“I was speaking the native language. That was Abenaki. If you’re going to live here, you should learn it.”

That’s been our problem since earliest colonial days. We’re a dominant culture, and speak the most dominant language, so rarely learn working abilities in other, less dominant languages. Those of us fluent in other languages tend to be outliers.

We’ve all read, likely in high school, Kipling’s “The Road to Mandalay,” in which a British soldier longs for the happy days of his service to the Empire in Burma: “Bloomin’ idol made o’ mud, Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd. Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed ‘er where she stud!” Not only is Tommy not a theologian, nor does he care to be; he’s not all that fluent in his native tongue. We’ve all seen the grossly misspelled, scribbled signs held up at rallies by anti-immigration folks. Then there’s the problem for Tommy, newly accentuated in our generation, of unprivileged contact.

Consider the ignorance inherent in mocking someone with a foreign accent. Even the wife of the president comes in for it. And I have to admit frustration with the unintelligible (to me) accents of many who answer the phone at the number for Customer Service. But what that accent means is that the person speaks at least two distinct languages. How many of us can claim that achievement?

When I worked on a Texas ranch with Mexican migrants about seventy years ago, the boss seemed to think it beneath me to try to learn their language. “Imagine that!” I overheard him say to his brother at a barbecue. “Will’s trying to get the Mexicans to teach him Spanish!” But I felt a palpable sense of relief when I got run into by a Spanish-only speaker down near Boston a couple months ago, and Bea was able to hop out and converse with him till an interpreter showed up. I suspect he didn’t trust her to represent him adequately when Trooper Grifone arrived.

Learning a foreign language without immersion is extremely difficult, save for a favored few. The ability is a gift; and it seems to me that it also requires at least a passing knowledge of your own native language. The main problem with speaking, say, high school French or German isn’t forming sentences or asking questions, it’s understanding the answers. At the moment I’m kind of easing into French and Spanish, courtesy of my multilingual pal, but I’ll never get far in the time I have left. C’est la vie.

However, in the interests of raising the tone of discourse in American English (if you doubt that necessary, just log on to Facebook for a couple of days. You could fill a book dedicated to proper usage with the flaming errors produced by the presumed graduates of American secondary education), I propose that we interject a few foreign phrases here and there into our everyday discourse. Practice leads to greater experimentation.

A prime example: If at the end of a brawl in a saloon, some of the recent combatants are unable to continue a regular regimen, we avoid saying that a few of the boys are out like a light on the barroom floor, and instead describe them as hors de combat.

At the climax of a hand of poker, as you shove your entire pile of assets into the pot, you avoid the crass expression, “All in,” and instead say cryptically, Alea jacta est. Not only will you be quoting a respected source (reputedly Julius Caesar), but you’ll be adding a touch of class and classicism to an otherwise pedestrian activity.

Think, too, of the romantic impact of quoting the chorus of “Spanish is the Loving Tongue” at the close of a billet doux: Mi amor, mi Corazon.” It used to work for me, especially with ladies of a Southwestern persuasion.

If you’ll try this now and then, you’ll have raised the tone of the American experience. You may also get tossed out of the bar on your derriere.