Would You Support a Bill to Make English the Official Language of the USA?

Was just curious after reading this: http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=69708

yer darn tootin!

I always thought english was the national language here
My answer is yes, english should be the official language.

I'm going to say "don't know". Other than a purely symbolic declaration - I wonder what the practical purpose of such a bill would actually be.

I mean - what are we talking about here?

I would vote for English as the official language. I don't know how much it would actually change, but...

Check here

Heck yeah......

Twenty-seven states already have laws making English their official language. According to the Census Bureau, eight in 10 U.S. residents speak only English.


~USA Today

I’d be interested to know ‘which’ states have done this, and what impact their various policies have had.

So basically we’re talking about doing away with the requirements for government agencies to support multiple languages support.

From that article at least, it seems a little contradictory to me… On the one had they’re making the case that states pay large sums of money on court translator fees – while a few paragraphs down saying that multi-language assistance would still be offered to non-english speaking defendants and victims of crime. Also that the 911 system would continue to cater different languages; and that Govt employees would still would continue to provide multi-language assistance.

Given that we’re really talking about Spanish here (and it really is a second language in the US) – its unlikely that this would make much of a difference to increase the adoption of English. All we’d really be addressing are official support to non-standard languages other than Spanish – which have comparatively far fewer native speakers in the US. So what would it really achieve?

Perhaps I'm being too cynical here - but it seems to me that a lot of support for this is tied to kneejerk reactionism for illegal immigrant problem from Mexico. I honestly can't see it making much of a difference to the linguistic diversity of the country, or reducing people's reliance on spanish.

I always kinda figured it was the official language of the US.

I'm not so certain it's a knee-jerk reaction since apparently it has been brought up in nearly every session for the last 20 years. And it's certainly not unique to the US, many other countries have either passed or are considering passing an official language.

Curious - what's the official language in other countries?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offic...ages_by_country

Well as I see it - the biggest push for this sort of thing is primarily because of the increasing number of people who only speak spanish (which is by far the biggest immigrant group). So it might sound great on paper - but I'm not certain we'd save as much money as we're claiming, as the only people who would really be affected by it would be smaller immigrant groups.

I'm not against it BTW - just don't think it would be much more than a symbolic gesture.

(in Alabama, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming)
Hawaiian (in Hawaii)

That list also included Puerto Rico (a US territory), which speaks Spanish (primarily)

I voted yes - although I support bilingualism/mulitlingualism

I have to say a year ago, I would have voted no. Today I vote yes because so many of my Mexicain students (many are new Americans some maybe not ) Say that biligualism does more harm than good. People are not forced to learn the language and never really intergrate. I know learning another language is hard. I failed French in High School. But I have to say as an adult who is incountering more French in my work, I'm picking somethings up a little better than before.

According to Wikipedia the UK has no official language, but I've seen other sources stating that English, Welsh, and Gaelic are official languages. So, who knows. The Welsh Language Act is supposed to require English and Welsh to be treated equally in the public sector, but one look at UK government sites proves that that is obviously not the case. It doesn't seem to be much of an issue since there are very few people who speak Welsh but not English, and most of them probably wouldn't have access to the internet anyway.

I have seen signage in Asian languages in the UK, always in London or nearby areas, and almost always in Punjabi.

didn't know we needed a bill to make it the official language. I thought it was.

T'isn't!

It would invalidate part of my state's constitution, not to mention pissing off all the people whose families have lived here since it was part of Spain.

Federal law supercedes state law; nobody in DC is going to care.

On that list, there is one notable country which has NEVER used the language-of-majority as its official language--Pakistan.

At Partition, about 58% of the population spoke Bengali and 4.5% Urdu--and Urdu was chosen as the National Language, leading to the 1952 riots (which led to Bengali getting a "lesser national language" status, scrapped in Dec. 1971).

Currently, almost 58% of the population is ethnic Punjabi (it was the second-largest group at 27% prior to 1971) and 11% is native-Urdu speaking; yet Punjabi has never had status (despite of Punjabis ruling/misruling the country from 1958-1971, 1977-1988, 1990-1992 and 1997-1999).

Yes I would

Absolutely 100% yes! I can't believe it isn't already the official language. I get so frustrated when I look at job postings that I am qualified for except for ONE issue: I am not bi-lingual and usually the job requires one to be bi-lingual in Spanish. It seems as if we are accomodating everyone else instead of them learning OUR language here. JMHO.

100% absolutely yes! i think its necessary we all share a common language. and i feel it should be a requirement to learn english when you apply for a visa to come here. similar to the laws in the netherlands someone posted on vj a while ago.

Except my senators (one from each party), who have quite a bit of clout.

And what I want to know is when the Republican party became the party of Big Government? What happened to the idea that conservatives believed in states' rights and thought federal government should be smaller, not bigger? Now the conservatives want the federal government to legislate what states can do about marriage, medicine, and what language people speak?! WTF?

When Goldwater croaked.

To be honest, nobody gives a squirt of piss for what two senators think. There are 98 other senators.



The Republicans have always been the party of big government.

Do you really think that if English became the official language, they'd have language police on street corners handing out tickets to people speaking other languages? Is that what you think would happen?

yes

Try more when Lincoln was shot.