評論
打印
Johnson
來源于《約翰遜》語言專欄
Mother tongues
母語
Forcing immigrants to learn English can be counter-productive
強迫移民學英語可能適得其反
Lev Golinkin left Soviet Ukraine as a nine-year-old in1990.With assistance from HIAS, a Jewish organisation that helps refugees, his family made its way to Indiana. In America, not having English felt “like having a massive stroke, only instead of being sent to the hospital and getting help you have to go out and get a job.” His experience suggests immigrants don’t have to be told how important it is to speak the language of a new country: they are more painfully aware of it than natives can ever know.
1990年，9歲的列弗·戈林金離開了蘇聯統治下的烏克蘭。在幫助難民的猶太組織HIAS的幫助下，他的家人來到了印第安納州。在美國，不懂英語“就像患了嚴重的中風，只是你不得不出去找工作，而不必被送進醫院接受治療”。他的經歷表明，移民不必要被告知講一個新國家的語言有多重要：移民比當地人更加痛苦地認識到這一點。
Yet they are often assumed to need coercion. On May16th, for example, Donald Trump vowed to ensure that immigrants to America learn English and pass a civics exam before arriving.
但是人們通常認為移民講本地語言需要被強制執行。例如，5月16日，唐納德·特朗普發誓要確保移民到美國之前要先學習英語，并通過公民考試。
Such strictures might seem to serve national cohesion. In fact, the wrong policies and tone do the reverse, as Vicky Fouka of StanfordUniversity found in a study of German-Americans living a century ago. With its large Germanimmigrant population, Ohiowas the first of several states to permit teaching in German alongside English. By 1900 some 4% of elementary-school pupils in America were taught at least partly in German. After the first worldwar anti-German sentiment led to the end of those programmes and, in Ohio and Indiana, even to a ban on teaching German as a foreign language to young children.
這樣的限制似乎有利于國家團結。事實上，正如斯坦福大學的維基·弗卡在對生活在一個世紀前的德裔美國人的研究中所發現的那樣，錯誤的政策和論調適得其反。俄亥俄州有大量的德國移民人口，是第一個允許用德語和英語教學的州。到1900年，美國大約4%的小學生至少部分使用德語授課。第一次世界大戰之后，反德情緒導致了這些項目結束，在俄亥俄州和印第安納州，甚至禁止將德語作為外語教授給幼兒。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
