There's one phrase that several people use which, almost more than anything else, irritates me. Usually the people uttering it are quite unaware of the poisonous connotations inherent in that phrase, or how well it reveals their stunted self-righteous provincial bigotry. Quite often they are also borderline, or far over the brink, Republican, backwoods, narrow-minded, intolerant, and on the whole rather remarkably stupid and ignorant.
Besides being all-American.
Can you guess the phrase?
"They should learn English!"
Yep.
The phrase is stupid and offensive, because the people about whom it is said already know that an inability to express themselves in English handicaps them and bars their advance. And furthermore, on a daily basis, they experience moments of complete incomprehension, and crippling barriers to "Americanity".
The rearendhats saying "they should learn English" do not take this into account, but blithely assume that the objects of their ire are perversely determined to not speak English like normal people. Why, it must be some foreign hatred of Anglos that inspires them to be so obtuse!
Many Americans are completely unable to learn any other language, and take for granted that all foreign tongues are deliberately difficult, or just too illogical for a civilized person to speak.
Certainly not if they have English as an alternative.
Because English is just totally perfect.
Jesus spoke English.
English is better than sex!
And sex, of course, is better if you speak English.
In actual fact, English is rather hard to learn, and the ridiculous orthography does not make it any easier. Several hours of study a week will get you a minor amount of conversational fluency after two to four years, but until then it seems a waste of time, and the limited amount you know will not win you any Brownie Points. Native speakers of English will still act like shitheads, and people from the vast uneducated trailer park between the San Francisco Bay and New York will still think themselves entitled to be rude, crude, and altogether hateful.
Monolingual English-speaking Americans can be very unpleasant.
Which is rather the opposite of encouraging.
Downright effing Texan, in fact.
By the way, if you are offended by this essay, please bear in mind that it is in English. Entirely so. Because you are incapable of comprehending any other tongue.
Over one hundred different languages are spoken in San Francisco.
And we're a darn sight better than you lot.
Please don't visit.
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