I Love My Country's Language

National conflict always sort of targets languages as a symbolic gesture. In lots of post-Soviet Europe, you see language issues suddenly coming to the fore banning foreign languages. My mother was born on the Lower East Side in Manhattan in 1911. Her first language was Yiddish. She did not learn to speak English till she got to kindergarten and she basically learned it from interacting with other children who spoke English. And so what comes into play then are class issues as well as ethnic issues.