View Full Version : English as the official language?
Jejune
10-28-2007, 02:13 PM
This is an obvious spin off of the bilingual ballots (http://spiffymoms.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4575) thread.
As I was reading it, some thoughts occurred to me. I've long thought it unneccessary and silly to make English the official language of the United States in that most immigrants already want to learn English (http://pewhispanic.org/factsheets/factsheet.php?FactsheetID=20) and acknowledge it to be necessary to survival in the United States. There's already a strong incentive to learn English (and, as Jo pointed out on the other thread, some English is required for citizenship) so it seemed pointless to me to make it the official language.
After some thought, though, I'm wondering if it could be beneficial to immigrants to make English the official language, in that, I think that in so doing, the U.S. government would have a strong incentive to create more easily available government funded English classes for immigrants intent on citizenship. We could also pass laws requiring employers to give their employees time off to attend classes or make English classes a job benefit. I haven't thought this all the way out, so these are just brainstorming ideas, not firm suggestions.
Anyway, what do you think? If you live in a country that has an official language, how does it work there? Does it make any difference?
Kristen
10-28-2007, 02:38 PM
I'm curious to know what people think. I'm relatively uneducated about the issue, so I'm pretty teachable at this point. :D
I live in England and quite obviously English is the official language however from what I read on the ballot thread we have far more allowance, acceptance and availability for those who can not speak or do not adequately speak English than America which has no official language.
Here there are laws to prevent people discriminating against those who are unable to adequately read, whether through learning difficulty or through English being a second language to them. All official documentation - medical and government, has to be available in a variety of languages or be translated upon request. All children must be accepted into state schools reguardless of their ability to speak English, my children have several Polish children in their classes who have little/no English and frankly they (the polish children) in Dylans class are picking up English and vocabulary much quicker than many of the English children who are largely non-verbal due to lack of social interaction within the home (Dylan has 2 entirely non-verbal children in her class, neither have any learning difficulties or special needs, just purely is a social deficiency due to deprived home life.)
The way I have always seen it is our country is happy enough to tax anyone who lands and works here so why on earth should they not be able to recieve information in their own languages when they are working & paying into our government system, many unemployed British nationals are living off of the state that thousands of hard working immigrants are paying into so why should someone who lives and works here, pays into the tax system not recieve information they are able to understand?
In my experience of living in an area with a high eastern immigrant influx the majority of immigrants want to learn to speak English to improve their employment prospects, to advance in the work place, many to return to school alongside work and also for social reasons- my husband has 3 Polish workers in his team at work and in the past he had a young czech lad who had taught himself all his English by buying American films with czechoslovacian subtitles because he so desperately wanted to be able to come to England and work.
Having an official language I think sadly makes it easier for bigotry and gives racist factions ammo to use in their rants about immigrants taking nationals jobs :rolleyes (and yet still our unemployment hasn't risen- it's remained static thus proving the majority of nationals unemployed long term here are doing so volantarily) It gives fire to the "go back to where you can from" rants of idiots, it gives the BNP something to bitch about when their true policies are inadequate and undeserving of peoples votes. Having an official language sadly allows people like that to consider themselves superior and with more rights than others.
Danielle
10-28-2007, 04:14 PM
English and French are both official languages here and we do have tons of free ESL (English as a Second Language) classes that also provide free childcare, life skills programs, counseling etc. The programs are fantastic and are sanctioned as acceptable activities for social service programs that require some kind of "work related" participation.
We also have ESL programs in our schools for children who are new to the country.
Personally, I don't think the US should make English the official language. The US has never seen fit to have an official language before, and I see no reason to change that. I think it would be a sign of rejecting linguistic diversity, which I don't see as a good thing. I think we should embrace the other languages spoken in this country, and strive towards being a country where most people speak more than one language. I think the influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants is a wonderful opportunity for us to become a country where it's common for most people to speak two languages--as is the case in many countries around the world--and I think that's a better way to go than reacting to the influx by clamping down on linguistic diversity.
That said, like you, Jejune, I can see some reasons for making English the official language, even though I don't think it's the right move. I completely disagree with the idea that most immigrants just don't want to learn English, and so we'd better force them to. Most want to. However, there are practical reasons why it is more necessary today for an immigrant to know English than it was in the past. Today, a much higher level of literacy is required to succeed in most parts of the country than has ever been required before. An immigrant who enters the country to unable to understand English is going to be at a huge disadvantage socially and economically. And, as you said, if English were the official language, it might force the government to provide more accessible language-learning programs.
Ideally, though, I think we'd make learning English easier for new immigrants by having more classes and allowing time off work to take them, without needing to enact an official language.
I think it's really the reasons behind wanting English to be the official language that bother me. The reasons tend, from what I've seen, to be related to hostility towards the influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants. I hate the idea of anti-immigrant sentiment fueling the push for a national language, and as long as that was the case, I would not support it, because I don't think any good could come from a law rooted in those sorts of feelings. It's so hard to separate the issue of English as the official language from what appears to be another wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, and I would much prefer that we left things as they were until the tide of anti-immigrant sentiment settles down. If there came a time when people were able to rationally decide that making English the official language would be the best thing for everybody--and that it was truly in the best interest of immigrants--then I think that would be a different story. But as long as the desire for an official language is driven by people's hatred of Mexican immigrants, annoyance with hearing people speak different languages, and sense that "those people who don't even know English" are taking their jobs, I don't think the result of an official language could be anything other than discriminatory.
Danielle
10-28-2007, 05:03 PM
Personally, I don't think the US should make English the official language. The US has never seen fit to have an official language before, and I see no reason to change that. I think it would be a sign of rejecting linguistic diversity, which I don't see as a good thing. I think we should embrace the other languages spoken in this country, and strive towards being a country where most people speak more than one language.
Having official languages certainly hasn't stopped Canadians from doing this. I would say that the majority of my friends and co-workers speak another language. For some it's French, due to school and immersion programs but for a lot of people it's their native tongue. I can think of more of my friends that speak another language than those who do not. Some examples are Hungarian, Italian, Croatian, Spanish, African Tribal languages, and the list goes on... and these are just people I interact with every day. Some are 1st generation but many are not and still speak the language of their parents or grandparents home country.
BigDave
10-29-2007, 09:08 PM
YES! We need a national language. We are a nation of immigrants, but if you go to another country you are expected to learn the national language. Like I said before, Germany, German, France, French, Spain, Spanish. It makes sense. In my job we are supposed to talk to every customer about a rewards program we have. Just the other day I had a family who did not speak any English, save for Yes, no and thank you (which was almost tunk ooo).
We need to have something. I agree with Danielle that Canada has not lost its linguistic diversity. I would even agree to having 2 national languages, but something must be done. Without it we should just adopt Esperanto.
Christine
10-30-2007, 04:32 AM
I guess I don't see the point since, as was pointed out, most people DO desire to learn English. We are a country of immigrants but it concerns me that the motive behind doing this NOW would be culturally "racist" in a way. Whenever I hear someone mention English being the official language, it's in the middle of a barrage about how "those people" need to go back to "their" country or learn to adapt to "ours" and it frustrates the heck out of me. I don't know about you, but I have zero Native American blood in me so I won't go so far as to get on any high horse over this matter. I DO have a problem with people living here illegally, but that's really another matter. Learning another language is not an easy thing and I guess I just don't see the point in making it official at this stage of the game.
That is my issue as well Christine. I have problems with the government not enforcing laws we already have but I have a feeling that is another sticky debate issue to discuss.
I don't really care either way if we have a national language. People are going to have prejudices regardless of whether we have a national language or not. I just don't see how it would really make people feel more so. The same people who want English to be the national language out of racism will be the same people who still will be racist after we have one. I truly doubt anyone is going to wake up one day and think, "Hey now that we have a national language, I can be racist!"
For me it is one of those money wasting arguments that really is more symbolic than it is important.
I think the main problem we have here in regards to racism & national language isn't that these people take pride it to feel more English it's the ones who take pride in it being their first language to feel superior. That is where the issues lie- with those who view having a countries official language as their mother tongue as a badge of superiority and privalige to a higher respect for it. We expect people to conform to our language yet we will willingly harvest and use their skills for our own financial gain or personal betterment in sectors such as the health service.
Danielle
10-30-2007, 06:58 AM
I can tell you that English was dh's first language but it would not stop a racist person from feeling superior to him or seeing him as "one of those people". I think race has a lot more to do with it than language.
Very true Danielle, I should have stipulated that the vast majority of racism & hate crime in my town is white vs. white, divisions being based on nationality not skin colour, we are an extremely diverse town and skin colour hasn't overly been an issue as long as i can recall- the majority of "them vs us" tension in our town is polish & other white eastern european vs British nationals.
I don't think an official language would make people more racist. My concern around racism is that I really do think much of the push for "English-only" right now is motivated to some extent by racism because, as Christine said and as I mentioned in my earlier post, it nearly always seems to come up in the context of rants about "those people." So I think the motivation behind enacting an official language, right now, would probably be anti-immigrant sentiment, rather than a genuine belief that having an official language is something positive for our country.
Like I said, if at some point in the future, when we're not in the middle of a wave of anti-immigration feeling and when perhaps we've tackled some other problems ;), if there was a rational discussion about what would truly be best for the country and for *every* citizen (immigrant and native-born), and the conclusion was that we should have an official language (or official languages), that would be different. But right now I see the push for an official language being largely motivated by anti-immigrant feelings (and I do think some of those are rooted in racist beliefs), and I can't get behind that, as I said.
Danielle
10-30-2007, 07:35 AM
Very true Danielle, I should have stipulated that the vast majority of racism & hate crime in my town is white vs. white, divisions being based on nationality not skin colour, we are an extremely diverse town and skin colour hasn't overly been an issue as long as i can recall- the majority of "them vs us" tension in our town is polish & other white eastern european vs British nationals.
Really? That surprises me. I think that here, if you are "white", it's much easier to be accepted even if you speak with an accent or don't speak English well. It's funny how these things can be so different from country to country.
Yep- here there obviously is racial tension in some areas (white supremists seem to do a sad and desperate job of springing up anywhere :rolleyes) but I live in a town just outside of birmingham which was very heaviliy involved in the Windrush and several other large scale immigrations so it was the 40s, 50s and 60s that mostly dealt with racial tension on skin colour in a big way. Now the town where i live the majority of families will have at least some members of my generations and almost definately my childrens generation who are mixed race and it does mean alot of tensions dispelled.
The language issue is the main one associated with prejudice against immigrants here because people don't look at a person with black or asian skin and assume they don't "belong" in a country here anymore, they know a person with Asian or black skin has as much chance of having british grandparents as the white person sat alongside them (in fact my one friend is asian in heritage yet has 2 English parents where as my caucasian husband has only one.) Accent and inability to speak a language are definate markers that people can pin point as someone not being a native citizen and so tension is based around that sadly. The tensions seem largely to be based around working class & the underclass (generalising here on my own community) with an obsession of eastern european immigrants "stealing our jobs", which is massively unproven as unemployment amoungst British nationals has stayed static or dropped rather than climbed like it would if that were true. It's the pity me scenerio where people who can't be bothered to help themselves are looking for a scapegoat to cover the negatives of their own apathy and right now Polish and Eastern European immigrants arriving for manual work are serving as that- very sadly.
It's certainly highlighted for me that all too often we're quick to assume racism is black vs white as you never really think of nationality being seen as a "race" too.
Christine
10-30-2007, 01:51 PM
See, where I live it's very much race AND language as we have a high Latino population. Usually when someone is upset about language, it's really a thinly veiled way of saying they want the Latino people to go back to Mexico (because they also all assume that every one of them is FROM Mexico!)
giana
10-30-2007, 02:19 PM
It's certainly highlighted for me that all too often we're quick to assume racism is black vs white as you never really think of nationality being seen as a "race" too.
Agree...You can see that in Italy very well where the northern italians absolutely detest the southern italians to the point that they consider them an inferior race...I mean my grandfather would rather have me marrying a black guy or an asian guy or whatever else instead of a Sicilian/Pugliese/Calabrese.
And well theyre all Italians
See, where I live it's very much race AND language as we have a high Latino population. Usually when someone is upset about language, it's really a thinly veiled way of saying they want the Latino people to go back to Mexico (because they also all assume that every one of them is FROM Mexico!)
That tends to be what I see, as well. People complain, for example, about all the people who don't speak English in Dearborn, and I do think it's often a way of saying (if they don't come right out and say it, which they often will) that they just don't want so many Middle Easterners or Muslims in the area. And illegal immigration from the Middle East doesn't seem to be an issue people are worried about, so these are people in the country completely legal (legal immigrants and people on visas) who they don't want here.
But I can see why, in an area where people were the same race, ethnic differences would matter more. Italian and Irish immigrants were hated when they started coming here in large numbers, and people complained a lot about them not speaking English. Some would say that a major factor behind the development of widespread public education was to assimilate the children of Irish and Italian immigrants into the larger American culture, because people didn't think they'd assimilate otherwise. I don't know enough to decide if I think that claim is valid or not, but we've definitely had our share of prejudice towards people based on ethnicity rather than race here.
There has been a lot of prejudice in the past, but I think this time some of it may stem from almost a survival instinct. Simply, Europeans and Americans of European descent are not reproducing enough. Their numbers are shrinking while everyone else's in the world are growing.
So if people here feel threatened by what will eventually be a changed culture, instead of railing against it with hatred and prejudice, they should face it with love, jump into bed and get busy reproducing.
I'm doing my bit Jo :lmao
I know in England it's middle class, white households that are reproducing at the slowest rate and are the most likely social demographic to chose not to reproduce at all.
There has been a lot of prejudice in the past, but I think this time some of it may stem from almost a survival instinct. Simply, Europeans and Americans of European descent are not reproducing enough. Their numbers are shrinking while everyone else's in the world are growing.
I think that's always been a part of anti-immigrant feeling, though. A big part of why there was so much hostility towards Irish and Italian immigrants was the fear that "those Catholics" bred like rabbits and would just overrun everybody.
I think I've seen statistics that, within a very short period of time, immigrant groups tend to begin reproducing at about the same rate as the rest of the population. It certainly didn't take long for Irish and Italian families to begin limiting the number of children they had.
I think the global issue and the national issue are two different things. At the national level, I do think that, even though many recent immigrants do have higher rates of reproduction than the general public (as they have in the past), that will cease pretty quickly and their rates of reproduction will line up with averages. At the global level, while I don't think there's any cause for alarm at the non-Western population growing faster than the Western population, I do think that better education (especially for women), better health care, and family planning services would lead to a better quality of life (and, most likely, smaller families) for families.
Here are some statistics about how fast the Hispanic population is growing:
44.3 million
The estimated Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2006, making people of Hispanic origin the nation’s largest ethnic or race minority. Hispanics constituted 15% of the nation's total population.
About 1
. . . of every two people added to the nation’s population between July 1, 2005, and July 1, 2006, was Hispanic. There were 1.4 million Hispanics added to the population over the period.
3.4%
Percentage increase in the Hispanic population between July 1, 2005, and July 1, 2006, making Hispanics the fastest-growing minority group.
102.6 million
The projected Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2050. According to this projection, Hispanics will constitute 24% of the nation’s total population by that date.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/hhmcensus1.html
In 2005, Hispanic women had the highest fertility rates, followed by non-Hispanic black
women, Asian women, Native American women, and non-Hispanic white women.*
Fertility rates for Hispanic women were over 45 percent higher than those for non-
Hispanic black women and Asian women (99 births per 1,000 for Hispanic women versus
67 births per 1,000 for non-Hispanic black and Asian women), and more than 65 percent
higher than those for Native American women and non-Hispanic white women (60 and
58 births per 1,000 women, respectively).
http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:SeP9rSJvR1IJ:www.childtrendsdataban k.org/pdf/79_PDF.pdf+hispanic+birth+rates&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Birth rates will likely slow down over time. But as of now, it is projected that by 2050 Hispanics will be 24% of the population of the United States. All other ethnic groups out breed non Hispanic whites regularly. Those are simply statistics. I do think they scare some people. But given the numbers both in birth rates and immigration, there will eventually be big changes in the American Culture. I don't think this is a bad thing but something we are eventually going to have to accept as it happens.
I should add more to big changes in American culture as our culture hasn't exactly remained static throughout our history.
gr8mommy
10-31-2007, 08:12 AM
For me it isn't a cultural thing, or a racist thing---purely a language thing. I don't care where someone is from, or what language they speak---as long as they can speak enough English that they can conduct their daily 'business' of living in English. We shouldn't be spending money on producing driver manuals in different languages---that money should be put to use teaching English language classes. We shouldn't be printing ballots in 94 different languages---we should be spending that money on English language classes.
If English were the official language, that would happen.
But it is proven, by countries that do have an official language that it doesn't happen the way we see it would in an ideological state with an official language. England still prints all information in a variety of languages, our police stations are hospitals, prisons and schools are still the largest employers of translators in the country and personally I say why not- if they are working and paying their taxes which fund those print outs, those health services, that police service, why should it not be accessible to them in a language which is perfectly acceptable when they are working to earn the wage they are taxed on and when they are spending their money from which taxes will be reaped?
As long as materials printed in other languages are done at a relative proportion meaning little waste/over production of one specific language then it is just the same ammount of tax dollars/pounds being spent- it would replace and substitute the English one not be given as well as. Alternatively in this age of modern technology it is not difficult for print outs to be available in a variety of languages online or in a database and only printed on request.
But it is proven, by countries that do have an official language that it doesn't happen the way we see it would in an ideological state with an official language. England still prints all information in a variety of languages, our police stations are hospitals, prisons and schools are still the largest employers of translators in the country and personally I say why not- if they are working and paying their taxes which fund those print outs, those health services, that police service, why should it not be accessible to them in a language which is perfectly acceptable when they are working to earn the wage they are taxed on and when they are spending their money from which taxes will be reaped?
As long as materials printed in other languages are done at a relative proportion meaning little waste/over production of one specific language then it is just the same ammount of tax dollars/pounds being spent- it would replace and substitute the English one not be given as well as. Alternatively in this age of modern technology it is not difficult for print outs to be available in a variety of languages online or in a database and only printed on request.
Yeah, that. ;)