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Tip O'Neill, the Massachusetts Democrat who once served as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, once observed that all politics is local.'' Today that could be modified to all language is political.''
No matter what the issue, there seems to be a linguistic angle. For instance, there was a federal levy known for years as the estate tax,'' which seemed an accurate description -- it was a tax on estates.
Republican revisionists, however, decreed that it should be called the death tax,'' even though it is not a tax on death. It's also a bit odd that Republicans oppose it, since the first president to propose such a tax was a Republican, Theodore Roosevelt. In 1906, he said that we should ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount, either given in life or bequeathed upon the death of any individual,'' since No amount of charity in spending such fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them.''
Consider the current discussions about Iraq. Our president wants to eliminate Saddam Hussein. But the Bushites don't put it that way. They say they seek a regime change,'' which sounds more like the result of an election, rather than of a war. Presumably it is a more palatable term.
The military action will not have a straightforward name like invasion.'' Instead, they talk about liberating'' Iraq. While this has positive connotations, the American GIs who liberated Europe in World War II brought back another meaning, as in My uncle liberated these neat smoke grenades from some supply depot.''
Of course, given that this administration is headed by oilmen, and that Iraq has the second largest petroleum reserves in the world, perhaps the liberation'' of its resources is exactly what they have in mind.
At home, we've got a linguistic issue on our state ballot this year: Amendment 31.
As I read it, it generally requires that instruction in our public schools be given in English, thereby eliminating bi-lingual education.
If I were dictator of Colorado, I'd revise the state standards so that you could not pass eighth grade until you were fluent in Standard English (the dialect of business letters and newspaper columns), at least one other common dialect of English (Legalese, Educanto, Ebonics, Blue Collar, etc.) and one non-English language, like Spanish, German, Latin, Nuche, Italian or Mandarin Chinese.
As the advocates for Amendment 31 put it, children can easily acquire full fluency in a new language ... if they are heavily exposed to that language in the classroom at an early age.'' That's the best time to learn other languages. We'd understand our own language better if we knew another, and we'd understand our world better if we more languages.
Would it be possible to offer that much language in grade school? I'm proposing only three, and two are closely related. Our older daughter, Columbine, spent a year in Iceland as an exchange student about a decade ago. You don't pass eighth grade there until you're fluent in five languages: Icelandic, of course; Danish (Iceland used to be a colony of Denmark), English (especially for the college-bound, because there aren't many high-level textbooks written in Icelandic), and two more, usually German, French or Spanish (Icelanders like to vacation in Spain during their long, dark winters).
So it's possible -- the country with the highest literacy rate in the world requires the mastery of a multitude of languages in grade school. For my part, even though English is my livelihood, often I wish I'd had more than a year of high-school German and such Spanish as I've been able to absorb over the years.
But I'm not likely to become dictator, and so we're back to the ballot and Amendment 31. Even though I'd like to see widespread fluency in many languages, who could quarrel with the goal of English fluency for all?
However, the way that Amendment 31 would implement this is called parental enforcement'' -- parents can sue and recover money if the instruction isn't in English, and educators could be barred from teaching for five years.
Both our daughters were fortunate to have an outstanding teacher, Loretta Ordaz, now retired but then the subject of some folk wisdom at Longfellow Elementary here: Dot your i's and cross your t's, Ms. Ordaz is hard to please.''
On the weekly spelling list for second-graders, she'd throw in a few Spanish words: amarillo, mariposa, viejo, even salida. I found it quite educational to go over the list with the kids.
Under Amendment 31, she could have lost her job for that. That's reason enough to oppose it. Good teachers are rare, and we ought to protect them, not contrive new ways to harass or fire them.
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