I was looking at something erlier and it mentioned that back 1776 when our founding fathers were establishing an official language English hedged out German by one vote. I seem to remember reading something similar before somwhere( I dont remember where), but my thing is I am not so sure we even have an official language and if we did were there that many german speakers around to give English a run for its money?
The USA does not have an official language.
There were, in the past, a significant number of German speakers in the US. There are still quite a few.
No, we don’t, and if we did, German wouldn’t be in it. Snopes is your friend:
http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.htm
(Note:while there is no “Official Language of the United States,” all proceedings of Congress are published in English, and most government business is transacted in English)
I know that English has been made the official language of several states. However, although it is the de facto official language of the country, it is not official.
Cecil did an article on this here
Although English was never made the official language of the USA, it is interesting to note that an understanding of English is a requirement for becoming a naturalized citizen with a couple of exceptions.[
URL]http://www.immigration.gov/graphics/services/natz/general.htm
English is, by ordinary regulation, the language of legal record of the three branches of the Government, with the provision that translation will be made if it is absolutely necessary that anything in another language needs to be introduced into the record; or if it’s necessary to protect a person’s rights (e.g. at their trial). It is also, by fact of history, the common language of American society. That’s about all that’s needed, really, proclaiming it an official national language adds nothing.
Not only has English been made the official language of some of the states, there are also other languages which have been made official languages of some of the states–and sometimes those two sets of states overlap. For example, Hawaii has two official languages: English & Hawaiian.
Cool, I did not know that about Hawaii. Any other states that anyone knows about?
Spanish is an official language of New Mexico, I think.
The odd thing is that a state having an “official language” on the books may not mean as much as some might claim. Indiana’s “official language” is English. However, parts of the state with larger Spanish-speaking populations (for Indiana) are making accomodations without anybody raising much “official language” stink.
In practice, if a certain number of people in the federal census answer that they speak x language as their first language in the home, certain election materials must be published bu the state (for state elections) in that language. So in MA, we had mostly English with some Spanish, Vietnamese, Creole, Polish, Russian, Hmong, and Portugese booklets to give out at the polling places; the Spanish books were everywhere but the rest were, if we did it right, concentrated in the census tract were the language was reported spoken. It was very tricky sometimes and you’d get a) people complaining about the expense of the Spanish books with semi-racist overtones, and b) groups like Italian-Americans complaining–in perfect English–that their groups deserved them too. Sorry folks, too many of you speak English!
Oh yeah, how about Puerto Rico, doesn’t it have English and Spanish as official, ie used in government docs? How about Guam, with English and Chamorro?
As a New Mexican, I can assure you that you are correct.
Not a state, but Puerto Rico’s Constitution declares English and Spanish to be the official languages of the government there.
Actually our dual “official” languages are statutory, rather than Constitutional. In '91 an administration with cultural-purist leanings passed a law rendering Spanish as the sole official language of the Commo. Government, but that got revoked and English/Spanish reinstated within 2 years when a different administration got voted in (and the howling protest from the Usual Suspects would have made people believe we were being ordered to speak Swedish!).