#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.
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my friends and i were just talking about this. and how it should be on this blog. weird.
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.
“German, Spanish, Swedish, or Italian are also acceptable, but are considered to be poor substitutes (especially Spanish).”………LOL…………….niggas!
Seriously, here in portland there are these bilingual preschools that all the yuppie parents pay lots to send their kids to.
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.
Yeah, what that other guy said.
Seriously, here in portland there are these bilingual preschools that all the yuppie parent pay lots to send their kids to.
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.
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
I just discovered this Russell guy and he is hilarious. Apparently not as big in the U.S. as he is in Australia or Europe but he should be.
Now I too will begin to list my superiority in mastering languages that the rest of you idiots clearly can’t muster. There’s English, Chinese, French, German blah blah blah blah.
“skool daze”? that is some fine spelling right there.
I think this fits perfect with the blog about how white people love grammar……we found you
Hey, who are you, the friggin spelling poleese?
Obviously he didn’t get the joke….
MY COUSINS ARE BILINGUAL (and babies) AND I LOVE THEM
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.”
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!
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.
this is not true… at least not in Chicago. You would not believe the number of white moms that wants my boys to be friends with “timmy” and “Brady” because they can practice Spanish with them. My kids just want to play Wii.
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…
You obviously don’t live in California. Pretty much everyone takes Spanish in grade school and high school here.
I’m a native Californian and I don’t speak a word of Spanish. I took French in high school for four years, and study Arabic now. They didn’t even offer foreign language until 9th grade were I grew up. Nearly everyone I know who speaks Spanish beyond the basics has parents or grandparents who are native Spanish speakers. Most white people in California don’t give a shit (I certainly don’t).
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!
Seriously! I took 4 years of Spanish….just to understand the conversations going on around me….
Interestingly, white Anglos in California get upset when they start speaking at a Latino/Hispanic first “en espanol” and the response “hey I speak English, don’t expect me to speak Spanish.” It would be better to put a sign in two or more languages now in public places: Major retailers have hanging bilingual signs, but not where the blogger Justin dares to shop in. “WAL-MART, bajos precios, !siempre!” +
What about pig-latin? Does that count?
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.
Pig latin or Hubby Dubby language.
Ubi puboopubied muby pubants.
I just pooped my pants
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