HB 477: Torturing the ones we want to welcome, torturing ourselves

Multiple Ohio blogs have posted entries in a foreign language today:

• American Pink Collar (French)
• Bad American (Polish)
• bitter-girl :: musings (German)
• Blogesque (Korean)
• Blue Bexley (Dutch)
• Blue Ohioan (Korean)
• Bring Ohio Home (Czech)
• Bring Ohio Home (German)
• Buckeye State Blog (Italian)
• Glass City Jungle (Hungarian)
• Gloria Ferris (Spanish)
• Ohio Daily Blog (Croatian)
• Pho’s Akron Pages (Vietnamese)
• Plunderbund (Redneck)
• Rowsey Blog (Spanish)
• The Chief Source (Spanish) at The Point
• The Daily Bellwether (French)
• Tim Ferris (French)
• Writes Like She Talks (Portuguese)

And it’s been noted that maybe, to some people, surfing from blog to blog and being unable to understand most of the posts (until you go here for the translation of each one) proves the point that Ohio and maybe even the United States should standardize, through legislation, the language most of us use and which is already being used by the state and federal goverment: English.

Why would we want our governments to do that? Because everything we try to read otherwise is pretty incomprehensible and that’s exactly what we want to avoid. It’s torture to stare at something and not have any idea whatsoever as to what it says, what it argues, what it tells you to do, what it tells you not to do.

Sounds logical, right?

Wrong.

Why? Why is that logic wrong?

Because those of us reading this blog and those blog posts are primarily native English speakers. Of course blog posts in Polish, German, Croatian, Korean and so on look like gobbledyguck to us.

So what’s the point of this little demonstration?

To non-native English speakers, blogs – and so many other forms of communication that native English speakers take for granted – look like nonsense. How does it feel, going to the most familiar places you know on the Internet to gather information about the day, about issues and policy that matter, about breaking news and urgent messages, and find that the shoe is on the other foot: you can’t understand a word, you can’t glean even the essense of what’s being communicated?

What kind of humans would legislate torturing literally hundreds of thousands of fellow Ohioans that way?

Here’s a list of the Ohio state senators on the State and Local Government and Veteran Affairs Committee, which appears to be the one that has HB 477 right now. Please contact them and let them know how you feel about HB 477.