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Concluding that English is the national language of the US is totally reasonable. Most government documents are in English. The Constitution is in English. Engl

Concluding that English is the national language of the US is totally reasonable. Most government documents are in English. The Constitution is in English. English is the language overwhelmingly taught in schools, used in the workplace, and is the most spoken language in the country by far. Saying that English isn't the official language in the US is really just highlighting the fact that the Federal government hasn't bothered to designate an official language. In fact, 32 states have designated English as an official language. For all practical purposes the official language of the US is English. This is much different from the India where only ~40% of the population are native Hindi speakers. More than 2/3rds of the US population only speaks English, and under 10% of the population have English proficiently categorized as "less than proficient" (but often this is still enough to get by).

umanwizard 7y ago
English is clearly dominant, but official linguistic pluralism does exist in the US in some ways. For example: * Large parts of the US provide ballots and other voting materials in Spanish (or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or various Native American languages, ...). * Courts in the US will go to pretty extreme lengths to find interpreters for criminal defendants who can't understand English, even if their native language is somewhat obscure. * There were public schools teaching primarily in Spanish until at least the early 2000s in Arizona; not sure if they still exist in other places. There are definitely still private schools teaching in non-English languages in some parts of the country, particularly Yiddish. Anyway, making explicit any link between citizenship on the one hand and language or culture on the other is considered a somewhat solidly right-wing belief in the US (and I would expect in other countries that began their history as settler colonies, like Canada or Australia), whereas it would seem like much more of a centrist consensus in even some overall more progressive-leaning societies (from Article 2 of the French Constitution: "The language of the Republic is French". I would be shocked if France lets you vote in Arabic or teach public school classes in Lingala). Because it's perceived as solidly right wing, and the other side of the political spectrum will fight it tooth and nail, it's hard for me to imagine the US declaring English as a federal official language in the foreseeable future.
- manfredo 7y ago
  > Large parts of the US provide ballots and other voting materials in Spanish (or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or various Native American languages, ...). Sure, in locations where other languages have a significant presence. But these languages always exist alongside English. There are no areas that I know of that do not produce said documents in English. English is universal. > Courts in the US will go to pretty extreme lengths to find interpreters for criminal defendants who can't understand English, even if their native language is somewhat obscure. And what do those interpreters translate said languages into? English. > There were public schools teaching primarily in Spanish until at least the early 2000s in Arizona; not sure if they still exist in other places. There are definitely still private schools teaching in non-English languages in some parts of the country, particularly Yiddish. Language immersion schools exist in plenty of countries with official languages. English is not an official language in Spain, I went to an English language immersion school when I lived in Spain. > Because it's perceived as solidly right wing, and the other side of the political spectrum will fight it tooth and nail, it's hard for me to imagine the US declaring English as a federal official language in the foreseeable future. Not really, there are plenty of practical reasons why designating official languages would be useful. One of my friends worked in a hospital, and talked about how much of a nightmare it was to treat non-English speaking patients (or more specifically patients that didn't speak English, Spanish, Mandarin, or the couple other languages that staff members spoke). Ostensibly they're required to find interpreters for any and all languages that patients may speak. This of course is a mess. Designating certain languages as supported and not supported would be a big efficiency gain and result in better care. There are also concerns of people only producing advertisements for housing in specific languages (e.g. a Chinese landlord only producing ads in Mandarin or Cantonese), and some see it as de-facto racial discrimination in housing. What happens when a juror can't speak English? One could argue that dismissing non English-speaking jurors is a form of jury discrimination, but it'd be a bureaucratic nightmare to provide interpreters for every language a juror might speak. There are plenty of good reasons to designate English as an official language. Regardless, whether or not English is designated an official language is pretty much moot. Over 80% of the population speaks English at home and over 90% are fluent in English. The next closest competitor is Spanish at roughly 1/6th the population. English will be the de-facto official language for the foreseeable future.

umanwizard 7y ago

English is clearly dominant, but official linguistic pluralism does exist in the US in some ways. For example: * Large parts of the US provide ballots and other voting materials in Spanish (or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or various Native American languages, ...). * Courts in the US will go to pretty extreme lengths to find interpreters for criminal defendants who can't understand English, even if their native language is somewhat obscure. * There were public schools teaching primarily in Spanish until at least the early 2000s in Arizona; not sure if they still exist in other places. There are definitely still private schools teaching in non-English languages in some parts of the country, particularly Yiddish. Anyway, making explicit any link between citizenship on the one hand and language or culture on the other is considered a somewhat solidly right-wing belief in the US (and I would expect in other countries that began their history as settler colonies, like Canada or Australia), whereas it would seem like much more of a centrist consensus in even some overall more progressive-leaning societies (from Article 2 of the French Constitution: "The language of the Republic is French". I would be shocked if France lets you vote in Arabic or teach public school classes in Lingala). Because it's perceived as solidly right wing, and the other side of the political spectrum will fight it tooth and nail, it's hard for me to imagine the US declaring English as a federal official language in the foreseeable future.

manfredo 7y ago
> Large parts of the US provide ballots and other voting materials in Spanish (or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or various Native American languages, ...). Sure, in locations where other languages have a significant presence. But these languages always exist alongside English. There are no areas that I know of that do not produce said documents in English. English is universal. > Courts in the US will go to pretty extreme lengths to find interpreters for criminal defendants who can't understand English, even if their native language is somewhat obscure. And what do those interpreters translate said languages into? English. > There were public schools teaching primarily in Spanish until at least the early 2000s in Arizona; not sure if they still exist in other places. There are definitely still private schools teaching in non-English languages in some parts of the country, particularly Yiddish. Language immersion schools exist in plenty of countries with official languages. English is not an official language in Spain, I went to an English language immersion school when I lived in Spain. > Because it's perceived as solidly right wing, and the other side of the political spectrum will fight it tooth and nail, it's hard for me to imagine the US declaring English as a federal official language in the foreseeable future. Not really, there are plenty of practical reasons why designating official languages would be useful. One of my friends worked in a hospital, and talked about how much of a nightmare it was to treat non-English speaking patients (or more specifically patients that didn't speak English, Spanish, Mandarin, or the couple other languages that staff members spoke). Ostensibly they're required to find interpreters for any and all languages that patients may speak. This of course is a mess. Designating certain languages as supported and not supported would be a big efficiency gain and result in better care. There are also concerns of people only producing advertisements for housing in specific languages (e.g. a Chinese landlord only producing ads in Mandarin or Cantonese), and some see it as de-facto racial discrimination in housing. What happens when a juror can't speak English? One could argue that dismissing non English-speaking jurors is a form of jury discrimination, but it'd be a bureaucratic nightmare to provide interpreters for every language a juror might speak. There are plenty of good reasons to designate English as an official language. Regardless, whether or not English is designated an official language is pretty much moot. Over 80% of the population speaks English at home and over 90% are fluent in English. The next closest competitor is Spanish at roughly 1/6th the population. English will be the de-facto official language for the foreseeable future.