Lizrraga 1

Frog, dumb Frenchman, beaner, wet back, these are just some examples of
derogatory terms that are used to dehumanize and oppress individuals and communities that
come into this country that are unfamiliar to American customs and language. In the article by
a professor of history at the University of Maine, C. Stewart Doty, How Many Frenchmen Does
It Take to...? he discusses the struggle the French came across trying to conform to American
customs and ideology in the North East Coast. These Franco-American communities were
constantly discriminated against by the Irish-Americans, they had particularly spiteful struggles
in Connecticut, Maine, and Rhode Island, as described by Doty. They were often in hostile
environments and were limited in opportunities for advancement in better jobs. What follows
will be a presentation comparing French speakers in the Northeast and Spanish speakers in the
Southwest and how the difficulties they have faced have been homogeneous.
The first issue that Doty presents is the prohibition of using their native language in the
public spectrum. As he explains, Most contemporary Franco-Americans have memories of
being punished for speaking French in school or the workplace. Even worse for many of them
was their experience in the French language classes of secondary schools, colleges, and
universities(91). This has a strong resemblance to the experience of Spanish speakers in the
Southwest. Like the French speakers, they were also being punished for speaking Spanish at
school or in the workplace. Teachers had the power to physically discipline students who were
using Spanish amongst themselves. Students studying French who were native speakers were
also put in hostile environments being told that the French they spoke was not the correct one,
similar to teachers of Spanish in the American Southwest demanding that their native Spanish
speaking students adopt Castilian pronunciation. This brings forth the idea of Sermo Nobilis and

Lizrraga 2
Sermo Plebeius, both are correct, they are just used in different context. They are social dialects
of the same language. Sermo Nobilis brings forth the notation of proper and pure, whereas
Sermo Plebeius is an informal context that is primarily spoken. For example what is the proper
way of saying pool in Spanish, alberca or piscina?
The second issue he touches on is how they felt ashamed and felt their heritage to be an
embarrassment and degrading, as he explains his experience with an elder teller helping him at
the bank. He detected a slight French accent coming from her so he switched languages and
begun talking to her in French but her reaction was horrified. During that time is was not
uncommon to stumble upon people of French descent who felt such a way. I have had very
similar experiences at work. I have had customers who come in to my store and I notice that they
speak Spanish so I automatically begin talking to them in Spanish to make them feel more
comfortable with me yet they continue to talk to me in broken English. Other times I have had
families that come in speaking Spanish amongst themselves so I talk to them in Spanish and then
they switch to English as if they have to prove that they speak English as well. From my
observations it is usually the teenagers or young adults in their early 20s that do this.
The third issue he argues about it how in order to fit in and assimilate to American
customs many of them abandon the French language, committing autolinguacide, customs, and
in some cases even religion. By abandoning the French language the first thing many did was
Anglicized their names, for example St. Pierre became St. Peter and Grenier became Green. That
is also seen with Spanish speakers, Miguel becoming Michael, Andrs becoming Andrew and so
forth. This is usually seen when children or adolescents are in school and want to fit in with their
fellow classmates that have English names such as Connor, Brittany, and Tyler. Occasionally it is

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also done against their will by teachers that do not care enough to learn or even attempt to
pronounce the name the child has and automatically Americanizes it as previously stated.
Doty describes that by the 1970s and 1980s, academics increasingly valued North
American French language, literature, and history (96). The 1970s saw an establishment of
French/English bilingual education programs in Maine. This is similar to what happened in Los
Angeles in the late 1960 amongst the Chicano community. They were uprising and fighting for
their educational rights, one of the things they were asking for was applied bilingual education
and the study of the raza, what we know today as Chicano Studies. Like the French the Chicanos
became aware of what was taking place around them and had had enough. They too wanted to
learn about their heritage and become aware that indeed Mexicanos can make it too, that Spanish
speakers can be more than blue collared workers and that we can take on professions that require
us to work with our minds rather than just with our hands.
The final observation is that the patterns of oppression that these two groups in particular
suffered from are very similar, from having to Americanize their name, to hiding their true origin
and identity. Doty states how in some instances the older French citizens living in the Northeast
regret having to assimilate to the American ways because little by little they began to loose
touch of who they were and where they came from. This has also happened in the Southwest
with families of Mexican Spanish speaking descent. The parents, usually first generations, want
to protect their children from having to endure the same hardships they had to go through as
children, by giving them English names and not teaching them any Spanish, in some occasions
even if that means that they will not be able to communicate with their grandparents.

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These two groups indeed shared alike battles when it came to assimilating and fitting in
with the American culture, however from previous readings and from some examples that Doty
points out I also concluded that the Asian American living in the United States also shares these
hardships. They also come into this country with different views of what it is to be courteous,
culture, and language. Putting all the ideas, events, and facts together I can see that all the major
minority ethnicities in the United States actually have an abundance of similarities, but rather
than focusing on that to become better communities we always see and point out the differences.