X Is For Xenoglossophobia

If xenophobia means "fear of foreigners," xenoglossophobia means "fear of  foreign languages."   Like Lyme disease, xenoglossophobia is endemic in many parts of the U.S.

This fear causes many parents to want to protect their children from foreign language instruction, resulting in a dearth of public schools that offer bilingual immersion (only 440 in the entire country).  In some states, programs that immerse children in another language are actually banned, because, a recent NPR report states (http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=141584947 ), "a majority of voters don't think children can learn proper English and at the same time hold on to a foreign language and culture."

Xenoglossophobes hold firmly to this view, despite a wealth of evidence that becoming not only bilingual but literate in a foreign language is really good for kids' brains.  For example, according to the NPR story, most of the students of Miami's Coral Way elementary school, which has been offering a rigorous English/Spanish immersion program since 1963, come from low-income families, yet many of them are accepted into the city's best high schools.

I've often wondered what xenoglossophobes think happens in the hundreds of sites around the globe where the entire population is, for political or geographic reasons, bilingual.  To pick an example close to (my) home, in Catalonia most natives speak both Catalan and Spanish, the two official languages.  It is said--mostly by Catalans--that we are the most intelligent people in all of Spain.  If there is any truth in that, it's probably due to the enforced bilingualism.  But then the Basques (who speak their own utterly weird language, and Spanish) and the Galicians (who speak a language related to Portuguese, and Spanish) probably maintain their own superiority.

Then there is the Vall d'Aran, a tiny valley high in the Pyrenees, in the northwest corner of Catalonia.  Its 7,000 inhabitants have not one, not two, but three official languages.  The first is Aranes, a variant of Occitan;  the second is Catalan, because the valley is in Catalonia;  and the third is Spanish, because Catalonia is in Spain.  Xenoglossophobes would assume that the poor Aranese are barely able to walk, much less think, with this linguistic turmoil in their heads.  But not at all.  The Aranese are proud defenders of their endangered tongue, and insist that it be taught in their schools.  In addition, because in winter it snows really hard and the passes into Spain used to stay blocked for months, they all also speak French.

My TV Show, Part The Second

(If you're wondering how I came to have my own live TV show during my college years, you can find out here.)

The end of my junior year in college was full of angst. On top of preparing for finals, I was having to write the textbook for the televised Conversational Spanish course that my mother had signed me up to teach that summer. Worst of all, I had just broken up with a boyfriend, felt sure that life was basically over for me, and was weeping copiously into my books several times a day.

I got through finals somehow, and handed a tear-stained manuscript of the textbook to the TV station manager. A couple of days later I was summoned to the studio for instruction. Here is what I was told: start talking when you get the signal, look at the camera, stop talking when we tell you. And don't wear prints--you'll look fuzzy. A couple of days after that, I was on the air.

Was I nervous? What do you think? Since the show was aired live, I was well aware that any mistakes would be seen and scoffed at by the invisible multitudes watching the show. My biggest fear was that I would not be able to time my final sentence to end exactly at the off-air signal.

Soon after the first show, my parents departed for North Carolina, and I moved into the dorm. Bliss! No house to clean, no dishes to wash, no grocery shopping, no babysitting my sister. Just classes and homework, and the TV show once a week. I quickly regained my joie de vivre.

Nevertheless, even after I lost the worst of my nervousness about the program, unpredictable things happened, like the time I had to abandon my car in a flood on my way to the studio.

The campus was all the way across town from the TV station, and I used to drive there in the afternoon in my little car. It was a dark blue Renault Dauphine, with the charm of all things French but made, I think, of papier mache , and with all the power of a lawnmower.

One afternoon I was driving to do the show when I got caught in a horrendous rainstorm, right in the middle of downtown Birmingham, Alabama. The intersections were underwater, the traffic lights were dead, and cars were being abandoned right and left. I could feel my little Renault swaying, but I had to get to the studio (I was supposed to go on in fifteen minutes) and I would never make it if I had to walk.

Eventually, though, I had to pull into an alley and abandon the car. The water was up to my knees. I had ten minutes til show time. I found a telephone booth and called the studio, and they splashed up in a huge late 1950s Impala and rescued me.

I ran upstairs to the set and sat down at my desk. I was panting, and soaked to the skin. Someone handed me a towel and I wrung out my hair. The music came on. I kicked off my sodden shoes and looked into the camera. "Buenas tardes," I said, with my best smile.

(To be continued.)