A thought on Obama’s call for a trilingual citizenry, “Everybody should be bilingual, or everybody should be trilingual.”

Asked what languages he speaks, Obama answered, “Indonesian and a little Spanish.” Also of note:

Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, attempted Spanish last year when he delivered his party’s Spanish-language radio address. But his Spanish is limited, and the taping of the speech was “tedious,” the Chicago Tribune’s political blog reported.

(Anyone else curious about how much Indonesian Obama remembers? He lived in Indonesia from age six to ten. I’ve been back from Turkey for fourteen months, and I’ve forgotten large swaths of the Turkish I knew.)

A few readers accused me of hostility to foreign languages for my unenthusiastic assessment of Obama’s declaration. Nice goal-post shifting on their part. Note that Obama isn’t merely saying, “learning foreign languages is swell,” or, “those who speak a second language deserve a pat on the back.” He’s saying that monolingualism or English-only is an insufficient condition for American citizens.

This is a very dramatic change from the position of American leaders for most of our history. It used to be, if you spoke a language besides English, a thriving life outside of immigrant enclaves would require effort to speak the mother tongue. American culture as a whole said to the immigrant, “You have to get with the program.” Now, Obama is pointing to Americans who speak only English and saying, “Now you have to get with the program.”

Given a choice between lamenting that too many citizens fluent in other languages cannot speak English, or that too many citizens fluent in English cannot speak another language, Obama chooses the latter.

In March, Philadelphia’s Commission on Human Relations ruled that the “This is America, when ordering, please speak English” sign at Gino’s Steaks restaurant did not violate the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance. In Obama’s America, perhaps that decision is reversed.