Posted on 08/03/2008 11:35:30 PM PDT by neverdem
NEW YORK --If you like bilingualism, you will love septalingualism.
Big Apple Mayor Michael Bloombergs latest brainstorm outstrips his notorious war on trans-fats, both for its audacity and sheer senselessness. Americas largest municipality soon will conduct official business in English and Spanish --which would be bad enough --plus five other foreign languages: Russian, Chinese, Korean, French Creole, and Italian.
This Executive Order will make our city more accessible, while helping us become the most inclusive municipal government in the nation, Bloomberg crowed as he signed this measure on July 22.
Bloombergs linguistic smorgasbord opens during a financial tempest. Thanks to Wall Streets woes, tax revenues have tanked. As the New York Post noted, profit taxes from the states top 16 banks shriveled from $173 million in June 2007 to $5 million last June, a 97 percent contraction.
Meanwhile, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Nicole Gelinas calculates, Bloombergs inflation-adjusted, per-capita spending has averaged 4.5 percent annual growth. This has quadrupled the 1.125 percent analogous figure for former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Red ink flows where Bloombergs rising government-spending curve intersects with Wall Streets plunging tax-revenue curve.
Bloomberg has steered this stunningly extravagant initiative into this intensifying fiscal turbulence. At least 77 city agencies now must assign or hire Language Access Coordinators to determine which municipal services will be delivered in which of these idioms. Some city forms will be translated into these tongues; elsewhere, city personnel will perform their duties daily in these languages. Perhaps interpreters will rush in if, say, Haitian immigrants want to discuss the City Charter in French Creole. As the police and fire departments struggle to fight criminals and blazes, how exactly will Bloomberg finance all this? Are tax hikes just around the corner?
Bloomberg ordered this indulgence without forecasting how hard it may slam New Yorks beleaguered taxpayers.
We dont have cost estimates, says Evelyn Erskine, Bloombergs deputy press secretary. Were in the first stages of planning. Some agencies will have to translate documents online. Some with branch offices may have to hire people. By January 1, Language Access Coordinators must recommend how their agencies will satisfy Bloomberg, and at what price.
Taxpayer dollars aside, Bloombergs septalingualism is a cultural migraine in the making and an insult to its supposed beneficiaries. Are todays immigrants too feeble to learn English, as did the 12 million immigrants who traversed Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954? Since when were Italians, of all people, too wretched to fathom English? Is it too much to ask todays Italian arrivals to speak Americas common tongue, as did the forbears of such distinguished New Yorkers as Giuliani, former governor Mario Cuomo, Home Depot co-founder Kenneth Langone, and Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese?
Before long, Bloombergs crazy scheme probably will ignite demands for ballots in these languages. And why not Chinese, Russian, and French Creole subway announcements? The city that epitomizes the melting pot will devolve into a modern Skyline of Babel in which New Yorkers increasingly co-exist with no shared means of communication. This merely will inconvenience English-speaking New Yorkers, but it concretely will hobble Koreans, Russians, French Creole speakers, and others who will have one less inducement to understand English, todays lingua franca of global commerce. Bloombergs folly will marginalize these people, rather than merge them into the American mainstream with the linguistic tools to compete in an increasingly demanding world economy.
I think this will hurt immigrants long-term assimilation into American society, both socially and economically, predicts Russian émigré Yuri Mamchur, director of the Seattle-based Discovery Institutes Real Russia Project. Most workplaces require them to speak English. This policy does them no favors.
Indeed, Bloomberg should scrap this program before it unleashes havoc. Its unspent outlays instead should teach immigrants to speak and write English. This will help them become productive citizens who interact with the vast majority of Americans who speak English, not Korean or Spanish.
Before Mayor Bloombergs next stroke of genius, he should go fix Gothams proverbial windows, which are breaking anew. In short: Silvoulpè met asasen lan prison, arête moun kap sal mi yo ak grafiti, retire mandyan ki sou twotwa yo, netwaye lari a. Thats French Creole for Please jail murderers, arrest graffiti vandals, and sweep derelicts off the sidewalks.
Mr. Murdock, a New York-based commentator to HUMAN EVENTS, is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
Is it time to build the fence yet?
“Snake Pliskin, line one.”
Anybody else get the uneasy feeling that the tower of Babel has been raised again?
LOL! I thought about that, too...
1 Rockafeller Center? Or is that the tower of babble?
This ladies and gentlemen is why I am currently learning Elvish. I plan on turning the State of Oregon and possibly the nation upside down as I take my fight to the courts to force all local and state offices to offer translation services to me. Heck maybe we could form a coalition for gibberish and set teams in each state to sue for gibberish translation services. Anyone up for it ??
Press 12 for Hindu....
Well, it took a Nimrod to build both.
Bloomberg ordered this indulgence without forecasting how hard it may slam New Yorks beleaguered taxpayers.”
This guy knows how to make money, true (of which he has more than sense) - He needs to stick to that and stay OUT of politics, out of policy.
What a dolt.
French Creole? In NYC?? The mind reels with sarcastic replies.
NYC is already basically a foreign country - this is just bizarre. Who’s going to pay for it? The non english speakers? Who elects these “people”??
New York is an international city. The point of this — not mentioned in the article — is to attract foreign businesses.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
For Haitian immigrants, I assume.
Klingon is for nerds ... LOL just kidding. Did a google search and figured I remembered right, Oregon already hired a Klingon translator for its mental health services.
Elvish is a far more difficult language and is spoken by a much smaller fan base.
I am thinking of going with gibberish though, it would be alot easier :)
Sindarin or Quenya?
Obviously, I prefer Sindarin. ;-)
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