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Loving Language: Learning to Hear Your Neighbor
Written as a “cure for monolingualism” that plagues most native English speakers today, this book imagines a future full of dignity for all languages. Formed by an insatiable linguistic curiosity and respect for the cultures around him, Benton suggests that attitudes intended to unite and strengthen the nation through a single language actually impose the opposite effect and impoverish us all. Become a life-long language learner today by using practical tips to connect with neighbors who appreciate delightfully humbling greetings and exchanges.
187 pages, Paperback
Published October 29, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 20, 2024
If you are an English speaking American in a multi-lingual community (which is basically everywhere), I think you should read this book. Obviously what I think probably doesn’t matter bunches, but I’m going to keep thinking it and passing this book around to anyone who will take time to read it so take that.
Only 4 stars because the writing style is hard to get into sometimes. He’s a man with a message, not necessarily a polished author.
This book deals a lot with linguistic privilege, which I’m still processing through, but he shares some eye opening, extremely sad cases of “linguistic violence” from America’s past that are hard to argue with. His vision of what America could look like linguistically is highly unrealistic. And absolutely beautiful. And if everyone just learned how to say “hello” to the doctor/barista/bank teller in their native language, we’d be one step closer.
Only 4 stars because the writing style is hard to get into sometimes. He’s a man with a message, not necessarily a polished author.
This book deals a lot with linguistic privilege, which I’m still processing through, but he shares some eye opening, extremely sad cases of “linguistic violence” from America’s past that are hard to argue with. His vision of what America could look like linguistically is highly unrealistic. And absolutely beautiful. And if everyone just learned how to say “hello” to the doctor/barista/bank teller in their native language, we’d be one step closer.
May 24, 2023
I really recommend this book, but I have a lot of mixed feelings. I was super excited about this book when I found out it was coming out.
Positive Points:
1) The author is a multilingual, multicultural White American, challenging the stereotype that we're all loud, monolingual jerks.
2) The author gives a broad history of linguistic violence here in the US. I've noticed recently the problem of teachers encouraging students to "learn another language!" without explaining this important context of language violence.
3) The book points out how you don't have to travel super far to hear a bunch of languages - if you know where to look, they're probably closer than you assumed.
4) The author highlights the need for give and take - instead of immigrants having to do all the work learning the dominant language (in this case, English), native speakers can do more work learning how to understand different accents and picking up bits and pieces of other languages.
5) The book points out a big part of WHY we see mistakes as bad - years of conditioning in the language classroom. I do NOT agree with the idea of grading students on how long they can hold a conversation (for me, that would be 2 seconds in English, some of us are really shy and don't have the main goal of speaking. Reading, writing and understanding what we hear are also perfectly valid reasons for learning a language). If people pay close enough attention, they'll start to understand WHY there's this mismatch between how well we do in school but how poorly we show up in "simple" conversations.
6) The book highlights how much work is involved in learning a language. Even a "poorly structured" sentence involves a lot of work for the brain.
Critique:
1) The author mentions how he guesses what language people speak based on how they look - for me personally this is SUPER cringe. I have been in way too many situations where my friend "looked like they spoke Spanish" but they didn't and it was really awkward. And then I'm white and don't "look like" I speak Spanish. This one lady spoke to me in super slow Spanish because she assumed I was a beginner who started learning when I married my husband, a native speaker. Then all the time I get comments like, "Oh, you speak Spanish? Don't take this the wrong way - I thought you were just another white girl", "Oh, I assumed you didn't speak Spanish because you have light-colored eyes", "Oh, my wife/husband/partner/whoever is white and doesn't speak Spanish, so I just assumed you didn't either." This whole idea of assuming what language(s) people do or do not speak based on how they look is exactly what I'm trying to get rid of. No one is ever going to think someone like me speaks a language other than English based on how we look. One of my best friends was a native Urdu speaker who, like me, had to constantly explain her existence because she looked "too light" to be a native Urdu speaker from Pakistan.
2) The book, in my opinion, focused too much on challenging US Americans who are US-centered and not enough attention on the realities of being a native speaker of a global language. This idea that it's just people from the US who are like this is wrong - you'll see it in other countries like England and Australia as well.
3) I feel like the book isn't balanced enough between idealism and reality. People will say the expectation of immigrants speaking a language - as well as ensuing language loss and the identity crises of children of immigrants - is something you'll see in other countries as well, such as Italy or Spain. They would say this book helps keep the US on a pedestal, like it's "chosen" to be different, it's "chosen" to become multilingual and accepting. So it would be nice to see these things addressed because from what I've seen they're widespread, and grounding the book a little more in reality would help the idealism seem more attainable. For example, while I think it's great (truly) to say we should move beyond tolerance to something more active, I think we're trying to put the cart before the horse here. The reality is we desperately need just tolerance at the moment, to move away from fear when hearing other languages. We can't leapfrog over tolerance to get to anything active. That's not true change or progress. So I would have liked to see practical steps to even get to the basics of tolerance first before trying to promote anything else.
4) The book at types uses multilingual and multicultural as synonyms.
5) The book mentions the use of using the native language in teaching another language as being more effective, but gives examples of this only when teaching English to speakers of other languages. When it's the other way around, such as students learning Ojibwe, an example is given of a boarding school where no English is allowed. But wouldn't it be more effective to use English if that's the native language? I would have appreciated clarification here.
At the end of the day, I will not be walking up to strangers and chatting about things I'm not interested in - that goes against every fiber of my being. But I am grateful to Richard for this book because of the positive points I highlighted above. I think in general, as humans, we all need to try a little harder in our production of another language and give a little more grace with others.
Positive Points:
1) The author is a multilingual, multicultural White American, challenging the stereotype that we're all loud, monolingual jerks.
2) The author gives a broad history of linguistic violence here in the US. I've noticed recently the problem of teachers encouraging students to "learn another language!" without explaining this important context of language violence.
3) The book points out how you don't have to travel super far to hear a bunch of languages - if you know where to look, they're probably closer than you assumed.
4) The author highlights the need for give and take - instead of immigrants having to do all the work learning the dominant language (in this case, English), native speakers can do more work learning how to understand different accents and picking up bits and pieces of other languages.
5) The book points out a big part of WHY we see mistakes as bad - years of conditioning in the language classroom. I do NOT agree with the idea of grading students on how long they can hold a conversation (for me, that would be 2 seconds in English, some of us are really shy and don't have the main goal of speaking. Reading, writing and understanding what we hear are also perfectly valid reasons for learning a language). If people pay close enough attention, they'll start to understand WHY there's this mismatch between how well we do in school but how poorly we show up in "simple" conversations.
6) The book highlights how much work is involved in learning a language. Even a "poorly structured" sentence involves a lot of work for the brain.
Critique:
1) The author mentions how he guesses what language people speak based on how they look - for me personally this is SUPER cringe. I have been in way too many situations where my friend "looked like they spoke Spanish" but they didn't and it was really awkward. And then I'm white and don't "look like" I speak Spanish. This one lady spoke to me in super slow Spanish because she assumed I was a beginner who started learning when I married my husband, a native speaker. Then all the time I get comments like, "Oh, you speak Spanish? Don't take this the wrong way - I thought you were just another white girl", "Oh, I assumed you didn't speak Spanish because you have light-colored eyes", "Oh, my wife/husband/partner/whoever is white and doesn't speak Spanish, so I just assumed you didn't either." This whole idea of assuming what language(s) people do or do not speak based on how they look is exactly what I'm trying to get rid of. No one is ever going to think someone like me speaks a language other than English based on how we look. One of my best friends was a native Urdu speaker who, like me, had to constantly explain her existence because she looked "too light" to be a native Urdu speaker from Pakistan.
2) The book, in my opinion, focused too much on challenging US Americans who are US-centered and not enough attention on the realities of being a native speaker of a global language. This idea that it's just people from the US who are like this is wrong - you'll see it in other countries like England and Australia as well.
3) I feel like the book isn't balanced enough between idealism and reality. People will say the expectation of immigrants speaking a language - as well as ensuing language loss and the identity crises of children of immigrants - is something you'll see in other countries as well, such as Italy or Spain. They would say this book helps keep the US on a pedestal, like it's "chosen" to be different, it's "chosen" to become multilingual and accepting. So it would be nice to see these things addressed because from what I've seen they're widespread, and grounding the book a little more in reality would help the idealism seem more attainable. For example, while I think it's great (truly) to say we should move beyond tolerance to something more active, I think we're trying to put the cart before the horse here. The reality is we desperately need just tolerance at the moment, to move away from fear when hearing other languages. We can't leapfrog over tolerance to get to anything active. That's not true change or progress. So I would have liked to see practical steps to even get to the basics of tolerance first before trying to promote anything else.
4) The book at types uses multilingual and multicultural as synonyms.
5) The book mentions the use of using the native language in teaching another language as being more effective, but gives examples of this only when teaching English to speakers of other languages. When it's the other way around, such as students learning Ojibwe, an example is given of a boarding school where no English is allowed. But wouldn't it be more effective to use English if that's the native language? I would have appreciated clarification here.
At the end of the day, I will not be walking up to strangers and chatting about things I'm not interested in - that goes against every fiber of my being. But I am grateful to Richard for this book because of the positive points I highlighted above. I think in general, as humans, we all need to try a little harder in our production of another language and give a little more grace with others.
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