A bilingual message for Ms. Xenophobe

Recently at a Whole Foods Market -- itself supposedly a beacon of touchy-feeliness -- a woman accosted my son Sebastian's baby-sitter for speaking to him in Spanish.

Sebastian, all of 11 months, was eyeing some fruit being offered for tasting, so Ursula asked him, "Quieres probar?" That's when this perfect stranger -- let's call her Ms. Xenophobe -- swooped in to impart her hateful ignorance: "You shouldn't speak Spanish to that child," she said, "I am sure that's not what the parents want."

She is sure, is she?

Such breathtaking impudence; if only I had been there to give this woman a piece of my mind.

It isn't just that the father of this blond child happens to be a blond half-Mexican, or my suspicion that nosy Ms. Xenophobe might not have minded so much if Ursula had been speaking to Sebastian in Swedish or German. What is most disheartening about the incident is how mainstream this woman's views are about the undesirability of American kids learning a foreign language.

This isn't a plea for immigrants to go about their business exclusively in their native languages. I am not someone who believes that you can be a full member of the American community without speaking English, which is why I have qualms about open-ended bilingual education.

But if it's important for immigrants to learn English in order to assimilate into our society, it's equally important for all Americans -- regardless of their ethnicity -- to be exposed to foreign languages in order to assimilate into the broader world.

And if people like Ms. Xenophobe think a blond child's command of English will naturally suffer if he is exposed to a second language, they underestimate the dexterity of a child's mind and human intelligence.

I WAS RAISED speaking both English and Spanish, and I sound like what I am: a native speaker of both. This is no reflection on my abilities; it's a matter of when I was exposed to the languages. It wasn't until I studied French and Russian later on that I realized what a gift it was to have been exposed to two languages at such an early age. Go to a country such as the Netherlands and you encounter an entire population that seems bilingual, if not trilingual. It's rather humbling.