Aria Memoir Of A Bilingual Childhood Summary

For as long as the United States has been a country, there has been controversy over establishing English as the official language. Even the idolized US President Theodore Roosevelt had a firm belief the US has “room for but one language in this country and that is the English language”. In a 2010 poll conducted by Rasmussen, eighty-seven percent of American voters said they would support making English the official language. Immigrants would also benefit from establishing English as the national language, because after learning English they would be able to actively participate in the democratic system employed throughout the US. Although the United States is a notorious melting pot of different cultures and ethnicities, language should be legislated, because having multiple languages spoken in the public isolates minorities.
In “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, Richard Rodriguez, a first generation Mexican American, firmly believed “english was intrinsically a public language and spanish an intrinsically private” (Rodriguez 296).
As a boy, the main problem he faced was he struggled to speak sufficient English. One factor that contributed to this problem was the bilingual education he received from a Roman Catholic School. Rodriguez described bilingual education as a “scheme” that “was foolish and certainly doomed.” The second contributing factor was his parents. As mexican immigrants, Rodriguez's parents never learned how to properly communicate in English. Although his parents weren’t directly inhibited by the inability to speak English fluently, Rodriguez recalled a common memory of his childhood where he felt his “clutching trust in [his parents] protection and power weaken” when they began to speak their limited English. Rodriguez didn’t feel like he belonged to public society until he was able to master speaking in English. Making English the national language would unify the entire
country. In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan faced a similar predicament as Rodriguez, because her mother also spoke in a broken English. Her mother’s limited English minimized her mother’s ability to effectively communicating with the American society around her, Tan recalled “some of her friends telling her they understand 50 percent of what her mother says” (Tan 405). Tan was not hindered by her mother’s “simple” English, but her mother was. To avoid being misunderstood, Tan would call businesses on her mother’s behalf and translate her mother’s easily misconstrued English to her “perfect” English. If English would have been set as the national language, Tan’s mother, and other first generation immigrants like her, would have possibly been more motivated to learn grammatically correct English. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria was the polar opposite of Rodriguez and Tan, because she embraced multiple languages. In all, Gloria spoke an astonishing eight languages. Gloria’s language adapted to fit the people she was around. Gloria’s story is an example of exactly why establishing a national language is so vital. It is ludicrous for any human being to have the daunting task of speaking eight different languages just to communicate with people who all live within relatively close proximities of each other. A new law establishing English as the official language might motivate immigrants to finally learn proper English and unite with society. In “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, “Mother Tongue”, and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, speaking languages other than English isolates immigrants from the American general public and puts their children at a disadvantage. Establishing English as the national language would only produce positive effects.