#78 Multilingual Children
February 28, 2008 by clander
All white people want their children to speak another language. There are no exceptions. They dream about the children drifting in between French and English sentences as they bustle about the kitchen while they read the New York Times and listen to Jazz.
As white people age, they start to feel more and more angry with their parents for raising them in a monolingual home. At some point in their lives, most white people attempt to learn a second language and are generally unable to get past ordering in a restaurant or over-pronouncing a few key words. This failure is not attributed to their lack of effort, but rather their parents who didn’t teach them a new language during their formative years.
White people believe that if they had been given French language instruction when they were younger, their lives would have turned out very differently. Instead of living in the US, they would be living and working abroad for the United Nations or some other organization with a headquarters in Switzerland or The Hague.
Generally, white people prefer their children to speak French. Advanced white people will actually spend outrageous amounts of money to send their children to a Lycee or Ecole Francaise. But the vast majority will abandon their dreams when they realize that need a second mortgage so their child can have a better study abroad experience in France.
Languages such as German, Spanish, Swedish, or Italian are also acceptable, but are considered to be poor substitutes (especially Spanish). At the time of writing, it is still considered expert-level white person behavior to have white children speaking Asian and African languages.
There is only one way to use this information to your advantage: speaking another language means that white people are more likely to want to have children with you. It is seen as a cheaper alternative to language schools.
What about pig-latin? Does that count?
I just pooped my pants
Pig latin or Hubby Dubby language.
Ubi puboopubied muby pubants.
What about sign language? My daughter is putting herself through college while Signing for college classes that have deaf or hearing impaired students. She makes more than I do.
When us whiteys get our nails done (oh such a white vice) we know the nail technicians are talking about us in that hoing hoing hoing language and then one comes over and says “uhhhhh nt nt nt”.
I just smile and use the universal sign language that we all know when I’m a few blocks away. Makes me feel so white but ashamed. I crack myself up anyway.
Wait, Spanish can’t be on this list. For some reason, white people aren’t comfortable with anyone– especially their kids–speaking Spanish, and will immediately suspect they are being spoken about in Spanish if they hear one word of it.
It’s a wonder that Dora the Explora show exists at all.
You obviously don’t live in California. Pretty much everyone takes Spanish in grade school and high school here.
Seriously! I took 4 years of Spanish….just to understand the conversations going on around me….
I am native Californian and I did my time in Spanish class, but I can affirm that Spanish doesn’t get half the status/respect reaction that French, German or even Portuguese does. Asian and African languages definitely get the “you’re a genius” reaction, though not as much cozy-up reaction.
hiflo is right about Chicago - there is so much Polish heritage there it can be overwhelming. But head on down to St. Louis and you’ll feel right at home, at least with the buildings and names, though nobody knows how to pronounce them anymore! “Creve Coeur” is pronounced “Kreeve Core”… the guy in the rental car agency at STL airport laughed his head off at me when I said it correctly in French…
Love this blog!
I think you’re neglecting Arizona too. Just about everyone (especially the under-30 crowd) speaks Spanish — at least to the extent of being able to negotiate travel and commerce.
I guess I throw off the curve a bit, as I speak 7 languages (5 proficiently and two not so much) — including French, but also including two Chinese languages, Japanese, and some (albeit not a whole lot) Arabic. At the risk of killing the mirth of an obviously tongue-in-cheek article, I have to note that it’s a personal pet-peeve that people always assume that they can’t learn a language unless they started in childhood. Simply.not.true. Does it take work? Sure, but it’s completely accomplishable by any normally-functioning adult of any age. The only advantage that childhood-learning confers is in the realm of phonology, but this is more than mitigated by adults’ higher cognitive and learning abilities…
MY COUSINS ARE BILINGUAL (and babies) AND I LOVE THEM
MY COUSINS YELL ALL THE TIME! I YELL ALL THE TIME TOO! MILK COST $3! A COW IS NOT A BIRD! WHEN THE MOON IS BLUE, SING ABOUT BING CROSBY! HI, HOW ARE YOU! I’M FINE! WHAT?! YOU WANT ME TO BE QUIET?! BITE ME!
haha.
im white and i speak swahili… it’s so true, for the longest time i felt super elite because of it.
and even though i know it’s white person behaviour, my kids will learn how to count in “african.”
hehe
Je Mappelle, Elmy is about all I can remember from my Skool daze in England, but French isn’t much use in Australia so it got dropped. Japanese is the second language taught in skools here.
As I’m also guilty of number 11 in this blog (and married to a chinese lady) it is likely that my kids will speak cantonese and English.
I hope it isn’t still weird by the time they get to that age of talking.
Heheh this entry reminds me of the Russell Peters you tube video when he’s talking about the African guy in the Casino. If you don’t know it do a search for the Full the Russell Peters video, quite funny
“skool daze”? that is some fine spelling right there.
Hey, who are you, the friggin spelling poleese?
Obviously he didn’t get the joke….
White people, while adoring photo ops with brown folks and trumpeting “diversity”, nevertheless secretly think European cultures and languages to be vastly superior to all others. Yes, Spanish is a European language, but it makes white people uncomfortable because so many brown people speak it. The language is associated not with Spain, but rather with Latin America, where so many newly arrived Americans come from, people whose brown skin makes white people uncomfortable.
It sure is more fun to be racist than to look at the real world, but more white people learn Spanish (in CA at least) than any other language, mostly because our state has tons of people who speak nothing but Spanish. People with brown skin do not make white people uncomfortable, but you obviously hate white people for some reason.
Seriously, here in portland there are these bilingual preschools that all the yuppie parent pay lots to send their kids to.
Seriously, here in portland there are these bilingual preschools that all the yuppie parents pay lots to send their kids to.
Yeah, what that other guy said.
Excusez-moi, mais je suis francaise. My kid is tri-lingual with spanish. we only speak french him and I. We live in Chicago, and in about 80 % of the cases I will get questions like “are we russians, polish, greek, italians, bulgarians…” anything but french. Your average white mid-western american will assume that I am polish ! then when I say I am french, invariably the answer is ” oui, oui “. There is a Lycee francais here. 75 % of the kids are americans. it costs a fortune to attend. My kid does not go there. The average american kid in his class has no clue where France is… somewhere on the otherside of the pond, LOL
Hi Flo,
“Lycee francais here. 75 % of the kids are americans. it costs a fortune to attend. My kid does not go there.”Good news?
If Sarko and his successors hold his new promise, the lycee francais will soon be free of charge for french kids like yours…
I hope it will motivate my brother and his american wife to let my nephews learn properly french.
She must be black inside, I didn´t notice she liked to educate her kids bilingual.
“German, Spanish, Swedish, or Italian are also acceptable, but are considered to be poor substitutes (especially Spanish).”………LOL…………….niggas!
We live in Germany, and our kids are bilingual, but I still hanker for them to speak French. I think French is the de rigeur second language for white people.
That would be because if you find yourself in a country where few, if any, speak English, they most likely know French. We Americans love to explore, but there isn’t anywhere we can go where the French haven’t already been.
my friends and i were just talking about this. and how it should be on this blog. weird.
my friends and i were just talking about this. and how it should be on this blog. weird
Yes you are.
Not only is it all about spending huge amounts of money to put kids into alternative language schools but because of this every conversation with parents in alternative language schools comes back to “well my timmy - he’s in this french immersion program” or “what you should really have your sandra do is attend my timmy’s immersion daycare”… this post is just so accurate!
I sent my daughter to a French preschool and kindergarten, because I wanted her to speak a language I was fluent in myself. The school is in a very exclusive suburb, and despite many platitudes about “diversity” and an “international worldview”most of the families there wouldn’t be caught dead in a non-European language situation,(with the possible exception of Japanese). Some of these same people were fighting the expansion of bilingual (Spanish) programs in the public schools (yes, it’s European but universally associated with Latin America).
Interestingly, the French teachers at the school were appalled at the ignorance of world cultures they experienced here.
When they tried to introduce elements of Franco-African culture to the curriculum, their efforts were universally rejected.
Good future topics: nannies and au pairs! And I can’t believe you didn’t mention jazz yet.
The bilingual Spanish programs in public schools are a bad idea because it means that native Spanish speaking kids continue to learn in only Spanish, which only makes it harder for them to learn English down the line. Not because we hate Latin America.
Well, I hate Latin America. Have you seen coke prices lately? What a rip off! I’m putting off learning Spanish until the prices drop–dramatically. Now, if Hugo Chavez were to get into the drug biz we might see some free coke floating up this way. You know, like when he offered free heating oil to people in the US during a really cold winter? Viva Hugo! Viva Hugo!
That is not true PHIL!!!!! It doesn´t mean that children will continue to learn in only Spanish! Get your facts straight. And yea, I am hating!!
I did bilingual education in Spanish in NYC for kinder/1st (we’re black btw, but my mom is into many of the the list and so am i by default lol) anyway, it was a great idea because the american kids learned spanish, the hispanic kids learned english (actually when i think about it, the hispanic kids learned spanish too! it’s amazing how many of them aren’t actually bilingulal!!) and now i get jobs that other people can’t!!
Hey white boy, you need to get out of the Westside a little more often.
Come on over to East L.A. once in a while.
Don’t worry most of the people are bilingual and it’s safe to drink the (tap) water.
Forget that nonsense. I don’t have to drive all the way to East LA to get some ethnic experience; I live in Winnetka which is packed wall to wall with ethnic people. I think one whole city from every Latin country has sent people to live in Winnetka and Canoga Park.
I’ve said this so many times before; If only I spoke Spanish and Chinese as second and third languages, I could not only have better travel experiences, but could work anywhere in the world.
Do you mean Asian people do not want to be bilingual ? Many of the things you write appear more to Asian than to white, but I guess it because you re in the US and want to genralise about white people there ?
btw I do think your blog is funny. Somehow it s very to the point about a certain group of people. But i think I don’t it’s not really about white people.
Le Grande,
You don’t get it, do you?
Anyway. Besides the fact that Asian girls are often cute, Asians are considered Super White (as long as they are from the “right” parts of Asia. And often times it is true even though the values derive from other origins: whites and many Asians share work ethics and like to buy similar things after they make it. Toned down beamer instead of Escalade. You get the idea.
I feel bad for Asian guys though. They will always be looked at by women as tech support - 325xi or not.
i thought white people hate people that arent like them
like strom thurmond.
that guy was so chill
“They dream about the children drifting in between French and English sentences as they bustle about the kitchen while they read the New York Times and listen to Jazz.”
HAHAHAHA YES!
Experts on “your” culture will sometimes get their kids a babysitter from that background and ask them to speak to the child in their language, and will take them to musical performances and theatre in that language.
When the same white people live in another country they will do the reverse and pay vast amounts so their kid can go to the American/British school, and get babysitters who speak English (I’ve babysat for some such people in France, and they’d be half-proud, half-annoyed when their kids spoke to each other only in French and responded to their parents in French). IME, Spanish is actually not a problem if the child has learned it in college/study abroad in Spain and has the right Castilian accent.
The children of immigrants to America also decide to hate their parents in the second generation for not teaching them their ancestral language.
Mango GIRL. . . Are you saying it is only okay to learn Spanish if they learn it in Spain and with a Castilian accent????
If so, SHAME ON YOU!!!!!
And like my last comments, YES, I AM HATING on your comment!!!
Don’t forget Esperanto, white people invented Esperanto.
It is worth mentioning, that in far-fethced plans to work in some capacity overseas thrusting children into the mix of a foreign culture is ALWAYS counted by white people as a “Great learning opportunity, the kids will become bi-lingual and experience other cultures”…
Never mind how much more terrifying it is the first time they get lost in the souk!
Listen, its all genetic, but I don’t think parents actually want their children to grow up to be…oh, you said bi-lingual. Oops
Being obsessed with Spanish is perfectly acceptable if (and only if) you won’t shut up about how you much you want to go to Spain one day.
Majoring in a foreign language is the new majoring in studio art, and it’s just as useless for the languages these people are actually studying (anything but Arabic or Chinese)
i’m working on my french. we have to learn it school here and i’m far enough along that i actually have a fighting chance of learning it properly. with anything else, i would be “unable to get past ordering in a restaurant or over-pronouncing a few key words”. and also being white-ish (though not totally white - thanks mum!), i am genetically pre-disposed to french anyway. phewf!
spanish is what i’d really love to learn. and i might. it doesn’t have the same connotations up here as it does south of the border (see what i did there?), so parents don’t mind if little abigail and logan learn it in school.
I would place German slightly behind French. Local white people love to talk German (the kind they learned while studying abroad of course) with German tourists. It cannot be avoided.
and where is that post on jazz? it’s so obvious!
how can all of your posts be so accurate? it is making me crazy.
I have this fantasy of marrying a french woman, moving to brazil and hiring a pinoy nanny. the child can learn spanish from me, french from his mother, tagalog from the nana, portuguese from his surroundings and will pick up english when his mother and I speak to each other. I’d deserve a doctorate of whiteness If i pulled that off.
-The white Mexican (yes, there are such things)
hilarious…. gads the comments on this blog are as funny as the blog itself!
If only i were french, we could get together Erod because I’m black, but i speak spanish and portuguese, i’m moving to brazil where my “maeinha” is a french teacher! bonus points for the tagalog speaking nana, i dabble in japanese, but apparently that’s not exotic enough!! LOLOL
to mango girl:
children who were never taught their parent’s mother tongue are right to hate them.
Uh, no, because kids need to learn English to succeed in America.
Um just because you know your parents’ mother tongue doesnt mean you dont know English. It’s called being bilingual.
THANK YOU!!!!! UGH, we have go so many ignorant comments on this board!!!!
Well, this blog seems to apply to a small segment of white americans. I don’t think any of this applies to white Spaniards, Germans or George W Bush. He’s quite blissful in his ignorance.
But, for those who desire to have the experience of a foreign country without speaking a foreign language, we offer http://www.walki-talki.com
I think white (and other) people who read this blog will love our tours.
Payam
أنا أبيض وأريد زوجة تتكلم بالعربية
As a white man who speaks French and German, I find myself wishing I knew Spanish as well. But none of these would come in all that handy in north-central Idaho (south of the Nazis, north of the Mormons), except for reading books in the original while I work my sweet government job. Pretty fuckin’ white, I know.
p.s. it’s école française
Sure, but try to do that with an American keyboard…
The irony being most Americans can’t locate France on a world map.
Arrogance & ignorance is such bliss, after all.
Yeah, but most of those Americans who can’t locate it on a map aren’t the white Americans.
Mandarin is the new French!
Ask Californians.
Here in California, the ethnics - aka anglo people, absolutely MAUL Spanish words such as San Rafael, Manteca, Alameda, Vallejo (shudder!), Paso Robles, Valencia, Cañada, Laguna Honda (yes, Ellie Mae, that [H] is silent), etc., BUT, I love to annoy them by incorrectly pronouncing Italian and French words. They’re too pompous and stupid to speak a second language that’s eminently useful, but Jethro would rather get the names of his charcuteries and San Gimignano right. Yesterday it was Kraft’s Singles - today it’s fromage.
“At some point in their lives, most white people attempt to learn a second language and are generally unable to get past ordering in a restaurant or over-pronouncing a few key words. This failure is not attributed to their lack of effort, but rather their parents who didn’t teach them a new language during their formative years.”
Agreed
“There is only one way to use this information to your advantage: speaking another language means that white people are more likely to want to have children with you. It is seen as a cheaper alternative to language schools.
”
There needs to be one on men and women wanting to date foreigners.
#35 forgot a local mecca where many of the blog’s subject matter live: Los Feliz. That gets butchered more than any of Jeffrey Dahlmer’s victims.
ha… so true.
To the Arabic speaker–who said “Me too, and I want a wife who speaks Arabic”–best of luck. It would be so much easier to find an Arab husband.
Scarily accurate, indeed. But this blog aside, nothing makes me feel whiter than living in an Arab country, despite the fact that I’ve gotten considerably further than ordering at a restaurant.
16- “btw I do think your blog is funny.”
No you don’t.