Obama’s Language Mandate: Why It Feels Like Hungarian to Me
I feel you misinterpret Obama’s speech, or perhaps distort its meaning so as to reach the conclusion you wish to make.
For example, his comment “It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English….” you interpret as saying that ‘European’s multilingualism is a sign of intellectual superiority’. That’s a superficial interpretation that leaves out the all-important humor inherent in the original. There’s a vast difference between saying something jokingly, and proclaiming that something as an absolute truth. You’ve taken the former and interpreted as the latter.
Second example: “….you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish”. Here Obama is using a specific example to illustrate a general point, i.e., learning foreign languages is good. As a skilled orator, he chooses Spanish because it has particular resonance with Americans. Reading a marxist-socialist agenda into these words is a long stretch, to say the least!
Finally, you claim that “Obama is not imploring us to learn Spanish in order to read and discuss the works of Ortega y Gasset and Miguel de Cervantes, but to…[attend to quotidian concerns such as communicating with immigrants]“. Well, you’re never going to understand Miguel de Cervantes if you can’t understand your the person who cleans your house or office, and I, for one, would never discount the value of being able to communicate with another living human being.
