Especially not ‘the king’s English’ as satirized by using ‘ain’t in this headline.
Coca-Cola put up an ad at the superbowl: ‘America the Beautiful’ sung in seven different languages, including Keres, which is a language of certain southwestern Pueblo peoples.
Online after the tv commercial, came a barrage of ‘Twitterish’… ‘speak English!’ accompanied by various vulgarities.
So all the food fight about “speak English” “be an American” “America, love it or leave it,” became another dust in the wind of the moment. But, a typical twitter re Coca-Cola’s superbowl ad: “that coke commercial where they have national anthem song in different languages is disresepctful #speakenglish. #Fu– coke i will have pepsi.”
Just a few facts. America is not the governmental name of our nation. It is the United States. Technically we are United Statesians. We are also Americans [who have within the boundaries of the USA, many additional sovereign nations]– but also Canadians, all tribal and heritage groups throughout all of Mexico and Central and South America are “Americans.” North America is more than the USA. The Americas encompass three enormous continental masses.
In terms of heritage groups and sovereign nations in the USA, there are many. Each has its own root language, which is most often not English.
The groups who were present in the Americas in the 1200s, 1300s, 1400s and 1500s when various came from the northlands of Europe, from Asia, from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Africa, did not speak English. Neither did the sailors from Asia and Europe and Africa speak English. They spoke their own natal languages.
Both Spanish and English in the Americas are the languages of the conquerers. Not the languages of the peoples who were colonized, murdered, or dispersed or enslaved or kept at a pittance. Just as in China, the huge conquests of the Han dynasty eroded and overwhelmed most of the thousands of individual native languages, so too in the US and the Americas. As in India also, a huge series of conquests obliterated thousands of tribal languages. The main two languages in India are not the subcontinent nation’s original languages.
English is a great language, very descriptive, not so much in vulgarities though which tend to the same repetitions over and over [although Shakespeare, now there was a master of the dagger] — and in a greater reality, English is one of the most persistent languages of business and commerce across the world. It is well worth learning for that reason alone, and for many other reasons as well– such as to study the world through words.
English is dense as a word enecylopedia: it has thousands of ‘loan words’ from other languages, like cinnamon and banquet and portal and a huge number of Latinate, German, Greek, old French, Spanish, Sanskrit, Native American, and also as migrations continue, more and more Asian and African words as rootstock. In many ways because English speakers in the United States often incorporate the most interesting, descriptive words from other languages, and ongoing, English is a living language that carries both ancient and modern words as descriptives and communication ways and means.
Just a head’s up, too: English is not the ‘official language’ of the USA though some have tried to pound legislation through to force it to be thought so. Though a few states have decided English is their ‘official’ language, the USA has no ‘official language.’ Many states’ constitutions are written in more than one language, only one being English.
While the Coca-Cola ad caused a mild tectonic plate rumple on Twitter with hash tags that sometimes displayed more a lack of knowledge of history rather than just a pique… and with some commenters mistakenly carrying on about desecration of ‘our national anthem, ‘America the Beautiful’… well let’s just say too, the Star Spangled Banner is the national anthem still… until further notice.
And in terms of states’ anthems, not all are sung in English. Hawaii’s for instance is sung in Hawaiian, has been, is, and remains so– for centuries now. And to attempt to be accurate, Moku??ina o Hawai?i. [computer keyboards ought have diacriticals easily for all languages, if someone wants to gripe about something, lol]
You can see the Coca-Cola commercial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8iM73E6JP8
But/ and, this is the youtube video that took my heart. Even though as usual, there are differing opinions on translations of various words in the commercial, singer’s accents, and so on… this short clip is of the Keres singer herself, Christy, a beautiful soul through and through with her kindness and tender view of the worlds, and how they translated the English to Keres: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhcl0pfznoc
I chose the youtube link wherein comments were disabled for Christy’s youtube– which is good in the sense that it keeps the predatory ‘lookatme/lookatme’s’ sidelined, thereby allowing readers to see and hear her important message that carries so much love, without being distracted even for a moment.
[There are several youtubes of the same clip where comments are enabled and have sunk again into a circular firing squad on racism. Just an aside, I note that several newspapers, including the nationalcatholicreporter and others far larger have disabled comments across the board in order to allow people to read in peace without the same five persons daily attempting to dominate with the same predictable tropes]
Still and yet, Christy speaks of a way for all to live– that would allow beauty and goodness to be spoken, and enacted daily. Thank you Christy. We who are elders and we who have often consulted our elders, join you in your good blessing for the best of humanity.
MOST RECENT UPDATE: I put the links in by hand. They have to presently be cut and pasted in order to see the videos. I apologize for that. I know our IT guy will know how to fix this. If you only have time to cut and paste one clip link, use the one to hear Christy. It is precious truly.
UPDATE: The two links to coca-cola ad and to Christy’s clip are in this article, but are not showing up. I’ve got a call in to tech support. Stay tuned.