Teresa Heinz Kerry, Andrew Sullivan, and linguistic diversity in the U.S.A

Via this Cliopatra post by KC Johnson, I came across Andrew Sullivan's critique of Teresa Heinz Kerry's convention speech at the Democratic National Convention. I saw the speech, and I don't have any strong feelings about it. We vote (or should vote) for politicians, not their spouses. There's little a candidate's spouse could say in a speech that would affect the way I would vote.

Consequently, I think Sullivan wasted his time taking apart Heinz Kerry's speech. Until she displays some political ambitions of her own, I don't think it's worth the time to analyze what she said (at least not when there are more substantive issues worthy of discussion).

But I just do feel the need to take issue with one part of Sullivan's article. Quoted below, it's a complaint about Heinz Kerry opening her speech with bits of Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

Now there are many languages spoken in the United States. French isn't one of the more common ones. Neither is Portuguese. THK was saying nothing here, it seems to me, except, "I can speak lots of languages." Good for her. But the point? That her opponents don't care to appeal to new immigrants? Or that new immigrants have a special claim on the Democrats? As one myself, I'd like to think so, but I'd also like not to be set apart. The opening of her speech was simply an exercise in exhibitionist cosmopolitanism. She's not the Pope; and her audience is American, not French. I don't get it. Neither, I suspect, did many others.

Sullivan doesn't mention the inapplicability of Spanish or Italian. The implication, at least as far as I can tell, is that those languages are spoken by enough Americans to warrant inclusion in a political speech. Speaking French and Portuguese to an American audience is, according to Andrew Sullivan, just showing off.

There's just one problem. Check out these 2000 census data. Here's an excerpt of the relevant information:

Spanish or Spanish Creole: 28,101,052 speakers
French (including Patois, Cajun)*: 1,643,838 speakers
Italian: 1,008,370 speakers
Portuguese or Portuguese Creole: 564,630 speakers

Turns out that more Americans speak French than Italian. In fact, French is the fourth most commonly spoken language in the U.S., following English, Spanish, and Chinese.** In other words, Sullivan is flat-out wrong. French is one of the more commonly spoken languages in America. And half a million Portuguese speakers are hardly small enough a group to scoff at.

I can see why Sullivan might see Heinz Kerry's opening as "an exercise in exhibitionist cosmopolitanism." But the fact is, she directed her speech in languages that are widely spoken in the United States. Was she showing off? Perhaps. But she was also speaking to a substantial number of Americans in their own language. What's more, unlike the pandering politicians who pepper their speeches with atrocious Spanish, she's qualified to do so.

*The fact that these figures include Patois and Cajun speakers complicates things. I'm not sure what their numbers are. My understanding, however, is that speakers of Patois and Cajun typically understand French without much trouble (though not vice versa). I think it's entirely reasonable to assume that a Cajun speaker would understand the French bit Heinz Kerry used.

**I'm not sure what to make of the Chinese figure. There are, after all, numerous "dialects" of Chinese that could just as readily be classified as distinct languages.