At a local supermarket recently I was asked by the clerk how I was doing. “I’m doing well, thank you,” I responded.

The gentleman in line behind me said, “You said it correctly. That’s how it should be stated.”

“What?” I asked.

“The clerk asked how you were doing and you said ‘well’ instead of ‘good,'” he explained. “That is the grammatically correct way to say it.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Thanks,” I finally said. “I had a great English teacher in high school who stressed things like that.”

English — what a language. I’ve been speaking it all my life and I’m still not always sure how some things should be said. I lucked out on this one.

On several occasions I’ve heard discussions on radio talk shows and television programs about our new neighbors and their insistence on speaking their own language. “They’re in America,” one caller said. “They need to speak English.”

Another caller said he was upset when Hispanic persons spoke Spanish around him. He was convinced they were talking about him. A little paranoid if you ask me.

How quickly things have changed. When I was a kid riding my bicycle up and down Main Street in Jewell, Iowa, it wasn’t uncommon to hear some of the old guys sitting on the bench in front of Paul’s U-Save grocery store speaking Norwegian. I didn’t understand a word but I enjoyed the lilting cadence of their conversation. Ten miles up the road in Kamrar, many of the older folks spoke Low German in public.

My grandparents came to America unable to speak English. Little more than a century later only a handful of their descendants can converse in the Low German language they brought across the Atlantic. I can speak some Low German but am far from fluent. (Kann du duuts proten?)

I propose we give our new neighbors a little time to learn our language. English is one of the most difficult languages to learn.

Case in point: Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present. Or, how about: The farm was used to produce produce. Imagine trying to learn that language!

Let me be clear, I am okay with some of the efforts supporting the English language because a common language is one of the few things that tie our diverse peoples together. More importantly, the ability to speak English is vital to the economic success of immigrants.

While the adults who have come to our nation recently are speaking their native language, their children are quickly learning English. Within a generation or two these families will be bilingual and in another generation their offspring will be losing their native tongue.

Frankly, I hope the families keep their native language alive. Their language carries with it a great deal of cultural identity. It is the merging — not the blending — of many cultures that gives strength to our society.

A friend in Marshalltown served on a committee working with the city’s Hispanic immigrants. For one of these meetings, the committee secured a translator. A short time into the meeting one of the Hispanic men suggested that the translator wasn’t necessary.

Surprised, the committee’s leader asked why. “We understand English,” the Hispanic gentleman explained. “It is speaking English that gives us difficulty.”

Persons who have never attempted to learn another language don’t understand how difficult it is to do so. Learning the vocabulary and grammar is tough enough; making the strange new sounds of a foreign language can be even more difficult.

Ironically, the people who complain the loudest about the folks who don’t speak English often don’t speak English all that well themselves. (I ain’t never going to figure that out.)

Rather than complain, we should be helping our new neighbors learn to speak English. Learning the language will help them assimilate more quickly and improve their employment opportunities. And, in a few generations, English will be their family’s mother tongue.

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. © 2023 by Huisman Communications.