Should English be our Official language?

IOLO
"Yes, please use Welsh on this forum from now on and do us all a favour" , he said .



He overlooked the "l" in favour .

 

There is a simple reason. At the time of the Ratification of the Constitution, English, while a common language, was not the native language of the majority. Ben Franklin even suggested that German be adopted as our national language, since a very large minority had German as their first language, another large minority, especially in the South had French as their first language, Dutch was spoken widely in NY. English was sort of a lingua franca, but in many parts of the new nation it was not the dominant language. I suspect the founders figured that that was one issue that would eventually sort itself on it's own.

Do we really want to emulate the French in mandating a single official language? The Brits recognize, Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Manx, Cornish and English as their official languages.

 

Some interesting stats about English as the official language:

http://www.proenglish.org/data/english-by-the-polls.html

There has been a lot of effort to make English official at the Federal level:

http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_lang.html

Despite the overwhelming approval by citizens of all kinds, it's a very small few who continuously oppose:

(surprise surprise)
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_lang.html

 

Is it compulsory in America to spell things wrongly and to use poor grammar?

 

Does it really matter on a message board?

 

To pedants, it matters, and the message from Heroclitus would get a very negative review.

 

It's was a joke.

Actually the English spoken in America is often more closely related to the traditional English of the past. English people used to say "fall" in the seventeenth century before adopting the French "autumn" instead. Much of the time American English is the purer form of the old language. I believe the same often applies to Canadian French and Latin American Spanish.

The joking though has a serious point. Americans are as able to control the language their fellow Americans speak as I am able to get them to spell "borough" or "labour" properly.

 

If you pick English, then speak English English as opposed to American English.

 

Because we have a Bill of Rights.

 

An official language just means that government documents must be in that language and used in government schools.

As it stands now, Mueller could have released his celebrated report in Urdu.

 

Make English the official language of the USA??? Yes please! I couldn't learn another language to save my life, but it was not from a lack of trying. I tried to learn Spanish all of my life but couldn't.

 

I think you need to have pig latin listed as an option.

 

Yes you could.

 

Non sequitur, since there is no necessary conflict between the two.

 

There certainly is.

 

It should be Russian. It'll help the process along.

 

Not in the least, obviously.

 

Think it through.

 

BTDT, so thanks for nothing.

 

English, the official language of Earth!