Tired of Ignorance

                                                                                    

He needs to work on his spelling a bit, but he's only a dog.

Anyone complaining about Spanish at the halftime Superbowl show with Bad Bunny is proving their ignorance.  

The U.S. has approximately 65.5 million Spanish speakers, making itthe second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world after Mexico.

Trump complained about the Spanish.

I want to live in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual world and for the most part I do.

My husband and I had our official marriage in our village's mayor office two years after our commitment ceremony. Like in many countries, even if a rabbi, minister or priest performed 1000+ marriage ceremonies with a couple, none are legal. 

Unlike our commitment ceremony attended by 40 people from seven countries, the only guests at our legal marriage in our Swiss village, were our witnesses, my housemate and her son. 

Most of the time, although we live in a Francophone world, at home we speak English or French. Just after the restaurant manager poured his gift champagne at our celebration lunch, my housemate and her son started speaking German. My German is rusty. I call it shopping German which means I can communicate on a very basic level.

That's weird I thought. I caught a few words about her picking him up by a certain time and where. Guacamole preparation? It made no sense until five hours later, when I realized they were finalizing details about a surprise party for us. They didn't think neither I nor my new official husband would understand the German.

Most of my friends' families are multi-lingual. Parents who must name a child, also decide who speaks what to their offspring. One couple where the woman speaks French, English, Dutch, German fluently and her American partner, who speaks English, made sure their sons speak English and French. Their three year old son when he met me saddled up to me and said, "I speak English very good."

Another friend (English, German, French) and her husband (English, French, German, Italian) have a daughter who from an early age spoke English, German, Swiss German with the same ease as she inhales and exhales. She is also learning French.

I won't ask you to forgive me for not feeling sympathetic when an American complains about someone singing in Spanish. It shows ignorance when an American growls, "Speak English. You're in America." What they are showing, "I'm ignorant and live in a bubble that shuts me out of all the wonderful things that the world has to offer."

Maybe the woman, who said that the Super Bowl was American so she didn't understand a Puerto Rican being there, didn't know Puerto Ricans are Americans.

Yes, language is tied to identity and culture. Limiting oneself is shutting out most of the world. Sad, so sad.

Even our dog is multi-lingual. We started speaking to him only in English. Then we realized by his responses, he understood, so for things we didn't want him to understand like "Should we take the dog for a walk," we used French.

Then we realized, he understood the French.

"I started spelling words like "W A L K." He caught on, We knew by his body language.

Maybe we should switch to "Gehen" for walk and other basic German words.

I think my dog is smarter than Trump.