The Official "Should the US Have an Official Language" Thread
 

I did a search and could not find this discussed, except as a side-bar to other debates.

So, should the US have (an) official Language(s)?

No.

If I remember history correctly, didn't they try at one point to make german the offical language? Or was it French? French sounds more logical because of the land they had in America but I want to say that it was german.

You're right! It was German, because of the immigrants. There were more German speakers than English speakers but the house (i think i'm getting this right, for once) decided that we should not have an offical language, as the ideals exspoused in our founding should reach beyond cultural and language divides.

In keeping with that, I'd be opposed to any offical language.

sadly some people think this is true:


SPeak ENglish or Die

I'm all for celebrating diverse cultures; however, I think the United States needs to be unified by the same language -- English.

Why not? Look around, everything is in english. When Government holds session, it's in english. When you file your taxes, your forms come to you in english. When you open your mail, i'm going to guess it's all in english. When you go to the movies, it's english( unless your watching a foreign film). I guess it might be a little different if you live in FL. CA or TX, but you rarely come across any language other than english in my region of the country.

Well, if English is the de facto official language of the U.S., which is what you're saying it is, what's the point of actually designating it as the official language? It's a waste of time and energy.

I agree with you.

27 states have English as their official language. That is already a majority.

History has made English into the de-facto official language. Simply passing the legislation would help to remove any confusion that illegal border-crossers and their supporters may have.

I'd rather not see a clash of civilizations much like Europe sees with their immigrants so the encouragement of English would help avoid that.

There are threads on this so I don't understand why someone had to go out and create another one. I speak to my cleaning lady in English. Every once in a while I'll throw in a word or two I picked up from Telemundo but it's nothing serious. I'm not planning on learning Spanish to communicate with her in the future.

-Rudey

Most days I am all for multi-culturalism. That is one of the things that makes living in Vancouver (and Canada) such a treat, but the official Canadian languages are English and French.

I have no problems with people keeping their culture, speaking their native tongue, but I wish the Canadian government would stress that fact that to live and work in Canada you should be able to converse reasonably well in English and/or French.

I have had days where I am out running errands and the person helping me can barely speak a word of English (and I know they can't speak any French). I just find that so frustrating. I feel like I'm the foreigner who can't speak their language, yet I'm the one born and raised in Canada.

I don't get it. If I moved to a country that does not speak my native tongue (in this case English) I would learn how to speak their language. I would definately show off my Canadian/British heritage, but at the same time immerse myself into my new culture as well.

Easier said than done. I guess.

So none of the federal offices have to go to the expense of hanging notices in multiple languages or offering Spanish language on their phone lines. That's my main reason why I think we should do it.

The problem is though, even if it's "official" it still wouldn't change the fact that there are pockets of the US where any store you go into there won't be any English spoken. Those are private businesses and they can do whatever they want - if they want to speak in all sign language or in pig Latin they can.

Yes, for many of the reasons cited in this thread.

This is actually an urban legend: http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.htm

In short, no such law was proposed, though they did suggest that they print federal laws in German as well as English, this was never even voted on. IT was decided to only print the laws in English.

Yes, English should be the official language of the United States. Doesn't meant that you can't speak whatever else you choose, just that english is the official language of business (and education)...and of the united states.

How expensive is it to hang notices in multiple languages or offer Spanish phone recordings/assistance?

How expensive would enforcement of an "English is the Official Language of the U.S." law/policy be? How much money would be spent enacting such a thing?

I have no idea what the answers are, but it just seems to me that it's likely the costs wouldn't outweigh any benefits.

valkyrie:

From the other side of things, what are the benefits of not having an official language?

I don't think I've ever tried to advocate for the benefits of not doing something that didn't seem necessary -- but I'll try. Not having an official language is nice and hippie-wonderful inclusive -- how's that?

In all seriousness, if many people in a given area speak a particular language that isn't English, governmental offices having signs/employees/recordings/websites in said language makes things easier for everyone -- for the people who speak that language and for the people who don't want to stand behind them in line at the DMV. Would taking down the signs in whatever language really make the people who need them go out and learn English at that very second? If not, it's just going to complicate things, isn't it? So what's the point?

I'm pulling that out of the air because I don't think of this as a question of benefits v. benefits -- I still think it's benefits v. costs.

Yes
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Re: The Official "Should the US Have an Official Language" Thread
 

Sorry, but it just isn't that simple. There are laws and treaties that prohibit the federal government from establishing an official language, that would be difficult to ammend.

I don't see the advantages of establishing an official language, when most countries in the world don't have one. Every nation has a de facto language, and isn't that enough?

People shouldn't be given jobs they aren't qualified for. If speaking English reasonably well is one of the qualifications, then they shouldn't have been given the job in the first place. Really, the only people who should be exempted from proficient English and/or French skills are the elderly.

Re: Re: The Official "Should the US Have an Official Language" Thread
 

I realize that it's not that simple. I also do not believe that we should have an official language. This thread was an attempt to keep another thread (the Spanish Star Spangled Banner) more on topic, and so I brought this debate to another thread.

Do you think that there would be a benefit in incurring the cost requiring people to learn (and facilitating that learning) english?

It certainly could be a benefit vs. benefit argument. Is it hard to see the inherent advantages when everyone in the same workforce speaks the same language? How about all of the people voting for candidates seeking offices? Many candidates are forced to run dual language campaigns...

I'm not sure the cost vs. benefit is as clear as you make it out out to be. Like you though, my 'thought' here is pure conjecture.

I can definitely see your side of things here -- and I will agree, your view is much more hippie and inclusive ;)

This just stuck out at me. Unless we made it illegal to campaign in a foreign language, I don't think politicians would stop running dual-language campaigns, and frankly, if they have enough constituents to warrant a duel language campaign, then they need to put in the effort to reach out to them. As someone said earlier, just making English the official language would not force people to learn it.

Re: Re: Re: The Official "Should the US Have an Official Language" Thread
 

I'm sorry. I didn't mean that you thought it was simple. I replied to you because it was the first post, however, many people on here are implying that it is that simple.

Let's take Spanish and the Mexican sub-population for example. I'd love to know what Mexicans have available to them in terms of work when they don't speak English. Well I guess most cleaning people and the people in the back of kitchens as well as the guys that wait on street corners make it painfully obvious of what they can do.

Aside from opportunities like that, it bridges the cultural divide. Europe often has clashes between people who came there and didn't integrate for whatever reasons and natives. That's why countries like France now won't let Muslims wear headscarves in schools.

-Rudey

Thank you for clearing up my mis-con-sceptions

:D

Re: Re: Re: Re: The Official "Should the US Have an Official Language" Thread
 

I'm not sure anyone implied it would be "simple" - instead, they replied that they felt English should be the official language (disregarding the difficulty of the task altogether).

My thought is that if they are eligible to vote in American elections, they must be citizens. If they are citizens, they should be able to speak english.

Actually, I would be all in favor of a law against dual-language campaigns. I don't think such a law would be quite constitutional unfortunately.

If you come to the US, you should learn English. Growing up in South Florida, it was frustrating to walk into a store at the mall and have the employees not be able to conversate with you. There were numerous occasions where an employee had to get their manager to help them because they weren't able to answer a simple question from me. They were only trained to ring something up....anything more than that caused blank stares. I'll bet these employees still haven't learned English. Why? Because they don't have to. The Americans have catered to them by putting signs up in their language, learning some of their language, etc. The South Florida newspapers constantly did stories on the immigrants from Spanish countries who were quoted as saying, "Why bother learning Engligh? It's unnecessary."

When my family moved to Japan for 2 years, my parents took Japanese language courses and I was taught Japanese at my school. We didn't expect the Japanese to cater to us.

Kind of like the old school immigrants here. You had to adapt into the melting pot, be an American. My mother had said that her grandparents stopped speaking Italian the day they were able to communicate to each other well in English. Maybe things are a lot easier now for the immigrant than they were 80+ years ago.

LOL I totally don't intend to make fun, but speaking of learning English, "conversate" isn't a word. ;) (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Back to what ktsnake said: I don't think it would EVER be possible to require people in general to learn English. Facilitating would be awesome, although I have no idea how much that happens already.

Your point about candidates being "forced" to run dual-language campaigns is not compelling to me. First of all, I don't think it can be considered "force" if a candidate tries to appeal to voters by speaking their language. Do it or not -- of course not doing it will have consequences, but that doesn't amount to force in my opinion. Also, these candidates are free to move to a place where everybody speaks English and campaign there, right?

Finally, I don't think the issue of employees who can't speak English is an issue for the government/law/national policy. If you go to a store where the employees can't speak English and that bothers you, don't shop there. The government can't regulate that.

LOL am I wrong, or am I arguing for less governmental intervention here, while some I'd consider conservative are arguing for more?

To vote in an American election, you must be an American citizen, correct? To become an American citizen, you have to meet certain requirements. Unless you are above a certain age, you must actually be able to show a minimum level of competence in using the english language as shown at this random website I googled:

http://www.dar.org/natsociety/Citize...?TP=Show&ID=77

This raises 2 possibilities in my mind for a "citizen" to be catered to in a language other than english -- either they qualify under the exemption because of their age (which probably isn't a highly significant portion of the immigrant population) or they committed fraud on their applications to become citizens. It seems that either of those two must be true if they feel that a candidate must campaign in spanish.

I'm not really sure that as a matter of public policy we should be turning a blind eye to those who defraud the INS... But of course, there are certain 1st amendment rights that we must be conscious of here, and I think (I hope) that those win out. So valkyrie, I grudgingly accept that on this point, you're probably right -- I just don't like it :)

Quote:

Finally, I don't think the issue of employees who can't speak English is an issue for the government/law/national policy. If you go to a store where the employees can't speak English and that bothers you, don't shop there. The government can't regulate that.

Actually, I see some huge potential benefits. Often, communication is critical in ensuring safety for employees and ensuring that employers are doing all they can to avoid liability. I would think that the payoff for employees all being able to read the same safety manuals or to heed the same warnings from their supervisors could be huge.

The cost-benefit analysis may prove to be more complex than you propose.

Quote:

LOL am I wrong, or am I arguing for less governmental intervention here, while some I'd consider conservative are arguing for more?

Upholding the law we currently have versus maintaining the status quo which involves ignoring the law we currently have... Nah.. you're fine -- liberals love to ignore the law ;)

Hey! Only when the law invovles drugs.

JUST KIDDING!!!

I think we all know that the vast majority of Americans speak English, even if it is not their original language. That said, I don't think that it needs to be designated "officially." HOWEVER, I am tired of people whining that we need to accommodate other languages as a matter of course, in other words having signs, directions, etc in more than one language (Spanish is the one most cited.) In America we speak English, and if you choose not to do so then everyone else should not be expected to accommodate you.

Wow, I seriously didn't know some states had an "official language" but yet the entire U.S. doesn't.

I agree w/ Pika2001... everything is in English, so why not?

I also agree with MrsMcCartney -- this drives me absolutely nuts!

I'm hispanic, and I don't speak Spanish. When I worked in retail, it drove me NUTS how people would start talking to me in super fast Spanish and I had no clue what they were saying. Then they either got mad at me and left because I couldn't understand what they were saying and no one else in the store spoke Spanish, or they STARTED SPEAKING TO ME IN ENGLISH!!

Umm... why didn't you just talk to me in English to begin with? :confused: It was so frustrating.

Update: Senate proposes making English official language

^^^^^^^
 

The amendment to the Senate's immigration reform bill to which the article refers would not make English the "official" language of the US. It would declare English to be the "common and unifying" language of the country.

The exact language as it currently stands is:

The Government of the United States shall preserve and enhance the role of English as the common and unifying language of America. Nothing herein shall diminish or expand any existing rights under the law of the United States relative to services or materials provided by the government of the United States in any language other than English.

Re: ^^^^^^^
 

How is that different from an official language?

An official language doesn't force you to eliminate all other languages. The legislators that have introduced and supported this measure have said it is for an "Official" language, the news reports reflect that, and an "Official" language does seem to be defined as a "Common and unifying language", no?

-Rudey

Re: Re: ^^^^^^^
 

Common and unifying is unofficial, if it was official, then all government forms/paperwork/etc would be required to be in English.