2019年经济学人 母语——强迫移民学英语可能适得其反(2)（在线收听）

Ms Fouka compared German-American populations in border counties of Ohio and Indiana with their neighbours in adjacent states (who experienced no language ban). She found that those affected by the ban were more likely to marry another German and give their children German names, and less likely to enlist during the second worldwar. Forced assimilation backfired at every level, from the personal to the political. 

弗卡女士将俄亥俄州和印第安纳州边境县的德裔美国人与相邻州的德裔美国人(这些州没有语言禁令)进行了比较。她发现，受禁令影响的人更有可能与德国人结婚，并给孩子起德国名字，而在二战期间参军的可能性较小。强迫同化在各个层面都适得其反，从个人层面到政治层面。

Unless the intentionwas not assimilation at all. Sometimes language laws are mostly symbolic. For instance, numerous American states have declared English to be their official tongue (at a federal level, the country doesn’t have one). This seems intended to send a message—“We speak English here”—without doing much to change reality on the ground. Sometimes, though, laws seem designed to make life as hard as possible for immigrants.

除非目的根本不是同化。有时候，语言法则主要是象征性的。例如，美国许多州已经宣布英语为他们的官方语言(在联邦一级，美国没有官方语言)。这似乎意在传递一个信息——“我们在这里说英语”——而没有做太多改变现实。然而，有时法律似乎是为了让移民的生活尽可能艰难。

Take Proposition 227 of 1998, whereby Californian voters eliminated almost all of the state’s bilingual education programmes. Bilingual teachingwas always intended as a bridge to English, but in a polarising campaign itwas portrayed as allowing kids to avoid English altogether. (A few years earlier, another vote had stripped illegal immigrants of state benefits.) A later analysis provided scant evidence that Proposition 227 made much difference to English-learning. But the Republican-led anti-immigration backlash of the1990s led to a counter-backlash: California Latinos, though often religious and socially conservative, have been solidly Democratic since.

以1998年227号提案为例，加州选民取消了该州几乎所有的双语教育项目。双语教学一直被认为是通向英语的桥梁，但在一场两极分化的运动中，双语教学被描绘成让孩子们完全避免使用英语。（几年前，另一项投票剥夺了非法移民的州福利。）后来的分析没有提供足够的证据证明227号提案对英语学习有很大的影响。但上世纪90年代共和党领导的反移民运动引发了应对措施：加州的拉丁裔虽然常常是宗教和社会保守派，但自那以后一直坚定地支持民主党。