Bilingualism

When I was a Gallaudet student I heard a lot about "bilingualism."  Gallaudet, in an effort to comply with MSCHE's accreditation standards, is in the process of making the university “bilingual.”  To do this, they’ve begun providing ASL interpretations of many of the written announcements on the website, such as the website for the new SLCC building.  

It doesn’t bother me that they are providing both ASL and English interpretations of information.  What concerns me is the manner in which they’re doing it.  The university has stated that they are including videos of signed information to aid people in understanding the material.  THAT ISN’T BEING BILINGUAL.  That’s saying, “Oh, you can’t read English?  All right, we’ll interpret it for you.”  Call it was it is- translating.  It’s not bilingualism.

The same could apply to virtually any language.  People say America is becoming a bilingual country because we have so many Spanish speakers.  Um… no.  Having two distinct groups of people who speak two different languages isn’t bilingualism.  If all children were raised speaking Spanish AND English, we could call it bilingualism.  Instead, there’s a big push for English speakers to take Spanish courses in order to better communicate with Spanish-speaking immigrants.  That makes a lot of native English speakers bilingual (myself included), but doesn’t make the COUNTRY bilingual.

This rant came to me while at work.  Several months ago a coworker (who was raised in America by Mexican immigrant parents) expressed shock that our boss didn’t know Spanish, despite having worked at Panera for three years.  When I pointed out that several of our non-English speaking employees had been at the store just as long, she didn’t understand my point.  “They don’t speak English… So?  Why doesn’t he learn Spanish?” 

Why the double standard?  I always use the example of myself travelling (or moving to) another country; if I wanted to move to France for an extended period of time (several years of more), I would learn French.  Maybe not fluently, but enough to get by on a day to day basis.  I’d want to for my own comfort, knowing that I could go into a restaurant and order my own meal.

Day after day I encounter non-English speaking customers who approach me and order in their native language.  I’ve had MANY people get angry with me because I could not understand what they were saying to me, and been cussed out for it on several occasions.  If we want to call ourselves bilingual, let’s actually make people bilingual.  Not SOME people learning two languages to communicate with those who don’t know the majority language. 

Same applies to Gallaudet.  We can be a bilingual university, but only if we stop babying deaf people who can’t use English properly.  Teachers (and students) are afraid to criticize those who write English poorly for fear of being portrayed as “audist” or “oppressive” (the two most over-used words at Gallaudet).  Last I checked, a professor’s job included teaching, not simply waving along students. 

Rant over.