Hello,
I'm an American with a Gaelic surname, part Cherokee, from Anglophone Texas, east of Austin.
The horror of dealing with many native English speakers is their worship of English and their intolerance towards other languages. Linguistic intolerance also affects American Protestants---there's a weird obsession with the 1611 English Bible translation. I'm Protestant, but I read Hebrew, a little Aramaic, French, a little Latin, etc......
Learning other languages is NOT a value in Anglophone culture, and we export that value when we export our culture. In northern France, a Dutchman said to me "you speak good French, for an American." I told a Singaporean what else I speak, and he asked, "Are you American?"
A new book: Vanishing_voices:__the_extinction_of_the_world's_languages (Nettle & Romaine) discusses the effects of Europeanization in much of the world (Africa and Asia get less attention), language death, and language rebirth (Hawaiian, Fijian, Hebrew, Gaelic, Welsh........). Worth reading, although very sad----------Elaine Keown
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