Yesterday's dubious Globe op-ed

Revisiting the Boston dailies' Crockefeller battle

DQM does NewsNight: Edwards and "Rockefeller"--updated!

8 Comments

• Will said:

  "they probably took it for granted that everybody in the U.S. would just speak English."

  Do you have a quote to support that?

  August 12, 2008 1:33 PM

• zadig said:

  How about the thought that perhaps they didn't make English the official language because A) they were declaring independence from England, and B) French was the international language of diplomacy, and the French were our allies?

  Of course, without any quotes, I'm just talking out of my ass. Much like the op-ed author.

  August 12, 2008 2:01 PM

• Marcelo said:

  It sounds like your beef is with the editor not the author. Opeds are opinion pieces. They do not have space for citations or bibliographic references like you seem to want.

  August 12, 2008 4:02 PM

• Adam Reilly said:

  I do not, Will, which puts me and Zadig in the same boat. But the fact that the U.S. seceded from *England* strikes me as noteworthy. And Marcelo, my guess is that if a pithy FF quote bolstered Kelly's argument--Ben Franklin stating that "undue allegiance to any tongue is a curse, not a blessing," or something like that--the Globe editors would have allowed her to include it.

  To reiterate: I sympathize with Kelly's aims. But that assertion that I bolded above cries out for evidence.

  August 12, 2008 4:39 PM

• Adam Reilly said:

  Will, I spoke too soon. Here's a John Adams quote on the subject, via PBS (www.pbs.org/.../johnadams):

  "I hope that Congress will profit by their example, by doing what they have lost so much reputation and advantage by neglecting; I mean by doing everything in their power to make the language they speak respectable throughout the world. Separated as we are from the British dominion, we have not made war against the English language any more than against the old English character. An academy instituted by the authority of Congress for correcting, improving, and fixing the English language would strike all the world with admiration and Great Britain with envy. The labors of such a society would unite all America in the same language, for thirty millions of Americans to speak to all nations of the earth by the middle of the nineteenth century."

  August 12, 2008 4:44 PM

• aging cynic said:

  Live long enough and you see everything, I guess. Did Adams say anything about "undocumented guest workers"?

  August 12, 2008 7:21 PM

• Larry C. said:

  "After all, they intentionally decided not to declare an official language for America..."

  I'd have to question that...did it even occur to them? Did any countries have "official languages" then? Still, it would be a good thing for more Americans to learn other languages. It might just be time to stop trying to justify everything by quoting people who lived in such a different age.

  August 21, 2008 10:13 PM

• Connor D said:

  Napoleon was the first modern Western example, IIRC.  All of France didn't speak "standard" French at the time, and Napoleon instituted standardized French to help consolidate his rule.

  August 23, 2008 6:42 PM

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