Word: englishness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...song) may exist in an hourglass, may in fact be irrelevant. The U.S. Border Patrol works through the night to arrest the flow of illegal immigrants over the border, even as Americans stand patiently in line for La Bamba. While Americans vote to declare, once and for all, that English shall be the official language of the U.S., Madonna starts recording in Spanish...
Before a national TV audience, Rita Moreno tells Geraldo Rivera that her dream as an actress is to play a character rather like herself: "I speak English perfectly well . . . I'm not dying from poverty . . . I want to play that kind of Hispanic woman, which is to say, an American citizen." This is an actress talking; these are show-biz pieties. But Moreno expresses as well a general Hispanic-American predicament. Hispanics want to belong to America without betraying the past. Yet we fear losing ground in any negotiation with America. Our fear, most of all, is of losing...
Perhaps the most gifted is Eduardo Machado, 35, a Cuban expatriate who arrived in the U.S. at age eight, speaking no English, when his family fled Castro's Cuba. Brought up in Los Angeles, he now divides his time between a house in suburban Pasadena, Calif., and an apartment in Manhattan. A would-be actor, he began writing plays when a therapist suggested he compose an imaginary letter of forgiveness to his mother. Among his best works: The Modern Ladies of Guanabacoa, an evocation of the complex caste system in Cuba six decades ago, and Once Removed, which captures...
...other end of the political spectrum is Carlos Morton, 40, a didactic, polemical, yet often fiercely funny Texan. Born in Chicago, Morton spoke only Spanish until age five, then adopted English. Frequently uprooted to such places as Panama and Ecuador because his father was a career military man, he now teaches at Laredo Junior College, a few blocks from the Mexican border...
After the Philippines became a U.S. territory in 1898, English was adopted as a more or less official tongue. But a growing number of Filipinos are calling for a kind of linguistic liberation, charging that English undermines the country's identity. Last week a wide-ranging study commissioned by a Philippine Senator blamed the language for inducing a national inferiority complex. Said the report: "Thinking in our native language but expressing ourselves in English results not only in a lack of confidence but also in a lack of power of expression." The statement, alas, was written in English...