Official languages of the US

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Definitely everyone in the U.S. should be able to speak English. However there is no need to make it official. Immigrants to the U.S. have always learned to speak English over time.

http://zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=11506

New Poll Finds That 79 Percent of Americans Favor Making English Official; Data Shows Even Higher Support among First and Second Generation Americans
More than three- quarters of Americans support making English the official language of the United States according to a new poll conducted by Zogby International for U.S. English, Inc. The poll of 1,001 likely voters found that 79 percent of Americans favor legislation that would make English the official language, with more than four out of five first-generation and second-generation Americans supporting the measure.

The poll found majority support for official English legislation among every subset of the population, including by gender, age, race, political affiliation, religion, marital status, education level and income level. Most notably, 81 percent of individuals who are immigrants or children of immigrants indicated that they favored making English the official language of the United States. Conducted from June 7-9, 2005, the poll has a margin of error of (plus or minus) 3.2 percentage points, with higher margins of error in sub-groups.

"Making English the official language is a widely-supported, common sense policy for a united nation," said Mauro E. Mujica, chairman of U.S. English, Inc. "These numbers prove that Americans understand that English is the key to academic success, economic opportunity, and political participation in the United States. As they have at their town halls and at the ballot box, the people have spoken in favor of a common language policy. Now it is time for Congress to act by bringing up the measure for a hearing and a vote."

In the 109th Congress, 125 Representatives have worked to address the lack of a common language statute, signing on as co- sponsors of H.R. 997, the English Language Unity Act of 2005. Introduced by Rep. Steve King (R-IA), this bi-partisan legislation would make English the official language of the United States government while providing common sense exceptions for public safety, trade and tourism. Despite the bill's ranking as one of the most widely supported bills in the 109th Congress, the House has stalled on bringing the measure up for a vote.

The poll marks the ninth consecutive U.S. English poll to find more than 75 percent support for making English the official language of the United States. Prior polls in 2004, 2002, 2000, 1996, 1995, 1993, 1991 and 1988 all found in excess of three- quarters of the population in favor of such legislation.

U.S. English, Inc. is the nation's oldest and largest non- partisan citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States. Founded in 1983 by the late Sen. S.I. Hayakawa of California, U.S. English, Inc.(http://www.usenglish.org ) now has more than 1.8 million members.

(6/29/2005)
- By Rob Toonkel, Dakota Voice, ArriveNet, U.S. Newswire

Now, here is the question: as the current policy of having no official language for the US is working just fine, what need is there to *make* English official in the US, except for to go and satisfy some reactionaries that do not deserve to have their ideas made so?

"satisfy some reactionaries that do not deserve to have their ideas made so?"

Sounds rather extremist to me, Travis . . . you deciding who’s worthy of having their ideas come to fruition. This may come as a shock, but 79% of the U.S. is not amassed of “reactionaries.”

The US is a big place, and language use varies. New Mexico finds it realistic and expedient to have both English and Spanish as official state languages (states can have official languages if they want, regardless of the federal government's stand). Portuguese is commonly spoken in New England, and I once saw a sign on a public bus in California that was written in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. I also drove through a small town in Washington state where everything was written in English and Dutch (a fairly surreal experience, by the way). Yes, you would think it would behoove immigrants to learn the dominant language of their new home, but you can't legislate that kind of crap. I have immigrant ancestors on one side of my family who cut all ties to their original language in the first generation, and ancestors on the other who spent their whole adult lives in the US and never learned English, and whose children and grandchildren were bilingual. Oh well. Their choice. Not the government's.

<<Immigrants to the U.S. have always learned to speak English over time.>>

andre in usa says it simply and concisely. It's true. No matter what official legislation says, many immigrants do learn some English anyway and the vast, vast majority of Americans born in the US (even of immigrant parents) come to command English at a native level. I understand these are important, complex, and weighty issues, yet if some people would look at historical precedent and stop being so shortsighted they might realize in a relatively short time (certainly by the next generation) everyone ends up speaking English anyway.

>I was wondering why the US haven't declared any languages as their official language of their country? [Hans]

Though there were settlements in many parts of the country made up of persons from non-English speaking countries, for most of the country's history persons who failed to learn English were marginalized. The need to learn English seemed so obvious that declaring English the official language would have been superfluous.

Around the beginning of the 20th century a play by Zangwell popularized the term 'melting pot' to describe how persons of other languages and cultures lost their previous linguistic and cultural identities and became merged into the American mix. I notice that there are copies of this play on the internet. Here's the passage from the end in which a character looks at a bright red sunset over an American city and expresses these ideas [the square-bracketed comments are in the original]:
---
DAVID [Prophetically exalted by the spectacle] It is the fires of God round His Crucible...There she lies, the great Melting Pot -- listen! Can't you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth -- the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian, -- black and yellow --

VERA [Softly, nestling to him]
Jew and Gentile—

DAVID
Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross -- how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward! [He raises his hands in benediction over the shining city.]....

The Melting Pot, 1908
http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/wsharpe/citylit/Melting4.htm
---
The Mexican writer Vasconcelos later expressed a similar idea about Mexicans with his term 'la raza cósmica' [the cosmic race], though I believe he was thinking more of the ethnic blend that resulted from the Spanish conquest of Mexico rather than the results of more recent immigration.

I don't support the total assimilation ideal myself. I favor something in the middle. Continuing the crucible metaphor, I say heat us all up but not enough to melt, just enough to soften the edges a bit. That way we can get along without scraping each other so badly. This involves only a slight sacrifice of ethnic identity (just as individuals in other respects must sacrifice a small amount of their individual identity – separateness as individuals -- in order to get along in society). It's not an either-or thing.

I do favor enough assimilation, though, to insure that no major alien enclaves threaten national unity. This can be done by fostering mastery of English and declaring English the official national language (while at the same time encouraging people to maintain their knowledge of other languages, so that the benefits of knowing those languages aren't lost). I believe it was a mistake to pass the law that required that the government print ballots in a language other than English when the percentage of the voters who speak that language reaches a certain point. People who don't learn English are cut off from direct access to much of the national discourse.

>...I think it was unfair of the colonists (who were British, remember) to want independence because they didn't want to pay taxes to the British Government. They obviously didn't realise that the British who lived in Britain paid about 12 times as much in taxes to the Government as those British who lived in the Colonies. [Adam]

It wasn't a question of the amount but rather of who gets to decide. The American colonists based their objections on principles that originated in England itself. They added a few ideas of their own or from elsewhere, of course, but mostly they applied British principles to their own circumstances. Here's how Franklin put the matter well before the Revolution, in a letter to the British governor dated December 4, 1754:

"That it is suppos'd an undoubted Right of Englishmen not to be taxed but by their own Consent given thro' their Representatives. That the Colonies have no Representatives in Parliament. That to propose taxing them by Parliament, and refusing them the Liberty of chusing a Representative Council, to meet in the Colonies, and consider and judge of the Necessity of any General Tax and the Quantum, shews a Suspicion of their Loyalty to the Crown, or Regard for their Country, or of their Common Sense and Understanding, which they have not deserv'd. That compelling the Colonies to pay Money without their Consent would be rather like raising Contributions in an Enemy's Country, than taxing of Englishmen for their own publick Benefit. That it would be treating them as a conquer'd People, and not as true British Subjects." http://www.historycarper.com/resources/twobf2/taxation.htm

As Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence, governments derive "their just Powers from the consent of the governed" -- and Americans did not give their consent to the taxes (of whatever amount) that were being imposed upon them. Persons such as Jefferson and Franklin felt that they were competent to govern themselves and shouldn't have to obey decrees that came from the mother country.

Bump.

when you read about america and stuff in atlas etc. it says the lanugage is English and spanish.

<<when you read about america and stuff in atlas etc. it says the lanugage is English and spanish.>>

Those are the two most widely spoken languages in the US now. However, many more speak English than Spanish, even with massive immigration of people who speak Spanish as a native language. If we were looking at an atlas from 100-125 years ago we might find it'd say the US's languages were English and German, since German was in a similar situation that Spanish is in today.

Not so much what the languages of the country are meant to be but you have no idea how ultra conservative the USA is. Imagine living somewhere where nearly all the cars have the Jesus fish on them, teaching evolution is all but banned in schools and creationism is taught almost as fact, you are totaly ostracised by your community if you don't go to church, racism is all pervasive and you get the Baptists knocking on your door to try and save you weekly, people actually stand in the street waving signs to try and outlaw abortion and the promotion of homophobia in America is an obsession etc etc.....In my opinion and experience of living in America, which I'm happy to say I no longer do.

I could go on, but as far as conservatism goes (I am and I have lived all over Europe and N. and S. America and the UK where I now live.) The UK is the least conservative by miles with a laissez faire approach to true freedom of action the USA can only dream about. It is an absolute liberal utopia compared with most of the USA.

<<Not so much what the languages of the country are meant to be but you have no idea how ultra conservative the USA is. Imagine living somewhere where nearly all the cars have the Jesus fish on them, teaching evolution is all but banned in schools and creationism is taught almost as fact, you are totaly ostracised by your community if you don't go to church, racism is all pervasive and you get the Baptists knocking on your door to try and save you weekly, people actually stand in the street waving signs to try and outlaw abortion and the promotion of homophobia in America is an obsession etc etc.....In my opinion and experience of living in America, which I'm happy to say I no longer do.

I could go on, but as far as conservatism goes (I am and I have lived all over Europe and N. and S. America and the UK where I now live.) The UK is the least conservative by miles with a laissez faire approach to true freedom of action the USA can only dream about. It is an absolute liberal utopia compared with most of the USA.>>

Um, I'm sorry but that has just about nothing to do with what this forum is about or indeed what we were talking about--matters of language. You are free to have your opinions on any matter but if they're not related with this forum's purpose you shouldn't post them here but instead find another appopriate venue, as there are plenty online. Also, just while we're on the topic, your brash generalizations certainly do not apply to all or even most of America, while I'm aware they do exist in certain places. I know--I'm an American and have lived abroad too, and the America you described is not the one I happen to live in.

Anyway...back to language now...

I have to say that I strongly agree with Kirk about Spanish in the US, in that I see no indications that Spanish in the US won't go the way that German in the US went before it. Around the start of the twentieth century, it seemed to many that German would become a very major language here in the US, and yet in the end it eventually ended up getting replaced by English, albeit relatively recently in places such as here, where there was still German-speakers left two generations ago. And today, as much as Spanish may seem to be gaining influence in areas, simply due to large quantities of immigration by native Spanish-speakers, I don't see any reason why it won't eventually be replaced by English in the long run, like in the case of German.

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