English, Spanish, French... Oh My!

English, Spanish, French… Oh My!

Today’s big controversy on CNN seems to be the Spanish version of our beloved, but barely singable, National Anthem. To which I say: bollocks!

The Founding Fathers spoke English, but they emphatically left the notion of a national language out of the Constitution. The anthem itself has ignoble beginnings as an 18th Century drinking song, “To Anacreon….” The Spanish version itself is soulful, rhythmic, and has a nice flair.

I think a lot of the racists and xenophobes don’t get it about language. It’s what any first year linguistics student could tell them: any human language is capable of expressing any human thought. Duh! That’s not to say I don’t love English. After all, I was an English major and have a doctorate in English Literature. But, I’ve also studied French, Italian, and other languages enough to know that each language is as “good” as the other, though each has its own special “flavor.” The important thing to keep in mind is the concepts behind the anthem, not the Englishness of the individual words.

To those who worry about Spanish being some kind of barbarian language—remember that Spanish is a direct descendant of Latin. Latin was a language of written literature, science, and law long before the Anglo-Saxons were able to scribble out syllables in runes on granite rocks. Sixty percent of English vocabulary comes from Latin, by way of Old French. Old French is itself a close relative of both Spanish and Latin. Otherwise, our National Anthem would probably sound like a cross between “Beowulf” and Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale.”

Grow up and get over it, ye nativists! Once, your ancestors were “bog Irish” or Polish or Italian poor immigrants. A brief review of the excellent film, “Gangs of New York,” should reveal to you that in immigration, as in the Bible, “there is nothing new under the sun.”