Die Wahrheit über Katzen und Hunde

As we continue to re-assess the purpose of education and the goals we seek to achieve as educators, as parents, and as learners, it is clear that language learning must form an integral part of any well-rounded educational model.

As Paul Garcia, current President of ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) points out, “Our National Standards are predicated on the principles of an American education that itself has its roots in the notion of universal education: ‘All students are capable of learning other languages given opportunities for quality instruction.’”

We should be prepared to take advantage of our multilingual heritage and put it to work in our schools and workplaces. After all, what’s so foreign about many “foreign” languages? English, the global language of our time, owes much of its success to its ability to pilfer words from other languages and adopt them as its own. As Booker T. Washington said, “We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” Most language teachers are familiar with the words of Walt Whitman who reminded us that the English language “is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.”

Not all commentators are impressed by the human capability to learn new languages. The writer Joseph Conrad claimed that, “To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.” Other writers remain singularly unimpressed by languages other then English. One particular writer, the incomparable Mark Twain, was famous (or infamous) for his loathing of the German language. Here he is on the fate of dogs and cats in German grammar:
“A dog is der Hund; now you put that dog in the genitive case, and is he the same dog he was before? No, sir; he is des Hundes; put him in the dative case and what is he? Why, he is dem Hund. Now you snatch him into the accusative case and how is it with him? Why, he is den Hunden. But suppose he happens to be twins and you have to pluralize him--what then? Why, they'll swat that twin dog around through the four cases until he'll think he's an entire international dog-show all in his own person. I don't like dogs, but I wouldn't treat a dog like that - I wouldn't even treat a borrowed dog that way.

Well, it's just the same with a cat. They start her in at the nominative singular in good health and fair to look upon, and they sweat her through all the four cases and the 16 the's and when she limps out through the accusative plural you wouldn't recognize her for the same being. Yes, sir, once the Ger-man language gets hold of a cat, it's goodbye cat. That's about the amount of it.”

Twain also wrote some very uncomplimentary remarks about school boards, which will not be repeated here.
Despite Twain’s dim view of German grammar, we here at American Language Review, are proud to cover the teaching of languages other than English (including German…). We believe that all language educators (including native English speakers who teach English as a second or foreign language) benefit from discovering languages other than their own. In this approach we are guided both by Goethe, who wrote, “Those who know nothing of foreign languages, know nothing of their own,” and by Charlemagne who said, “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”

To this end, we will be publishing a series of foreign language supplements beginning with Spanish in the Jan/Feb 2001 issue of ALR. We trust that readers will enjoy the opportunity to read material presented in languages other than English while we continue to provide the profession with wide-ranging coverage of language teaching matters in English itself.
Auf Wiedersehen!