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.
New York City will now be officially renamed Press 2-3-4-5-6-7 city.
Other countries have official languages. It is not in the least racist for our country, states and cities to declare English as the sole official language. If you live here, you should learn English.
Thanks for the ping!
And the folks who run those businesses speak English, too. And they did it without having the city government pander to them in this manner, didn't they?
Competition is tougher these days. You do what you have to do.
NYC is competing with L.A., Dubai, London, etc. etc. for business.
Oh, please. NYC is very unfriendly to business unless your business happens to be a giant in financial services, a tourist attraction, or a professional sports franchise.
Uh yeah — I’d add media conglomerate, fashion leader, big pharma or major advertising concern.
What’s wrong with that? Big business creates jobs. Lotsa, lotsa jobs.
If you’re a guy who wants to open a corner store, then you best be clever, patient and ruthless.
Lots of French Creole speakers in Flatbush and Canarsie in Brooklyn, to say nothing of SE Queens.
All fine and dandy. I just feel that it is becoming “mallhattan” with all the suburban style chain stores. Then again, what is more New York that going into Duane Reade at 3AM?
BTW: The homeless are back!
“
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.
“
No suprise.
The California dream of The New Tower of Babel spread across the land.
Heck, here in Missouri we even have our version of California’s
DMV providing a Bosnian-language version of the drivers manual.
To bend over for the approx. 40,000 Bosnians in the Greater St. Louis area.
My prediction: You're going to see a lot of new, independent type businesses open over the next five years.
influx of transplants from flyover country who...
These are the children from the richest families of small to medium-sized towns. Basically they left for college and never returned home to the family car dealership, funeral parlor or small manufacturing concern. A couple of things about them:
A) They are Corcoran realtor’s dream. No idea how much something costs, except that it’s “expensive” and that their parents want them in a “safe” building.
B)They’ve never seen NYC take a turn downward, i.e. 91/92.
They’re in for a surprise.
C)They ain’t wising up to the ways of the big city as quickly as they should if they want to survive.
I agree, and I know from the retail end of the banking industry that the NY market is considered oversaturated with banks, and that consolidation of the banking industry should give pause to yet another bank opening in Park Slope.
...but they won’t look like the small businesses of 30 years ago.
I predict very niche, upscale small businesses —$50.000 t-shirts and organic, holistic bakeries —aimed at very fragmented demographics. The day of new Greek diners is long gone.
The children of the diner owners, if they stay in the business, tend to open more upscale restaurants on the same site, including "upscale diners" (see the place on 14th and 9th in the Meatpacking district). Tastes change with the times and the generations, but even many young people don't want an impersonal world of SOLELY composed of Best Buys, Chipotle, and Whole Foods.
Speaking of young people, I still don't understand the whole "cupcake" phenomenon. Lining up for something mommy used to make, I guess.
I'm 32, and already feel old around such people.
Didn't know that. ROP types?
If you don’t want the impersonal, then you go very upscale. Drop $50,000 at Prada and they will get very neighborly — they might even bring you a beverage.
Liberals are sick.
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