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Letters to the Editor

OUR NATIVE TONGUES
By Gar Smith

San Francisco Chronicle
May 23, 2006
Page B6

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/05/23/EDGDOIJL311.DTL

Editor --

Hearing the news that the Senate has voted 63-34 to make English our official language, I can only reply, "Bravo!"

This is no time to be blasé. Speaking English needs to become a cause célèbre. English should become de rigueur in every U.S. school. The Senate deserves our kudos for going mano a mano with this bête noire. The best way to address the angst of non-assimilation is to deliver a legislative coup de grâce that renders every foreign language absolutely verboten.

Now that singing our national anthem in a foreign tongue has become a criminal faux pas, shall we address that other great threat to American unity -- the Catholic Church, which persists in the use of Latin. I'm sure the senators would agree that, henceforth, Mass should be celebrated in English -- God's language -- and we should crack down on such linguistic fellow-travelers as pharmacists, doctors, and scholars. If they don't like it, let them move to Latin America.

Gar Smith
Berkeley