Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Septalingualism: NYC Mayor Bloomberg's Latest Crazy Scheme
HUMAN EVENTS ^ | 08/01/2008 | Deroy Murdock

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 Bloomberg’s latest brainstorm outstrips his notorious war on trans-fats, both for its audacity and sheer senselessness. America’s 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.

Bloomberg’s linguistic smorgasbord opens during a financial tempest. Thanks to Wall Street’s woes, tax revenues have tanked. As the New York Post noted, profit taxes from the state’s 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, Bloomberg’s 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 Bloomberg’s rising government-spending curve intersects with Wall Street’s 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 York’s beleaguered taxpayers.

“We don’t have cost estimates,” says Evelyn Erskine, Bloomberg’s deputy press secretary. “We’re 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, Bloomberg’s septalingualism is a cultural migraine in the making and an insult to its supposed beneficiaries. Are today’s 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 today’s Italian arrivals to speak America’s 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, Bloomberg’s 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, today’s lingua franca of global commerce. Bloomberg’s 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 Institute’s 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 Bloomberg’s next stroke of genius, he should go fix Gotham’s 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. That’s 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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: aliens; bloomberg; govwatch; nyc
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-72 next last
"Bloomberg's Latest Crazy Scheme," nails it quite nicely, doesn't it?
1 posted on 08/03/2008 11:35:30 PM PDT by neverdem
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: neverdem

Is it time to build the fence yet?


2 posted on 08/03/2008 11:37:39 PM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Smokin' Joe

“Snake Pliskin, line one.”


3 posted on 08/03/2008 11:40:15 PM PDT by IrishCatholic (No local communist or socialist party chapter? Join the Democrats, it's the same thing.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: neverdem

Anybody else get the uneasy feeling that the tower of Babel has been raised again?


4 posted on 08/03/2008 11:41:11 PM PDT by Navy Patriot (John McCain, the Manchurian Candidate.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: neverdem
자유주의는 정신 장애이다. !
5 posted on 08/03/2008 11:48:10 PM PDT by Jay Howard Smith (Retired(25yrNCO)Military)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: IrishCatholic

LOL! I thought about that, too...


6 posted on 08/03/2008 11:51:36 PM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Navy Patriot

1 Rockafeller Center? Or is that the tower of babble?


7 posted on 08/03/2008 11:52:48 PM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Smokin' Joe

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 ??


8 posted on 08/03/2008 11:58:24 PM PDT by BhaktaSteve
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: neverdem
This is the same kind of feel good fiasco that has Kalifornia sucking mostly dry coffers.

Press 12 for Hindu....

9 posted on 08/04/2008 12:00:59 AM PDT by OKIEDOC (OBAMA aka Post Turtle the Forest Gump of American Politics ABORTION -Liberal Child Abuse.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Smokin' Joe

Well, it took a Nimrod to build both.


10 posted on 08/04/2008 12:01:25 AM PDT by Navy Patriot (John McCain, the Manchurian Candidate.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: neverdem

Bloomberg ordered this indulgence without forecasting how hard it may slam New York’s 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.


11 posted on 08/04/2008 12:05:29 AM PDT by llandres (I'd rather be alive and bankrupt than dead and solvent)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: neverdem
...plus five other foreign languages: Russian, Chinese, Korean, French Creole, and Italian.

French Creole? In NYC?? The mind reels with sarcastic replies.

12 posted on 08/04/2008 12:06:24 AM PDT by yankeedame ("Oh, I can take it but I'd much rather dish it out.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: neverdem

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”??


13 posted on 08/04/2008 12:09:23 AM PDT by The Worthless Miracle (Where's Michele??)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BhaktaSteve
Why mess around? The Klingon Language Institute
14 posted on 08/04/2008 12:10:23 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: The Worthless Miracle

New York is an international city. The point of this — not mentioned in the article — is to attract foreign businesses.


15 posted on 08/04/2008 12:16:01 AM PDT by durasell (!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: cyborg; Clemenza; Cacique; NYCVirago; The Mayor; Darksheare; hellinahandcart; Chode; ...
Experts See Albany Ills as Problem, Not Crisis

FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.

16 posted on 08/04/2008 12:18:13 AM PDT by neverdem (I'm praying for a Divine Intervention.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: yankeedame
French Creole? In NYC??

For Haitian immigrants, I assume.

17 posted on 08/04/2008 12:18:18 AM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (Obama "King of Kings and Lord of Lords")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: Smokin' Joe

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 :)


18 posted on 08/04/2008 12:28:00 AM PDT by BhaktaSteve
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Jay Howard Smith
別に外国語が流暢にしゃべらるって大きな問題じゃないでしょうか。 !!
19 posted on 08/04/2008 12:57:55 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo (McCain crosses Party lines to vote LIBERAL. I'll cross Party lines to vote CONSERVATIVE. 'Nuff said.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: BhaktaSteve
Elvish is a far more difficult language and is spoken by a much smaller fan base.

Sindarin or Quenya?

Obviously, I prefer Sindarin. ;-)

20 posted on 08/04/2008 12:59:38 AM PDT by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-72 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson