Since moving to Taipei, something’s been bugging me, and I feel the need to mention it: Americans are way too concerned about “protecting” their native language.

In Taipei, many people speak English, even though their island society could function just fine without it. But in an attempt to market themselves to the Western world, they learn. Not only do they learn, but they also use their knowledge to help little lost foreign girls (exhibit 1: me). I’m never standing on a street corner looking perplexedly at a map for long before a local is at my elbow, offering to help. What makes this even more indulgent of them is that Americans are not their first, not their second, but only the third largest group of international visitors in Taiwan. In other words, they’re not assisting me for the tourism revenue; they’re just doing it to be nice. In fact, out of deference to English-speaking foreigners, many signs are in English. (And by “many signs,” I mean every sign related to public transportation or any road sign.) I can count on one hand the number of times someone here has gotten frustrated with my inability to communicate. The first time it happened, I have to admit, I was offended. But I mean, I guess I am living in their country, eating their food, earning a salary from a local business. It’s only fair that I learn their language.

And then I realized that those lines sounded familiar.

Oh yeah. It’s like, every American’s mantra about Spanish-speaking immigrants.

I’ve never bought into the whole let’s-make-English-the-national-language battle. But now that I’m experiencing the foreigner’s side, I realize just how miserly that mentality is. If native Chinese speakers can learn English, which is an overwhelmingly dissimilar language, I think Americans can learn some basic Spanish. Despite the fact that the U.S. was built on the backs of immigrants, we can’t subtitle a few simple road signs in Spanish? We begrudge them the Mexican bakery that now fills the empty building down the street? We refer to any neighborhood populated by Latin Americans as “the bad part of town”? Please. The most shocking thing is that my Christian friends are the most stringent supporters of this movement. Jesus went through some pretty inconvenient stuff for slaves, for women, for all the outcasts of the day. Shouldn’t we do the same?

For those of you who find it irksome to press 1 for English: stop being selfish in the name of nationalism. If Lady Liberty had pose-able thumbs, she would beat the bejeepers out of you.