Albisteak
American postcard
The emigrant is always the last to arrive. In New England, for example, Italians who I know consider themselves authentic Americans. According to those Italians, Russians are now the immigrants. In California, immigrants are, by definition, the Hispanics -in reality, the Mexicans. On the contrary, Canadians do not see themselves as being different. The language and culture are the same. The biology, different in the case of Hispanics, also helps. The fact that they compete in the same basketball and football leagues is a determining link.
Now, among themselves -between the Americans, I mean- differences are more ethnic rather than territorial like in Europe. Only Hispanics have certain territorial concentration in states like California and, even so, in a manner very different from Europe. Each of those groups unites with one another -and distinguishes themselves from the others- in unique ways. Afro-Americans, for example, normally belong to a church which has the function of representing identity, but also -and this is very determining- welfare assistance in community services such as food, education, assistance for the handicapped and elderly. Italians, on their part, maintain their festivals of San Antonio or even the saints corresponding to large cities like Boston and New York. The Irish with Saint Patrick, which they celebrate with pride each 17th of March all over the United States, dressed in green with large doses of alcohol. Without a doubt, the ethnic group which maintains the most territorial cohesion is the Native American. We know at what price: the reserve, isolated from the socio-cultural, economic, political and technological world of the country. Subjected and reduced to an anthropological substratum or tourist attractions, living a life which feeds into their subordinate situation. A similar situation to the Amish, set aside from the present by their own choice.
All these groups, with some exceptions, attend the same schools, watch the same television networks and follow the same basketball and baseball teams. And, of course, they all serve on the same armed forces. The consequence is evident. For all of them, English is the language of arrival, the symbol of integration in the land of refuge and the instrument which allowed them to stop being immigrants. The integrative greatness of the English language includes, as is natural, its own perversion.
Original languages -no matter the identifying value they maintain in their groups of origen- are banished from public circles. For a time -maybe only a generation- will comply with the duties of orality and informality. Culture of masses and economic activity -the two basic fields of definitive integration in the new society- will establish an unappealable socio-linguistic hierarchy. English is the naturalization paper which allows them to abandon the condition of emigrant and the indispensable factor to advance socially and economically. Maybe we should come to a conclusion.
Toni Mollá
Journalist and author of the book Manual de sociolingüística
