[x1stcav]

Boy! Did I used to get that lecture from my grandmother when I started to pick up Sicilian from my grandfather, who was in the last years of his life and had started to talk in the native tongue again.

She was all over me like a hawk with the same admonition:

‘We’re in America now. Don’t listen to that crazy old man. We’re never going back to Sicily. Speak English!’

Brutal? You bet! We weren’t raised to be pu$$ies.

[liberalh8ter]

I wonder if that attitude toward immigration is generational or cultural. I know in the case of my family, they felt as though opportunities to make something of themselves awaited them in America. It seems as though those who are invading feel as though the opportunity that awaits them is to fleece us.

[reg45]

When my grandmother died, about forty years ago, we had to go through her things. Among her treasures we found the book that she had used to study English when she first arrived in this country a century ago.