LSA
“They beat the language out of us in school,” remembered one elderly Alaska Native. “Whenever I speak Tlingit, I can still taste the soap,” another confirmed (his language now has fewer than a thousand speakers). On Guam, the naval government prohibited the use of Chamoru on school grounds, in courts, and in governmental offices. Children caught sp
... See moreDaniel Immerwahr • How to Hide an Empire
Add to that the fact that school curricula don't require students to learn foreign languages
What’s the real reason why most people in the USA only speak/knows English and not another language?
As Allied leaders contemplated how the world might look after the war, they thought about language. “The empires of the future are empires of the mind,” Winston Churchill announced in 1943 in a speech at Harvard. The key to that mental colonization, he believed, was linguistic. Churchill invited Harvard students to imagine the “grand convenience” t
... See moreDaniel Immerwahr • How to Hide an Empire
The challenges English faced went beyond the technical ones. Colonial rule, which had been one of the chief vehicles for spreading English, was visibly breaking down. Decolonization would ultimately release more than six hundred million people from rule by Britain and the United States. Would they stick with English? Very likely not. Many complaine
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