Arizona woman off ballot after high court agrees her English isn’t good enough
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/08/arizona-woman-off-ballot-after-high-court-agrees-her-english-isnt-good-enough/?hpt=hp_bn1
While I firmly believe that English should be the official language of these United States (decades ago I was quite flabbergasted to learn it wasn’t already), I also firmly believe that _until_ such laws are passed at the Federal level it should be considered unconstitutional for any state to have such a requirement. Further, if such a requirement is had, there must be an unambiguous, crystal clear definition of what ‘adequate’ command of our language is. I have communicated with people from the North East and often find them challenging to understand (why do they talk so damn fast? Whats the rush?) and my lovely wife, while Filipino, speaks excellent, accent-free English, but initially had very substantial difficulties communicating with people when we lived in North Carolina (I, being Southern Born, evidently inherited the ability to follow their drawl). So, what is good enough English? It would seem clear, upon reading that article, that the woman in question has inadequate English skills and since the communication at city council meetings is undoubtedly going to be in English I feel it is reasonable to expect that representatives should be able to communicate without a translator, so on the surface I agree with the judge’s decision. However, since there is no objective criteria for deciding what is good enough besides a judge’s whims, I have a problem with the whole process. The point of law in our country (mostly ignored as regular readers are well aware) is to be uniformly applied to everyone regardless of race, religion, creed, wealth, station, etc., etc., etc. How can anything be uniformly applied if there is no definition?
Of course, defining what would be adequate is probably a very challenging task and undoubtedly why the Arizona Legislature never got around to doing so. Indian English can be very difficult to understand (just ask anyone who has got tech support!), yet I would argue that they speak better English than the majority of our nation’s natural born citizens. (Don’t ever accuse them of speaking poor English, unless you want an earful; they do have an official language and it is English and they are taught it English in school!) Heck, I have attempted to communicate with people from England and even though nominally we speak the same language, we have to talk like idiot morons in order to get thoughts across because when we talk at normal speed with normal word choices and emphasis we might as well be talking different languages. I have also been told of people who are several generations removed from having immigrated, yet because they almost exclusively interact with their relatives and close family friends, even though they were taught English in school they can barely speak it today.
On an amusing counter note (amusing to me, at least), when my wife and I were living in North Carlina we stopped at a local sea food store. As there wasn’t anyone available we called out as we entered and were answered by the purest southern bell blue-eyed, blond haired accent you can imagine. Then, around the corner comes this 100% pure ethnic (I believe her family was) Vietnamese girl (still cute as a button, but about as far from blue-eyed and blond haired you can probably get). She acted as translator for her parents as it seems their command of English was such they didn’t care for being embarrassed by trying to use it.
Arizona has made english the official language, but she can speak it correct? she didn’t need a translator in the court room?
If they needed a court to determine if she could/could run for council, shouldn’t they evaluate all candidates in a similar manner? Why is her english skills different from the other candidates? Why not evaluate the candidates on their ability to interpret law or something related to their job on city counsel?
If one could not speak, or hear, or see? would that disqualify them from running for the same reason that they can not perform the duties of city council?
What I got out of the article was she couldn’t answer, in English, questions the judge put to her. Thus, to communicate to the judge she would need a translator.
Good point in many respects, though I don’t think lacking language skills is (currently) considered a disability worthy of government accommodation.
As a Texas bubba living in New York, I don’t find that they speak too rapidly (although I drawl). They do have problems which I have addressed by giving lessons to a few of my friends.
I coach them that they should convert one syllable to two or more and reduce multiple syllables to as few as possible. “Yayus” for “yes” would be an example.
There are other subtleties such as lengthening vowels. These may be so locally variable that one must simply accomodate them without resorting to giving lessons. In a 20-mile radius, in Texas, one might hear “aunt” pronounced as “ant” or “ain’t.” In a 20-mile radius, in NY, one might hear it pronounced “ont” or “ant.” (Whether or not you actually get what I’m saying depends on how you pronounce “ant.”)
As for the woman in the article, she needed a translator. She would clearly have been ineffective in the job. To me, that’s grounds for exclusion. One would not hire a blind person as a color-coordinator or a deaf person as a music critic. At some point we must opt for common sense over postulated discrimination.
I agree that a competency test would be hard to define. I also feel that language simplification would be the first step towards Orwellian newspeak and even stronger mind control. Without subtleties the number of extant concepts is reduced.
In any case, if you can’t communicate with your team members you don’t belong on the team. Political correctness and namby-pamby accommodation of gross inabilities be damned.