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A Multilingual America Would Be Magnifique

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 16, 2008

Sarajevo. February 1984. A clear, cold night. Beneath a black canopy dusted with gem-quality stars, two Etats-Unis sportswriters stamp their boots on the media center sidewalk as they hail one of the rattletrap mini-sedans that passes, during the Olympic fortnight, for a taxi.

A Fiat, possibly a Soviet-made Lada, shudders to the curb. Mumbling refrigerated gratitude, the journalists topple into the cramped back seat. "Press village - Dobrinja," says one, producing an icy fog. The driver, in four days of stubble, nods.

In the rearview, the cabbie's eyes throb with overstrained vessels, suggesting sleep and shaving ended about the same time. The car lurches into light traffic.

With the village at least 15 minutes away and streets treacherous with ice, the Americans attempt to strike up a conversation - if not out of traditional Yankee friendliness and journalistic inquiry than from a sense of self-preservation.

If the driver dozed and the little car careened off the Princip Bridge, no one would survive. One of the passengers points to the floor. Through a jagged gash, they see the street passing below.

They inquire about the hole.

From Sarajevo To Paris

"What happened back here? To the floor?" The bloodshot eyes dart to the rearview. "No English," says the driver. Alas, our Serbo-Croat extends only to greetings ("Dobro jutro!"), farewells ("Dobro vece!") and bar orders ("Slivovitz!"), neither of much use at the moment.

But the driver is resourceful and unexpectedly alert. "Se habla Espanol?" Not since sixth grade, thinks the passenger with the Sunshine State diplomas. His companion, a product of New York City schools, holds up a thumb and forefinger separated by the width of a dime. "Poquito," he apologizes.

This was the moment, preserved in an imperfect memory, that reduces Barack Obama to quivers of embarrassment for the countrymen he hopes to lead toward a brighter, cooler, healing, less contentious and, as it turns out, multilingual future. Then, from the New Yorker, a stab at redemption: "Français?"

In fact, he did, keenly. For the balance of the ride, the Serb driver and the Jewish American from New York working for a paper in New Jersey zipped through an ancient European city along smooth thoroughfares recently paved by Eastern bloc heavy equipment in a car built in Italy, or possibly Russia, conversing in the musical language of Napoleon.

Obama Should Stay This Course

All of which is to concede that not everything the presumed Democratic presidential nominee utters is silly, naive, ill-informed or in need of self-repudiation during the next news cycle. Strip out the innate condescension, and Obama's proposal that tomorrow's Americans should communicate expertly in more than one language is a wise and, indeed, ancient idea.

Never mind that getting Americans to communicate expertly in their native tongue envisions an achievement unattained in public schools since before Sputnik. Competency in a foreign language is an investment in human currency, and more; it's a mind-widening, character-building experience. Denouncing it as otherwise chooses a world that is unnecessarily narrow, dark and cold ... as This Space discovered in a ramshackle sedan from Italy, or possibly Russia, 24 winters ago.

Columnist Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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