstrates the self-evident superiority of the assimilating culture or the assimilation would never happen" in the mix. He's not talking to you or me or Latinos or anyone whose vote he doesn't already have. He just wants to signal to them that he's on the same "we're soooooooooo much more awesome" bandwagon as the assbaskets who want(ed) a constitutional amendment making English our official language back when my fair state had the misfortune of being represented by Faircloth.
In other words, MAE-pwned.
Once they get Spanish in the schools, next stop is Ebonics.
How was Faircloth's first name pronounced, anyway? Loff?
As someone who used to work (tangentially) in the field, I agree with 5. It's not the language aspect that's as threatening as the idea that the kids might learn pride in their culture. To the Gingrichites, cultural pride is a zero-sum game; if you're proud of your, e.g., Mexican roots, then you're not of the dominant culture and Our Tax Dollars are working to undermine your Americanness. I suspect that there's also an element of suspicion of the unknown; since the classes are taught in not-English, you can't *really* know what other subversive ideas our kids are learning at the hands of the crazy liberals.
The best part of the whole Señor Gingrich debacle was this attempt to explain his way out of it.
But last night on Hannity & Colmes, Gingrich claimed his statement "did not refer to Spanish." Gingrich insisted, "What I meant is very clear," but then wouldn't say which language he was referring to.
Gingrich said, "Now, I'll let you pick -- frankly, ghetto, historically had referred as a Jewish reference originally. I did not mention Hispanics, and I certainly do not want anybody who speaks Spanish to think I'm in any way less than respectful of Spanish or any other language spoken by people who come to the United States."
See, he wasn't talking about Spanish, he was talking about *Hebrew*. Either learn the American language or GO BACK TO ISRAEL.
I think that bilingual ed is totally dominated by the specifics of California politics. One group of teachers vs. another group, warehousing Spanish-speaking kids, "special privileges" to Spanish-speaking kids, hostility to immigrants, general hostility to the degraded schools and to taxes in general, and anti-union feeling with a lot of anti-evolutionists / anti-secularists hitchhiling along. All this things are exportable, of course.
Educationally I think there's a strong case for immersion, but there's also a strong case for a kind of bilingualism (or maybe double immersion). A good school system could produce students literate and native-speaker-fluent (or almost) in two languages, but it very seldom works that way, and that's not what the argument is really about.
Technically, "Lauch" is pronounced like "lock," more or less. There's a light "aw" in there, though, so it's a little more like "lawhk" but not as strong as "hawk." I wouldn't want you to think it's all crazy or anything. It's pronounced almost exactly like I'd hear Scottish people pronounce "Loch" if that helps at all.
In practice we mostly pronounced it like "that asshole."
Either learn the American language or GO BACK TO ISRAEL.
Oddly enough, according to Dennis Prager, it is Israel's example that we should be following when it comes to bilingual education:
Here, too, compassion trumps effectiveness. The country that has successfully assimilated the greatest percentage of immigrants is Israel, and that country does not have bilingual education. Immigrant children in its public schools are immersed in Hebrew, despite the fact that Hebrew is far more difficult than English is for most of its immigrants (especially those speaking Latin languages). But it is not what works that matters for liberals advocating bilingual education; it is their perception of compassion and multiculturalism.
I do have a friend who was immersed in Hebrew as a 22-y.o. immigrant, and he absolutely loved it.
10: "See, I can't have been serious because I was talking about Jews and everyone knows I love Jews and anyone who criticizes me must be anti-semitic and want to put Jews in ghettos." Then the microphone hangs in mid-air for a moment after Gingrich exits, stage-right, faster than the eye can follow.
Don't you love how he's supposed to be the intellectual Republican?
The old California "bilingual" education format really didn't make much room for the teaching of English - an acquaintance of mine, who taught ESL at a local middle school, says she taught 3 half-hour classes per week to each batch of kids - not enough to really get them up to speed. The schools here that tried total immersion discovered, wow! - if you teach kids in English, they learn English... and thereafter catch up to their grade level quite quickly.
Why no one ever consulted, say, Berlitz, on the most effective ways to make kids truly bilingual is beyond me. FTM, why American schools are so resistant to starting second-language acquisition in primary school for native-English speakers is beyond me.
Some time ago, my former housekeeper's daughter moved from LA to Alaska for a year - her husband had been told that there was big money work and that immigration wasn't as much a danger. When they returned - the winter being more than daunting to a pair who had spent their childhoods in Guatemala and thereafter lived no further north than LA - Miri was absolutely fluent in English, with scarcely an accent, and her two kids were completely bilingual. She ascribed this to the fact that there were no Spanish TV channels or radio broadcasts or magazines or culturally isolated communities - IOW, total immersion. She announced that she was trying to convince her still monolingual friends to try the same technique as much as was possible in a city where the majority of residents are Spanish-speaking.
Goofy-assed Dennis Prager has a point in 13. Immigrants are probably going to pick up the new language better in a language immersion environment. Bilingual people doesn't mean bilingual education.
But I could be wrong, here is the the meta-analysis that supports the book that McWhorter cites:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JWCRAWFORD/greene.htm
I had an Iranian friend who went to Alaska specifically because there were no Iranians there. I spoke English with almost no accent -- when I first met him I thought he was Hispanic-American, Armenian-American or something like that.
I also used to know a Moroccan who taught himself Spanish, German, and English entirely by immersion, with no classes at all. He'd hang out and talk to anyone who'd talk to him, and he'd request you to correct his English. I knew him over a period of time and watched his English improve from barely-adequate to fluent.
17: What makes sense to me as a benefit of a well-designed bilingual/dual-language/whatever program over total immersion for a schoolkid, is that total immersion has to be stressful with regard to the other schoolwork. You might learn English slightly faster when totally immersed, but you're also going to be completely lost in your math class, and I bet a reasonable proportion of kids don't figure out that they were lost due to language difficulties rather than a lack of math aptitude, and don't snap out of it when their English improves.
But I'm theorizing -- I haven't got any data.
My brother teaches at a public school (literally a stone's throw from Mexico) that works the way the usual rich kid's French immersion programs work. They start out with just English class in English in Kindergarten (all the kids, the school's about half native spainish speakers and half native english speakers), and by 8th grade they only have Spanish class in Spanish. Everyone comes out knowing English, Spanish, and a third language (one of which my brother teaches). It seems to work pretty well, despite being in a poor city with poor students.
21: What happens to kids in the higher grades that just got here and don't know any English yet?
I think they go to other schools. Definitely a problem in the model.
I don't see why they'd do any worse than immersed in a conventional school -- probably better because they could communicate with their classmates, and wouldn't be socially isolated from everyone but the new immigrants.
Bilingual education has a bad reputation because actually existing bilingual programs are generally terrible, mostly teaching in Spanish and never transitioning kids to English as promised. They are particularly bad for native English speakers stuck in the bilingual classes because of a Hispanic last name and unassertive parents.
Even McWhorter admits (in your link):
"Now, it is just as indisputable that in practice, Spanish-English bilingual ed programs have tended to become stagnant boondoggles for a minor industry of bilingual ed teachers, with bearded teenagers lagging in Spanish-language classes. Gingrich is right to be put off by the postures of identity politics that have kept these kinds of programs alive."
That's certainly my impression as well -- the question is what causes it.
21: That doesn't strike me as at all hard to do, and in fact it should be the standard, but various factors make it rare.
Spanish is a major world language. The argument would be different in a district that was half Mayan or half Albanian.
"There's no reason for English speakers to fear that Spanish is going to crowd them out of the public sphere in America, just because more Americans are also Spanish-speakers now -- anyone growing up in the US can't avoid learning English by immersion regardless of what language they speak at home, and the only monolingual Spanish speakers are going to be people who immigrated as adults."
This is not universally true -- although maybe sometimes true, for some people.
Excuse me while I go dig up my lurker-friend who has some first-hand knowledge here...
Maybe not universally true in the 'nothing's universal' sense, but I'll be really surprised if you come up with data showing that there's any noticeable population of non-English-speaking US-born Latinos.
20: I suspect most kids will grasp that any troubles they have with classwork have more to do with language-not-quite-knowing rather than subject-no-aptitude. There's nothing in the ideal of total immersion that rules out tutoring - which can frequently be done by bilingual kids who are older, where both concepts and vocabulary are addressed. No one is suggesting that a school should dump kids into immersion and then ignore them - it's just that most so-called bilingual programs are not extraordinarily effective.
About a hundred years ago [well, OK, 1972], I did the keypunching for a study for a PRLDEF suit over bilingual education in NYC. The study essentially said "If you don't teach kids English, the don't learn English". As I see it, implementing the "teach kids English" part is where many schools have failed.
29 -- Data? Not at my finger-tips.
But I'm trying to convince my lurker-friend, who was raised (in Texas) in a bilingual household, and who's currently working (in Dallas) in the public schools. And her experience (although maybe I should hold off and let her speak for herself, if she's not too shy) is that there are significant groups of students who (even in high-school) are Spanish only. Marginal, if any, English skills. Not recent immigrants.
In other words, my 'universal' caveat in 28 was meant to express the suggestion that maybe your experience (LB) in your state might be quite different from a comparable situation in a different (read: 'redder') state.
Also, I'm not sure what 32 is supposed to mean, but that's not what I'm saying.
29: Dunno. I'm not an opponent of bilingual ed, per se, but poorly run bilingual programs have a pretty terrible effect on English fluency. When my family came to this country, my sister was placed in a regular English-language elementary school. She had a rough time -- an asshole teacher once refused to let her go to the bathroom until she asked properly, in English, which was impossible, so she wet her pants -- but after I think a year or so was perfectly fluent. My cousin's kids, on the other hand, attend a bilingual program in a poor neighborhood. They were born in this country, for Chrissakes, and they don't speak English properly for their grade level, at least in my estimation -- they are "fluent," by some measures, but their grammar is terrible and definitely non-standard.
32 was a correction to 30, not a comment on your post.
I don't have data at my fingertips either -- I had this mentally filed under 'everyone knows that'. So I certainly could be wrong. It's still really surprising to me -- how socially isolated can you get from English speakers in the US?
32 looks like a correction of the phrase "the don't learn" in 30.
As a follow-up to that quote from Prager in 13, it is worth pointing out that his assertion that Israel does not have bilingual education simply isn't true. A few relevant quotes from the Wikipedia article on the languages of Israel:
"Hebrew lessons are provided in Arabic-speaking schools from the 3rd grade onwards, and a Hebrew exam is an essential part of the matriculation exams for students of these schools." [emphasis added]
"English is mandatory as a second language in schools and universities, for both Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking students."
Also, it goes without saying that Israeli immigration is quite a different phenomenon than U.S. immigration, and that the Hebrew language plays a different role in Israeli culture than English in the culture of the U.S.
36: Pretty isolated. My grandmother has lived in this country for close on thirty years now. She lives by herself, gets around fine. She knows two languages, neither of them Enlighs.
Purely personal/anecdotal, but I agree with Junior Mint and arthegall that bilingual education, in practice, does a disservice to immigrant children.
And do all immigrant kids have a "so I peed in my pants" story? Bonding!
... I once found a fascinating review by McWhorter on Amazon which caused me to downgrade his intellectual acuity retroactively, which is unfortunate, because I liked his work on creole languages in the Spanish empire. Five stars for Alias Shakespeare:
"Come on, folks -- case closed!, October 16, 1999
The evidence Sobran presents makes it hopelessly clear that judging from the evidence available to us, de Vere wrote the works of "Shakespeare". Skepticism that a rural burgher could have written such cosmopolitan plays doesn't sit well with today's egalitarian spirits, but then this is but one sliver of Sobran's comprehensive argument, which finds its conclusive strength in the sheer accumulation of clues all pointing in one direction. We will most likely never know the details of the arrangement between de Vere and "Shakspere", but this does not belie the powerful case Sobran makes itself. The works of Shakespeare are among humankind's greatest achievements, but they were not written by the workaday actor from Stratford. Sobran convinces us of this in a concise, entertaining, and masterly piece of work. He is right that if de Vere's authorship were finally accepted, then Shakespearean studies would be inestimably enriched by our finally being able to connect the works with an author whose life actually corresponds with them -- something Shakespearean scholars are unique in forgoing out of mere discomfort with the classist air of denying Shakspere's authorship. This is, really, something of a shame."
Of course, Gingrich's reviews on Amazon also show he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Shakespeare crank beats fanboy.
They were born in this country, for Chrissakes, and they don't speak English properly for their grade level, at least in my estimation -- they are "fluent," by some measures, but their grammar is terrible and definitely non-standard.
I really don't mean to say anything insulting to you here, I'm just working from things I think I know about language learning. When you say their grammar is non-standard, do you mean they're fucking up like a kid learning high-school French does, or are you just saying that they're fluent speakers of a low-class dialect of English? What I'm guessing is that they're exposed enough that they're genuinely fluent English speakers, but they don't speak English like educated people do, because their schools have isolated them from educated speakers of English.
26
What causes bad bilingual programs? Well the fact that they are generally run by the worst sort of ivory tower leftwing identity politics idiots probably doesn't help. And of course poor and minority parents are less adept at fighting the system.
35: poorly run bilingual programs have a pretty terrible effect on English fluency
True, but I suspect that the "poorly-run" aspect is more to blame here than the "bilingual" aspect.
And I'd agree that the bilingual programs we have are generally not a great thing for immigrant kids -- I'm just thinking that's a characteristic of American bilingual programs as they currently exist, not anything innate in the nature of teaching school in two languages.
43: No, it's not just that they speak an urban patois, they really are not speaking English properly. They mispronounce basic words, or replace words with similar-sounding vocabulary, I think because they've never heard the words pronounced correctly. They mix up their grammar, in a way that is typical of English-language-learners. And they are not code-switching -- this is the only way they know to speak English.
how socially isolated can you get from English speakers in the US?
Well, this is exactly the criticism of how a lot of bilingual education has been done. If you are kept segregated in Spanish-only classes, for example, and then go home to your predominatly Latino-immigrant neighborhood where the parent speak spanish and the kids are taught only in Spanish, and you listen to radio and TV and read newspapers in Spanish (as it is easy to do in neighborhoods with high concentrations of immigrant families), the answer is that you can be pretty darn isolated.
My wife has friends who have lived here for years who speak little English because if you live someplace with a large enough immigrant community, you can get most stuff you want--stores, TV, newspapers etc.--in your native language. And that's great. But at some point, if you want kids to have access to what the country as a whole offers, they need to speak our common language. And when bi-lingual programs serve noly to isolate them, it disserves them.
Can there be great bi-lingual programs? sure. The one your kids go to seems to be one. However, I do not think that is--or at any rate, in the past has not been--the norm.
From my observation, bilingual education varies dramatically in practice. Few programs I am aware of as are rigorous as the dual-immersion that LB describes. And in high-poverty neighborhoods, it can absolutely be a dumping ground for kids with "foreign" names whose parents are not pushy.
I don't know anyone who came to this country as a child (15 or younger, roughly) who did not achieve English fluency by adulthood, regardless of schooling. But that is playground English -- which is to say speaking and listening. Written English (and reading) skills do not develop absent affirmative, concentrated effort -- which is less necessary in daily life than figuring out how to say "Can I go to the bathroom?"
I know plenty of adults who live and survive just fine in a monolingual non-English environment. All you need is a critical mass of fellow oldsters. Christopher Castellini did rather a nice evocation of this for Italian immigrants of the 1950s in his first novel.
Another reason bilingual programs have a bad reputation.
38
I'm the lurker mention in 28. I grew up in Texas in a bilingual- by which I mean that both my parents speak Spanish and English, and most of my extended family speaks either one or the other only. I recently moved back to Texas from the East Coast and I've been substitute teaching since December.
I've got no studies to back me up, but speaking anecdotally, there IS possible for US-born children to graduate from high school without a high degree of English fluency.
One of the problems here is the question of the *degree* of fluency, and the underestimation of the prevalence of Spanish-only media and social/cultural life in many parts of the country.
Is it inevitable that a US-born child will learn to speak English? Yes. But based on what I've seen and heard in the last few months in the public schools in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, it is not inevitable that those children are achieving the degree of fluency that will enable them to take challenging classes in high school, much less be accepted to a four-year college.
Also, it is entirely possible in Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington (where I live) to live more than half of your life in Spanish. Newspapers, tv, magazines, grocery stores. Not just specialty shops, either: La Gran Plaza in Fort Worth is an entire shopping mall with Mexican retail shops. The entire food court are different taquerias.
This is heaven for me, since now I don't have to wait to visit my grandmother to get the food (and junk food I like), but it underscores (for me) the realization that school may be the only time during the day that many of the children I see and talk to hear English for an extended period of time- and that only while the teacher is talking, because they all carry on their social lives in Spanish.
I don't have genius solutions (or suggestions), and I have nothing but nice things to say about the teachers and ESL programs I've seen in the schools, but something is very, very wrong with our system the way it is, and I think part of it is language. I see extremely motivated elementary school students at some of the predominately (over 90%) hispanic schools I sub at, but I have yet to see more than one latino in the honors classes I sub for at the high school that elementary school feeds in to. When I went to high school here, I WAS the lone latina in the honors program in a graduating class of hundreds.
Also, I should clarify that I studied French and Spanish literature, and lots of Mexican Anthropology. I fully support everyone speaking as many languages as possible and young Mexican immigrants (and children of immigrants) to be as proud (and as knowledgeable) as possible about where they come from.
But first.....English, so they can take some good classes and have a chance at going to a good college.
My guess is that educated immigrant parents who are ambitious for their kids almost always want their kid mainstreamed in immersion classes, especially very young kids. The "tracking" argument about actually existing bilingualism is a powerful one.
At the same time, I don't think that there's any particular problem with the existence of enclaves of non-English speakers. Not an especially good thing, but not the end of civilization as we know it.
One of my son's good friends had two Hong Kong Chinese parents who spoke essentially no English after 30 years in the US. The three kids are bilingual and successful now in business or professions. The parents just worked too hard to learn English.
52
It took me so long to type everything I see that most of the points have been covered earlier in the thread. Sorry for the repetition!
And do all immigrant kids have a "so I peed in my pants" story? Bonding!
Nice try, blaming it on your inability to speak English. Won't work.
there are significant groups of students who (even in high-school) are Spanish only. Marginal, if any, English skills. Not recent immigrants.
I found data! For Texas! In the Houston area, 75% of 1st-generation Hispanics speak English well; 90% of 2nd-generation Hispanics (including 12% who only know English); and 96% of 3rd-generation Hispanics (68% of who only know English.) The other Texas cities listed are essentially the same, including Laredo and Brownsville.
Of all the cities, Salinas, CA had the least savvy 2nd-generation immigrants, where 84% speak English well.
But probably, the 10-15% who don't speak English well seems very significant when you see it up close.
I second arthegall, though, like him, lack firsthand evidence. I have a good friend who taught high-school in a small town right on the TX border, and his experience was that many of the adults in the community who had come here as children could only speak the most rudimentary English, and were for all intents and purposes still monolingual. Which was, in fact, a big problem, because while they got along fine in their little community (and, of course, the communities just across the border), they couldn't engage with the broader culture in any meaningful way. And he was teaching their children, who were in high school and had been here their whole lives, and who were also functionally monolingual. And his impression was that this was a problem in many communities in the western border states.
He did not like bilingual education programs.
And now that we're through with the data, on to the anecdotes! My most immersed immigrant friend came from the USSR when he was 8. He didn't speak a word of English. They put him directly into public school. Now he speaks perfect American English, with only the faintest trace of accent or weird diction, but I bet that it was a rough road getting there.
(In 50, "I know plenty of adults" should be "I know plenty of immigrants who came here as adults")
To get back to the topic of the post, though: I think the issue is class. If you can't speak English well (and by that I mean broadcast English), native speakers may look down on you, regardless of how many other languages you can speak.
Lip service aside, I don't think the U.S. genuinely values being bilingual. We say we do, but if we really did, then people would routinely be graduating from high school fluent in a second language. Not because it was required, but because it was valuable.
Instead, even at the college level, we routinely have "requirements" of presence rather than capability. I.e.: You have to take two semesters of a foreign language. Not: You have to take enough classes to pass the equivalent of the TOEFL in your chosen foreign language.
35: Back in the 19teens, my father, at age 12, got put into total immersion in the first grade and was promoted as rapidly as he could make progress. He also said it took about a year or so before he was fluent and at the proper grade. The same with my uncle, but he was a few years older and retained a bit of an accent.
Is it inevitable that a US-born child will learn to speak English? Yes.
I think I'm quibbling on the boundaries between 'speak English' and 'speak English well'. I'm not denying at all that we've got plenty of areas where a non-English speaking adult can function fine -- I live in one. And certainly, kids without English speaking parents can end up poorly educated in English, and bad bilingual programs don't help. But pretty much all of them are going to be English speakers in a meaningful sense.
54: Never apologise for transmitting information, especially first-person observation. You have the advantage over most of us in that you're speaking from personal experience, both as a student and as a teacher, and as someone familiar with the issue.
34: 32 was to my 30.
And yet I will never be convinced Gingrich was making a serious statement about bilingual education rather than throwing his dinner scraps to the isolationists and white supremacists. From the linked article it sounded like he talked a lot more about the printing of ballots exclusively in English than about education.
One complicating factor is that a fair proportion of the SW was Spanish-speaking from 1600 or 1700 on and has always been Spanish-speaking, even though the US conquered the area in 1840. If Spanish-speaking immigrants come to an area which has been Spanish-speaking all along, it doesn't mean that the US is being taken over by aliens.
Every area has people who did not do well in school, and in Spanish-speaking areas these people don't learn English, whereas in English-speaking areas they're just ignorant and speak local dialect.
The big thing that gets lost in this whole mess is the relation between L1 (mother tongue) and L2 (second language) proficiency and what it means to teach kids when both of these are in play.
One big problem is when you have students who are weak in L1 ( they are not linguistically advanced or cannot read in some cases ) and then expect them to make progress in those things in L2. In many ways it is futile and that is really why bilingual education is so important. It may well be a good idea to teach a child to read in Spanish while working on spoken English. Later the skills will be translated and they will be able to read english like that.
We have a large population of kids in our schools locally who are suffering from this very problem as they are not only transitioning to English but from an non-literate culture. These kids are being totally failed by the English immersion sink-or-swim approach here because their problem is not learning English. Learning the linguistic translation is really easy, the problem is the there is an impedance mismatch and the skills they have do not translate into an academic context at the same time the academic skills we are trying to teach them do not match their experience.
To be effective (at least for most immigrant populations) you really need to have a parallel approach to teaching in both L1 and L2 for quite a while.
On preview I see that is might be important to mention that up here in the north where I am all the highly motivated suburban parents want their kids in the bilingual immersion schools. The Spanish one is good of course the French one is even better and is in the best neighborhood. All these schools serve primarily middle to upper class WASPy kids, now if we had similar schools for the real immigrants...
P.S. I the interest of anonymity I am not going to go too far into what our local mix of languages happens to be.
We have a large population of kids in our schools locally who are suffering from this very problem as they are not only transitioning to English but from an non-literate culture. These kids are being totally failed by the English immersion sink-or-swim approach here because their problem is not learning English.
Oh yes, I want to second this as a complicating factor in talking about bilingual education. The challenges in working with immigrant children whose parents do not use a written language are significant.
A somewhat related problem comes when working with students who are native English speakers, but not of American English. Liberian English, for example, is just as legitimate as American English -- but it's not the same. And when Liberian students get dumped into ESL or other programs as if they're non-English-speakers, it's crazy -- they feel insulted, and they're still not getting the education they need.
62: If "pretty much all of them are going to be English speakers in a meaningful sense" means they can articulate "Do you want fries with that?", then yes. If it means they can succeed at other than low-wage jobs and/or outside polyglot areas or get a reasonable post-HS education, then not necessarily.
Tangent: People make fun of the Brit tendency to assign class by accent; what we do here, I think, is probably far more judgmental. Hearing inarticulate, grammar-chawing rednecks bitch about "dumb furriners" based on accent rather than command of the language would be funnier if it weren't so pathetic.
There are, BTW, signs all over LA offering to rid people of their accents. It's not clear whether they're aimed at non-native English speakers or just aspiring actors from the Bronx.
OT: That one guy that we had that one thread about appears to be having some trouble with that other guy. Good wishes to him and all that.
It also looks like a good part of my punctuation in 66 has gone into hiding, oops.
If "pretty much all of them are going to be English speakers in a meaningful sense" means they can articulate "Do you want fries with that?", then yes. If it means they can succeed at other than low-wage jobs and/or outside polyglot areas or get a reasonable post-HS education, then not necessarily.
Well, yeah. But the barriers in their way are class markers and education generally, not inability to comprehend or produce the English language.
Yow, I wish I'd read that thread when I had the chance.
LB: Nope our "home language" is Finnish, but we are here in America. Personally, I like being on of only a few people who speak the language around here. It makes everyday life so much easier to be able to have a "secure" channel of communication for use with my family. I can tell the kids to stop picking their noses and nobody else is the wiser. And car salesman hate it when you can ask for your spouses honest opinion of something and they cannot use that information against you. "Well my wife really hates the red one, but if you an give me a good deal I may be able to convince her..."
65: Every time some nutter proposes making LA or the whole of California "English only" - and includes a provision that all signs must be in English - folk are forced to notice that most of our street names and many of our city names are Spanish. Except Mission Viejo, which is spelt half-assed and incorrectly gendered. Not to mention all those French restaurants called "Chez Something". Or Fogo de Chão. Or the Yatai Tapas Bar. ["Pan-Asian fusion", need I say more?]
74
73: I beg to differ. There is something substantively different betwen an accent and a lack of fluency. For instance, many of the people in my family have strong accents. One favorite uncle sounds just a teeny bit like Speedy Gonzales. If speaking English that sounds like you also (or primarily) speak Spanish is a class marker, then there you go.
But, the same uncle speaks English very fluently. I.e, he has no trouble understanding other English speakers or making himself understood, so it follows that he has no trouble doing his white collar job.
Many of the students I hear and see don't just have tell-tale accents: they are not fluent in English. I mean, when I give instructions, they don't understand me unless I speak extremely slowly and enunciate. When they read out loud from a textbook, they read several grade levels below where they read in Spanish, and it's unclear to me whether they understand what they're reading.
If that student can't get hired to work in an office, it's not because of a racist/classist prejudice on the part of human resources. It's because they wouldn't be able to do the job. And if that student was US born and educated in US schools, well, that's a real problem.
76: my family uses Spanish like a "secret" language, but seems to not grasp that because we live in TEXAS, everybody else also speaks Spanish (see comments 1-1000). I've tried to point out that using the "secret" language to criticize other people's fashion choices at the mall is not a super idea, but nobody listens to me. Hilarity usually ensues, but I'm a little worried that one day we're all going to get shot. (see also: concealed weapon laws in Texas).
Eh, you know better than I do. I'm generalizing from neighbors of mine -- there's a lot of first generation Dominicans, but I never run into teenagers who aren't fluent in English: the lowest level of English proficiency among people who came here as kids is heavily accented and 'street' sounding, not non-English speaking. But it sounds as if that's not as generalizable as I thought it was.
76: My father used Arabic to the same effect: Whilst many people might recognise French or Spanish instructions to small children to quiet down or say thank you, very few caught the Arabic.
A friend of mine, however, discovered that her habit of swearing in Arabic was not always wise - she turned around after having cursed out a careless driver in Paris, only to find an elderly Algerian woman staring at her in horror.
I took Finnish as my non-Indo-European language; Arabic and Chinese were too early in the morning, and, being Norse, I look more like a Finn. Which reminds me that somewhere I still have recipes for sima and tippaleivät...
70: No, no, I'm fine. Barricading the door and locking myself, my wife and the cats in the bedroom then barricading that door when we hit the hay, but fine.
His assets are frozen, though I'm not sure how, and my lawyer -- I can now officially say "I have a lawyer," even if it is a close friend who ain't charging me -- my lawyer has compiled evidence and is contacting the authorities as I type.
Also, as the child porn thing is more likely to get a quick response from said authorities than the death threats, it looks like that's what the initial visit will be about. Not sure yet, and don't want to seed random threads with updates, but I'll find some way to keep y'all posted. It's the least I can do, since y'all kept me sane.
70: It's time to call the FBI. Really, really time.
Finns and Swedes come to the US to work as secretaries, because they can spell English better than most Americans. So we should listen to what they say abbout second-language teaching, but throw them out of the ESL datasets because they're just not normal.
The comments have been deleted from That Guy's website, but one left me wondering: what does "fuck you to Nelson" mean?
It's what Hardy answered after Nelson said "Kiss me"?
His assets are frozen, though I'm not sure how
I'm pretty curious about that, too. His parents, possibly?
It's about twice as painful as fucking them into a half-Nelson.
85: The expectations for a "Swedish secretary" have changed since our youths, haven't they John?
Bialistok: "Whatiya mean, What will they say? They'll say 'Bow-wow-wow wa-wa-wa-wa-wow!'"
86: I think it was a reply to this.
88: Something to do with the divorce proceedings, maybe? I'm not sure. I haven't talked to anyone in a couple of days, so I heard that from my lawyer. When I asked why, he said he wasn't in a position to ask the authorities that.
I'm pretty curious about that, too.
Would be part of any divorce proceedings, no?
Pwned on my own life. I sulk away to cry now.
88: IANADivorceL, nor any kind of L in the relevant state, but I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't something her divorce lawyer was able to do. She has some as yet undetermined ownership share in their assets, depending on the state, and if she's got a reasonable belief that he's going to start hiding stuff once he's warned that she's divorcing him, a procedure for quickly freezing everything would make sense.
But I don't actually know if there is such a procedure even in NY, nor anything at all about Louisiana law barring what's in Streetcar Named Desire.
Wait, not pwned! (Apparently two hours of restless sleep for a couple of days straight confuses a person.)
85: What? Did I miss the funny part? Why would you leave the fully-insured paradise of Scandinavia to take letters from crabby management types?
Have you thought about taking a long weekend and going somewhere, maybe doing something outdoorsy or otherwise physically tiring? I'd be fretting myself into a frenzy if I were you, and shaking yourself out of it might be good.
I apologize for my touchy 34 -- I was reading quickly, when I should have read carefully.
Plain, thanks for showing up for me :-). I take it you're the mystery person who called my office while I was at out at a lecture.
P.S. "That Guy" if you do want to discuss things here - and by gum I think you oughta - mighty be better to elide the "URL" part of your info. Just in an excess of caution; people might search on that url.
95 is a good conceptual gloss; I knew how to do this once. I well remember instructing wives—not inherently but usually—how to gather financial records she sometimes had never looked at. And I've heard plenty of war stories.
I think it was a reply to this.
Ah ha. Yes, that makes sense. I thought it was another hip phrase the kids use today to confuse old people like me.
100 - I thought I was. I have to delete my name/info every time I post, despite unclicking the "Remember personal info?" ordinal.
Crap, what? "Ordinal"? That makes no sense. I meant button. And yes, if y'all don't mind a vicious threadjack, it'd be nice to vent about this to people who don't need to be told the whole damn backstory. (Also, I promise to use English, and properly.)
Man, that's really terrible. He's still far away from you, right?
if y'all don't mind a vicious threadjack
Are you kidding? We're all salivating over here.
That Guy, I love how casual you are about things at your site. "Lahlahlah, don't mind the menacing comments. Now, we know Foucault doesn't engage the work of twentieth century historiographers..."
I'll edit the URL out of this thread. Going forward, try putting in a phony URL and hitting 'remember info'.
It'd probably work better if you check "remember my personal info" as TGfTT. "Don't remember" is not the same as "forget."
That said, dear god. And I wonder how the old money will react when some chunk of it is no longer theirs due to their idiot son.
You could put in the URL for my maggot cock post.
Other Guy, didn't the Troll of Sorrow teach you anything about anonymous posting?
Testing to see if this works.
God, editing comments is sloooooooooow.
105: And you were going to vent. As Apo says, we're waiting with bated breath.
With nearly 300,000 comments currently in the database, the gears do grind.
And it does. So, yes, where to start. I updated y'all the other day about the whole "points" thing, and since then, well, there've been:
(1) 8,000 more death threats on the answering machine
(2) about that many death/rape/torture threats posted to my blog
The division actually amuses me, since it seems like there's more creativity involved in writing the threats than in just airing them. I'm not sure why he's more creative on the blog, but he is.
So, my lawyer's not only an old friend but, I learned today, the guy who housed my current advisor when he was a job candidate. That's neither here nor there, just weird. I'm a little spacey, though, so maybe it's better if y'all ask and I vent in response?
114: confirmed!
Now let's hear some dirt.
I would edit that comment to put a (!) after 300,000, but it would take too long.
118: Is the forwarding between former friends still going on?
119: pwned, dude.
The number 300,000 is astonishing enough without being punctuated with an anus.
Any repurcussions among other people's marriages?
What about the political angle?
What do your non-feline cohabitants think of the whole thing? For that matter, what do your feline cohabitants think?
How's the friend, is she holding up okay?
And I think we're clean. Off to bridge.
121 - Yes, but the fall-out's not what you might think, since a lot of the people involved already knew about it. The pictures have been taken down -- took them a couple of days -- but a couple of other collections were identified before that happened. I'm not entirely sure how, but I'm guessing some intrepid sleuth found whatever bulletin board they were posting about their exploits on.
One of the other people in on the competition actually called me, I don't know, two or three nights ago, I can't tell, and basically thanked me for putting it to an end. The whole thing was involved in greater corruption, as in whose-company-got-what-rebuilding-project and what-not being based on their performance in the competition. So even if it's too early to joke about Katrina, it's not too early to mention its relevance.
The whole thing was involved in greater corruption, as in whose-company-got-what-rebuilding-project and what-not being based on their performance in the competition. So even if it's too early to joke about Katrina, it's not too early to mention its relevance.
OMFG.
That Guy: Is your family okay? Not you and your wife; I understand that you're thousands of miles away from the point of impact (so to speak). But do you still have family in the area?
I don't know anything about old money in that region, but I do know a bit in other contexts, and old money generally has long tendrils. Not to get all paranoid on ya.
At least we've disconfirmed the hypothesis that he's a basically nice guy with a little bit of a kink kink. That's the way science progresses, one experiment at a time.
Thinking of this guy as "Southern old money" reminds me of William Zantzinger, of Hattie Carroll fame, who last I looked was still alive, out of jail, still accepted by his social set (albeit as a guy who'd had a bit of bad luck), and still behaving abusively, though not quite so much so.
Katrina, it's not too early to mention its relevance.
Holy fuck.
123 - I'm a little out of the loop, but I only know of one other marriage that's been rocked by this. Turns out if the wife knows, what from the having-slept-with-someone-else, and the husband knows, what with the having-tallied-the-points-someone-else-scored-with-his-wife, the ramifications are null.
124 - Wife's scared, felines are hungry. We've argued a little since -- about my drinking a little too much, and about the wisdom involved in purchasing a fire-arm of some sort -- but for the most part, she's taking everything in stride. Of course, she has to leave the house to teach, whereas I can hole up behind doors barricaded with boxes of books.
And people on campus are asking her about the comments. She tries to explain what happened, but says the story always comes out a little screwy, and so they're all emailing me now. I tell them what I can.
Yep. That pretty much pegs the "that's fucked up" meter.
old money generally has long tendrils
"We're gonna have to dig under the slab to get this old money out."
I recommended the book to FL already, but if you haven't read Harry Crews' The Knockout Artist, it's a good treatment of the pervy debauchery that goes with Louisiana old money. Quick read, too.
125 - She's doing as well as can be expected. I last talked to her on Tuesday, I think it was, and she reiterated her thanks that I told her. No word yet on the HIV/STD tests, though, and that's got her down (among other things).
129 - They're fine, but I haven't told them about any of this yet. My dad's a little, how to say it, overprotective, so I'm still trying to figure out how to break it to them. (My mom's the sponsor or whatever you call it of my friend -- Catholic thing, has to do with confirmation -- so she's not going to take the news well.) My parents live in Houston, though, so I'm not too worried. My sister lives in Baton Rouge -- in my old apartment, no less, and has my old LSU email address, too -- but I haven't told her yet either. Now I'm thinking I maybe should.
Damn it.
127: Holy whoah. This IS going to make a great movie.
130: Hey now, that's my mom's teenage ballroom dancing partner you're slagging off.
Okay, he was pretty much exactly the asshole you might expect.
Thankfully nobody in family runs in those sorts of circles anymore.
128, 131 - That's not that unusual; par for the course in Louisiana politics, actually. Most of Baton Rouge is devoted to rebuilding New Orleans, and this is just how these things no-bid contracts are decided down there.
139: It.. I mean, specifically this way? As a general rule? That's one of the most amazingly disgusting things I've ever heard.
Wouldn't some of the women involved have figured out the game they were involved in? Seems like something that might bother them? I suppose I should read that book...
108 - Not casual, not casual at all. I had the Foucault thing on the back-burners for a week or so, and posted it in the hopes of distracting myself. Sadly, the chicken-shit asshole who responded has slunk away.
I liked the Foucault thing a lot, speaking as a non-academic who's read a goodly amount of Foucault and his critics. I don't have anything to add about "That Thread", though, except I hope that you'll keep very safe and not too crazed with stress.
141 - That's what the pictures were for.
142 - There are all sorts of running bets among these people that end up in the disbursement of million dollar contracts. A friend of mine lost the chance to be kitchen manager at Juban's -- a famous, fancy Cajun restaurant -- at the batting cages. (He's actually coming out to California next week, and I haven't told him about this yet, as he's likely to be tremendously pissed because of who some of the people involved are.)
142 - Forgot to mention, many of the people involved knew exactly what was going on and why. I have no proof, but I'm sure some of those guys sent their wives to other guys to seal a deal of one sort or another. No evidence of that, but it wouldn't surprise me, as these people are wealthy and powerful and damn it they intend to stay that way.
145: Okay, well, yeah. Batting cages is, I would argue, a qualitatively different kind of bet.
Although now that I think about it, I suppose there are analogies to be made between the two.
144 - Thanks. I'm of two-minds about it right now -- don't know how I feel, but know I feel conflicted -- but my stress/paranoia is ridiculous at the moment, so I'm trying not to make any important decisions.
132: I suggest you skip the firearms unless you're already familiar with them or can get some immediate intensive coaching and practice. Stick with the drinking and scriptwriting.
149: Words to live by in any case.
I feel slimy just hearing about this stuff. TG, you're really remarkable for having done the right thing given the players -- I don't think I grasped the kind of social circle at all when the issue was put to us.
146. Christ. Emerson's policy looks better and better all the time.
149 - Well, I did grow up in Louisiana, so I have some experience with firearms. Not that I've ever fired a handgun, mind you, but I wouldn't be completely useless, I don't think. Thing is, there's a 10-day waiting period, so I'd have time to think about/regret my decision any way you cut it.
OT/OT: I need more lamb-shaped butter.
After everything in this thread, it seems actually odd that your friend was so shocked by seeing the pictures in the other thread. I guess nobody had tried to use her to get points in the Most Dangerously Horrible Game.
151 - Yeah, I'm not ever going home again for a long, long time. Thing is, I can't even explain why to some people, which is the bitch of it. "Sorry, Sarah, I can't come to your college graduation, blah blah blah." (Although I'll probably tell her sooner-than-later, but you see what I mean.)
Well, it [The Matter of Foucault] is awfully conflict-y. I don't really run with enough of a theory crowd to understand all the debates going on, but the institutionalization of Foucault among non-academics has been really visible in the bookstore where I volunteer. The main Foucault books are among our biggest non-fiction sellers, right after Chomsky, Zinn, hooks, et al.
154 - You'd think, except she married into money, she's not actually from it. Neither am I, as you might guess. The only reason I knew all about this was that I played baseball with them until college. I mean, I talked to my friend about all this before she got married, but she was having none of it, insisted he was a reformed man, &c.
154: Or perhaps a lamb-shaped cake mold. My mother baked a cake using one of these every easter, a cake referred to as "lamb cake".
156: You should post that in That Blog of That Guy from That Thread. He needs good comments over there, more now than ever before, poor sap.
160: But the blog of That Guy is for [gulp!] graduate students! I wake in the night, heart pounding, fearful that the graduate students who lurk in the walls have somehow gotten in and are leaning darkly over my little bed.
I wake in the night, heart pounding, fearful that the graduate students who lurk in the walls have somehow gotten in and are leaning darkly over my little bed.
Damn it, I told them to be quieter... (and thereby more menacing).
155: That really is so horrendous. I can't imagine not being able to visit my hometown. I was going to suggest you grow a moustache, but that seems to glib even for me.
Is it possible that you could go back from time to time but keep it on the DL? Or are these (terrible) people really so pervasive that they would smoke you out regardless?
I'm having trouble imagining the circumference of all this, perhaps because my childhood friends are not only neurotic northeastern suburbanites but giant nerds to boot. More Cheever-meets-Douglas-Adams than Faulkner.
Well, really it's the nibbling at crumbs in the kitchen that wakes me up. And sometimes they chew up wool sweaters for nest material. "Guys," I tell them, "Guys, I've got a couple of extra blankets you can have", but no, they prefer to chew.
160 - Yes, but we're dumb graduate students who can't seem to not implicate themselves in other people's sex lives.
However, I forgot to mention: one of the guys in my simulated baseball league of sabrmetric semi-celebrities (two of the guys write for ESPN, another for Baseball Prospectus, &c.) who happens to live in Baton Rouge heard about this from the back-end and had one of those wait-a-second-I-know-that-guy moments. (I'm sure he didn't explain how, because as you can tell, it's fairly geeky.)
127
If this guy is really involved in extensive public corruption isn't there a case for siccing the press on him?
163 - A 'stache wouldn't work, as I'm one of those people who cycles through facial hair, so pretty much everybody knows what I look like within the finite realm of variations.
As for keeping it quiet when I went, word would get around, I'm sure. The people I'd want to see work with/live next door to/are married to the brother or sister of/&c. some of the principles. Since they know about the blog, my lawyer actually recommended I make a big deal about going to the MLA in Chicago, far away from them, when I travel back to Houston to visit my family. (Houston's only 4 1/2 hours away.)
I think there's a case for not fanning the flames any further than necessary.
166: You're not from around here, are you?
165: trying not to break anyone's anonymity but is that the League of D____?
166 - Which press, though? The one he's already effectively silenced? It's not like anyone's going to talk about it on the record, after all. I mean, these families go way, way back; they know the names of the descendants of the slaves they owned and know (or think they know) which of their relatives has "a little Negro in them."
which of their relatives has "a little Negro in them."
There might even be pictures of it.
172: Well, shit, if everybody knows about your role, maybe you're the press.
Or maybe stick to scriptwriting...
171 - I think you're talking about the Diamond Mind league. We use OOTP, but some of the same people are involved. (A professional historian of the Great Depression with influence in certain front offices, right?)
168
Sounds like it is a little late for that.
There's always the national press. I'm sure Harpers or the Atlantic Monthly would pay big bucks for this story, artfully told. And if their lawyers passed on it. Then you probably really would have to disappear, though.
173: Yeah, but I don't like to talk about it.
173: Voyeur daguerrotypes were all the rage back in the day. Although the sex was somewhat, uh, tantric.
176 - Maybe, but there's nothing more I, personally, can do. The corruption is wide-spread and well-known -- PBS did a documentary about the construction of the levies pre-Katrina, for example -- and it's not like I can change it. Wish I could. More to the point, I wish I could without causing more pain to my friend and bringing more shit down on my own head.
177 - Well, I did teach literary journalism under a Pulitzer Prize-winning former-editor of the Los Angeles Times, so I could pull a few strings...but then I'd have to disappear, and forever, before I was disappeared, forever.
180: If you worked with a pro journo partner, and kept things anonymous, and helped them find other anonymous sources? Seems like something a lot of people know about.
Hard not to cause more pain to the friend, though. But rooting out this kind of corruption in LA seems like it might be historically urgent at the moment.
180
Maybe, but this sort of scandal might attract more attention and investigations then quietly stealing millions.
By the way I don't in any way mean to imply that you have some kind of moral obligation to do anything further. You've put yourself out on enough limbs for ten people already.
Y'all may be right, but to be frank, I'm not sure I could deal with that right now. I'm barely keeping it together as is. (I don't normally drink at this early hour, or any of the earlier ones I've drunk at today and recently.)
Oh, and hang in there, "That Guy." Best wishes.
Then forget it. We're plenty of audience.
"audience" s/b "support group"
Good Gravy. I have to repeat myself from the original thread: I have no idea what a geographically distant pseudonymous stranger could possibly do to help the situation, yet the desire to offer is strong.
185 - now isn't the time you'd even want to deal with it; the denouement is too far down the road yet. But it's a great story, and great stories are a treasure. Keep it in your back pocket and ask yourself how you feel a year from now.
(um, can somebody refer me to the thread where "points" were first discussed? I missed that part)
185 & 153: Okay, one last bit of unsolicited paternalistic advice from me. Some old fart has to say it and I'm probably the oldest one here.
Alcohol and guns don't mix very well. If you're really in a situation where using one for self-defense is at all likely and you do decide get one, you'll need to lay off the booze. This tale has more than enough twists and turns already, I think no one here wants an even sadder ending to your part in it. I'm done. No more. I promise.
That Guy, the combination of kiddie pr*n and public corruption might actually be enough to interest the FBI, if you were inclined to go that route.
Hang in there.
191 is exceptionally important and needed to be said. Really, while I'm not sure why anyone needs a handgun, I am sure that you should not have one unless you know how to use it and you are sure you would use it. And then, only when sober and sure. Heck, I'm always all those things, and I would not have one in my house. Stick to a baseball bat and keeping your cell phone handy to call 911.
191, 193 - point taken. I'd obviously have to drink less to be a responsible firearm owner, which as of this moment, seems like a bad idea on two fronts.
194: or, alternatively, you'd have to own less guns to be a responsible drinker. That's how I like to think about it.
Just as an aside, under certain conditions, shooting guns drunk is really, really fun. Obviously a bad idea. But honesty compels me.
192: it's hard to imagine they would have much interest in taking it further than the immediate crime, though. At least not with this justice department.
195
"192: it's hard to imagine they would have much interest in taking it further than the immediate crime, though. At least not with this justice department."
Easy enough for me to imagine, particularly with a lot of press interest (and this being New Orleans isn't Democratic involvement likely). And the draconian penalties for child porn are just the thing for encouraging people to make a deal.
195.2: "This justice department" is the key phrase, but the Administration has been slagged enough over Katrina that they might be in a mood to throw a few old-money preverts to the wolves. Plus we're about due for a new AG who will be under some pressure to look like he's cleaning house.
Really, while I'm not sure why anyone needs a handgun
Idealist's hippie roots are showing.
Is there any way for me to find out which thread the whole "points" thing was discussed on? I somehow missed that one, despite having caught all of "that thread."
Just read about "points."
Dude.
All I can say is that I really want to hear, in the end, what kind of divorce settlement your friend gets. I hope to god she gets her a big, big piece of that dirty old money. If she moves out of state, maybe she won't even have to take the kids to visit Jethro in prison.
Now guys, without this kind of thing we wouldn't have Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, The Moviegoer, A Confederacy of Dunces, or any of that good stuff.
205 - I'm sure it'll plenty favorable, if only to keep her quiet. Once you start talking about "legacies," the families get involved in their defense, and -- technically -- the kids are family, even if his ex-wife isn't. At least, I hope that's how it plays out.
I was actually in a bilingual program in 4th-6th grade, and I loved it. Of course, I was pretty much the only native English speaker in the class. And I do think that, in general, what was happening with academics was less challenging even than the "regular" classes (which were so dull that my folks put me in bilingual so that at least I'd be learning Spanish).
But I think that the reason for the dullness of the academics in bilingual ed is about racism. Low fucking expectations, man. And I do think that if we emphasized the BI part of bilingual (which is what two-way immersion programs are starting to do) that that would help address that problem.
Certainly full immersion is the best way to learn a new language. It probably isn't the best way to learn anything else, though. Math could probably be taught in a mix of English and Spanish. But stuff like social studies and history I think you'd have to really make a genuine and concerted effort to provide, at least, native language tutors to help the kids keep up to speed there.
Of course, one of the biggest issues in California is that it isn't just Spanish. Some schools have kids speaking like five or ten different languages: Spanish, Metaxa, Hmong, Vietnamese, Korean, Khmer, and on and on. Then again, hiring teachers aides who speak the languages would provide work for those kids parents, too, and much more easily integrate the adults into the broader school system, which could only help the kids.
208: Doesn't somebody very close to you have a lot of professional experience in this subject, or am I mis-remembering?
My dad never taught bilingual b/c his Spanish is appalling. My sister is bilingual, but by the time she was teaching, bilingual ed was illegal. So not really.
Just want to echo the supportive "hang in there"s, "That Guy".
221: I don't think I've said this explicitly yet to "That Guy". It took some courage and you did the right thing. If one of my kids had done something similar I'd be very proud of them.
Wow, look what happens when you're offline all day and then don't read 200-comment long threads.
ThatGuy, it's probably too late for me to say this, but: I revise my second opinion. Don't tell your friend; forget you saw anything.
I updated y'all the other day about the whole "points" thing, and since then, well, there've been:
I missed this! I missed it! Where is it?
ThatGuy, you pwn. If PointScoringAsshole shows up again, can I come over and abuse him verbally?
--
Everyone needs to learn to be fluent in English. We shouldn't insist on immersion at the expense of math & science. We shouldn't insist on billingual education at the expense of high level-fluency. Schools should be like Sally's school. Thus endeth the comments.
You know, honestly, the more I think about it the more I think That Guy makes it all up.
emphasized the BI part of bilingual
Pervert.
217: mmm.
Was just considering that.
Honestly I don't really care either way. It's still amazing.
It's part of the elaborate setup for next year, when he appears and shouts, "April Fools! I'm not dead, bitches!"
Apo's sermon for Easter Week.
Oh, not that guy
I've believed it completely from the start. And I've always I admit wondered about the real lives behind "those pictures," not the people for whom it's obviously just a business, but the ones who are in some way recording a lived life.
I believe it. But my cat was skeptical when I told her.
That Guy, you are teh hero. Perhaps apo will lend you his crown for a time or perhaps you can share the title but seriously, teh hero. Please keep us in the loop on you being OK or needing help. You don't even have to keep us in the loop on the goings-on in LA if it becomes a burden to talk about it rather than an opportunity to vent (though I confess I am glued to the comment threads now in case you show up to dish).
My preferred interpretation of the Aristocrats joke used to be that it's not told for shock value; rather, it satirizes the behavior of the upper class. I now realize that, whatever the details may be in each individual telling, it's actually a true story about one Old Money family or another.
I'm still pissed at whoever convinced me that french was the language to learn, not spanish.
Here here, to French being a wasted study and to That Guy spinning one entertaining yarn. Don't forget about your friends in the Florida Flophouse when you're shopping around for a screenplay writer.
And if you don't trust me, you can ask the Bible.
Here here, to French being a wasted study
Yeah, I was drunk a lot when I was learning French too. C'est bon.
226: When I was a lass and wanted to drop Latin in favour of Spanish, I was told by the guidance counsellor and my mother that Spanish was "irrelevant". Of course, it was also my mother who tore up and threw out my pristine first year of The Fantastic Four comic. A near-mint #1 is now going for $36,000...
Or perhaps I should have appended il faut toujours en ivre.
The very first night I moved into the building where I lived in New Orleans, I had to step over an old woman lying drunk on the stairs. She was one of the tenants, along with the guy who sold acid out of his apartment, a few Tulane and Loyola students, and a few young professional types. It wasn't that bad of a building, either; it was on the edge of the Garden District. I don't know if the landlord was Old Money--but he was money--and he used to wander around the building with his hand down his pants. Allegedly, one of the women in the building caught him mastubating outside her door one morning. He regularly bought booze for Martha--the old woman--at the K&B across the street and I think he had something going on with the acid dealer, too.
Which is to say, if That Guy's story isn't true, it isn't unbelievable.
I'm surprised to see that Jackmormon has yet to vigorously defend the study of French.
233: My mother threw out my Sandy Koufax rookie card in about 1990, when it was already worth money. Not even in anger, just getting rid of stuff cluttering up the place.
217 - Hmmm, can't tell if you're being serious there B., but for the record, no, I'm not making it all up. If I were, I'm sure I'd found some way to make the story better. That I'm not sure how I'd do that speaks to my lack of imagination in this regards -- i.e. there's a reason I'm a literary critic, not a writer. I'm just not that good of a storyteller.
Defend it? Hells no. They make you read Le Petit Prince, you know.
95, you can take your drink to-go, but only in a plastic cup -- no glass on the streets.
Learning ANY new language is a good thing, because it teaches you what it's like to think within another culture's mindset. That said, French isn't terribly useful unless you want to spend a lot of time in France, or you're into French lit or cultural criticism.
no glass on the streets
You already sound so experienced; are you even old enough to drink yet?
Muslims are so naive about this stuff...
That said, French isn't terribly useful unless you want to spend a lot of time in France, or you're into French lit or cultural criticism.
Of if you want to impress the laydeez with your savwah fare.
We spent a while in one class yesterday discussing the correct pronounciation of "law French," like "oyez" and "en banc." It was a good use of time.
We spent a while in one class yesterday discussing the correct pronounciation of "law French
Ah those lazy days of spring semester as a 3-L.
242, I was just getting LB up to speed on Louisiana law. (Also, come to think of it, LB, don't pet the NOPD horses. Bad things happen.)
