From: delval@scottie.Stanford.EDU (Alvaro DelVal)
Subject: Re: Bilingualism - a good cause!
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University, CA, USA
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 93 21:42:35 GMT

In article <1993Jan8.123946.20522@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> mmh@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
>In article <1993Jan7.164927.1@cc.helsinki.fi> thietaniemi@cc.helsinki.fi writes:

>>And the position of Russian language in Estonia is still a strong one.
>>It's the Estonians that have received in last years the right to
>>use Estonian in all situations in everyday life, like in all shops,
>>visiting doctor and in railway stations.
>
>Yes, and I would fully support and defend this right, and the
>right of *anyone* to use whatever language they like, that is
>precisely what I am arguing about. If there are a substantial
>proportion of people who are native to a country (and by
>"native" I would suggest born in that country, or normally
>resident in that country and accepted as citiznes of it) whose
>mother tongue is one other than the mother tongue of the
>majority, then I would suggest that the basic human right that
>everyone is treated as an equal means that they should have the
>right to use that mother tongue on all occasion, and not to be
>dsicriminated against in any form because that is their mother
>tongue. We might argue over what is a "substantial
>proportionm", but I wouldn't put it above 10%.
>
>Matthew Huntbach

Though I agree with the general thrust of your position, I think
things are not so simple in practice. It is relatively easy to print
official documents in various languages. Much more difficult is the
question of ensuring that everybody receives an education in their
mother tongue. If this is not ensured, in many cases the result is
wide gaps in educational achievements between the population with
education in their mother tongue and population without it, which in
the long term goes against the principle of equal opportunity; and
even when this gap does not arise, there is always the potential for
the complaint that "we are being *forced* to learn in a language not
our own, so we cannot use our language whenever we want". I wonder
whether you'd be willing to support public money being spent (and if
so, how much) in education of the asian population in Great Britain in
their native tongues.

The problem is that ensuring education in the mother tongue is often
very difficult (and might cost a lot of money). There is, for example,
the question of mass. There must be enough people speaking X, and
quite likely they must be sufficiently concentrated in certain areas,
to make it economical to provide high school education in language X
to everybody who so desires (is a 10% sufficient? I'm not so sure).
Even if this requirement is satisfied for the high school-age
population, will still be enough X-speakers to ensure this for
university education?  What about highly specialized courses? How much
money should one spend on this? And what about job requirements?
Should you learn language Y in order to get a job at university Z,
just because a good segment of the population speaks Y, even if your
language is X?  Or would this requirement be discriminatory towards
X-speakers? And so forth. And these are not rethorical questions, but
very real issues that have arisen in Catalonia, for example.

And a very common argument is that allowing, as you suggest, someone
to conduct his or her whole life in a given language which is not
predominant actually goes against his or her better interests - for
example, here in the USA it is often said that non-native english
speakers should learn english in order to progress in life and become
"integrated" in American society. So you should attempt to ensure
education in the mother tongue, bilingual education, or what?
(Bilingual education, say english/spanish, has *lots* of problems in
the USA, by the way)

So, things seems to me to be rather more complicated than you picture
them. I agree with your ideal, but I'm just not sure that it is always
achievable. 

Regards,

Alvaro