I demand that we place immigration restrictions on the English language. Words that have already settled into English must, I suppose, be allowed to stay - all those Greeks and Romans and French and Dutch and Indians and Arabs have been here for so long that we'd have a job getting rid of them now. But no new immigrants! Let us have no more foreign words stealing the jobs English words used to do! If we have to support redundant words, let them be English words, not words that don't belong to this language. We should keep foreign words out before they swamp our schools and hospitals. We have to stop these words from just waltzing into our language without restriction, as though they had a right to be here. Those admitted on tourist visas should be italicized and made to leave as soon as their time is up.
Laughing at anti-immigration arguments is one thing. For a reasoned defence of free immigration, go to the internet version of The Objective Standard and read the article "Immigration and Individual Rights" by Craig Biddle. He's talking about America, but the same moral principles apply to immigration into this country.
Don't they actually have similar language restrictions in France? Or is that just a myth?
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post very much!
It's more than a myth, but less than an outright ban. The authority responsible for keeping the French language pure is the Academie Francaise, not the government itself. According to Wikipedia, "The body has the task of acting as an official authority on the language; it is charged with publishing an official dictionary of the language. Its rulings, however, are only advisory; not binding on either the public or the government."
ReplyDeleteOf course the Academie has failed utterly. French businesses are not so xenophobic: many large French companies, including the one I used to work for, mandate English as the corporate language.