Speak English, please

I recently received an email suggesting that for fun we all wear a T-shirt with a picture of Uncle Sam and the words "I want YOU…to speak English." I guess that’s a sentiment shared by many people who feel if you live here you should speak ‘our’ language. I, like most Americans, only speak one language, English. So we would naturally like everyone who comes here to save us the bother of learning Spanish or Mandarin.

As someone who travels frequently outside the US, I’m thankful that the countries I visit don’t share that sentiment (with one possible exception). Take Kenya for example. There are 42 tribes in that country, each with its own language. To communicate with each other, they speak a second language common to all of them, Swahili (even we know what ‘hakuna matata’ means). In addition, most of them speak English. I pity the poor soul who only knows Kikiyu.

If you visit Morocco, they speak a form of Arabic that most Arabs from other countries have a problem understanding. Not only that, restaurant menus are in Arabic with subtitles in French. For all I know, they could all be wearing T-shirts with a photo of Charles de Gaulle and the words "I want YOU…to speak anything but English," but since I can't read their T-shirts I will never know.