I know that Hernán Cortés began his conquest of the Mayan states in the early 16th century, and Mexico was a Spanish colony for something like three hundred years.
According to Wikipedia, The country is both the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world and home to the largest number of Native American language speakers on the continent.
What I’d like to know is–why hang on to Spanish? It’s not exactly part of any native tradition.
The language barrier is the primary means by which bigots and border authorities identify recent immigrants. Of course the language barrier also impedes communication; it retards assimilation, it contributes to alienation, and it breeds resentment. Oftentimes it also burdens children with many parental responsibilities (because children learn new languages with greater facility).
Replacing Spanish with English would eliminate all of those problems. It would make Mexico more of a fully-integrated member of the North American community, and it would ease communication with its NAFTA trade partners.
An English-speaking Mexico should also make it easier for the United States to abandon its prejudices–and treat its border with Mexico more like it does its border with Canada.
Weighed against all of those benefits, why wouldn’t Mexico abandon Spanish? Does Mexico regard the language of its subjugators with affection? Would its relationships with the Spanish-speaking countries to its south be damaged–and should it care?
Most of South & Central America speaks Spanish, as do large Caribbean islands like Puerto Rico & Cuba. It is becoming more prevalent in the US. If there’s going to be a domino effect of national languages, you’ve got it going in the wrong direction. The last to fall will be the Southeast.
Canada, having a connection to the British Empire, will find itself in an awkward position. The polite thing to do is to fall into line with the rest of the Americas. Then there’s the Quebecois to appease.
Pragmatically speaking, a contemporary cultural hegemony is projected economically. An English-speaking Mexico would complete a North American bloc with no significant dependencies on the other economies of the Western Hemisphere.
The question of Mexico’s relationship with its Central- and South American neighbors is abstracted from the presumed existence of some loose confederation of states allied in unspoken resistance of American cultural hegemony–with Mexico perceiving itself to be at the vanguard. If this is a source of pride, is it something Mexico would willingly give up? Is it a luxury that Mexico cannot afford?
I don’t see as much value in other countries of the Western Hemisphere abandoning Spanish–although at the rate Brasil is growing, the region’s primary trade language might soon be Portuguese.
The problem is that most Mexicans are also descended from those subjugators. Spanish is an integral part of Mexican culture just as French, German or English is integral to the cultures of France, Germany and Britain. Spanish is a cultural touchstone for the citizens of Mexico in a way that English is not. Also, Mexicans can be fiercely nationalist and any attempt to make English their official language would utterly fail among cries of kowtowing to American interests.
No mexican alive today was subjugated by spanish explorers. The mexicans of today were born surrounded by people that speak spanish, and follow spanish cultural traditions. They don’t switch to English for the same reason Americans don’t switch to Spanish - it’s part of their modern heritage.
Spanish has been the dominant language in Mexico of at least the ruling class close to 500 years, which is longer than English has even been present in North America. That’s plenty long enough to be a tradition in and of itself.
Mexican emigrants to the US are only a small proportion of the population. Why should the entire population of Mexico switch to another language in order to make things easier for emigrants?
There are around 350 million Spanish speakers in Latin America, which is comparable to the total number of English speakers in the Western Hemisphere. Portuguese and French, the other two major languages of the Hemisphere, are much closer to Spanish than they are to English. If the goal is hemispheric integration, then it would make much more sense for English speakers (and others) to switch to Spanish.
Weighed against those benefits, why shouldn’t the US abandon English?
Most Mexicans are mestizos, descendants of both the conquistadors and the Indians. I’m sure that most do not identify Spanish as the language of the “subjugators,” but simply as their native language.
“More of a fully-integrated member of the North American community” pretty much amounts to “becoming even more dominated by the US”, which is hardly desirable from their viewpoint.
It won’t make Mexicans any less brown or make them more American, so it won’t.
From my experience it seems that English is taught rigorously in Northern Mexican schools. While vacationing on South Padre Island I met a lot of Mexican Nationals who spoke no English but would yell for one of their children to come and act as interpreters.
The kids seem to have a good working vocabulary of English by the age of 10.
OP: Do you really think that if that “Mexican-looking” person spoke only English, the bigots wouldn’t still be bigoted against him? If so, let me remind you about Asian-Americans in the US who are still treated as foreigners by the bigots.
Does the OP have an example of a country, anywhere in the world, where the population voluntarily decided to switch form one language to another? A country at least remotely as large as Mexico? Does the OP have any idea how difficult it would be for even a highly educated country to switch languages? It’s one of the most difficult things that a culture could do.
The adoption of Hebrew as the national language of Israel is probably the closest thing you’ll find, or possibly the transition of Turkish from Arabic script to the Latin alphabet.
Urdu in Pakistan; it is near universal now, but in 1947 in what is now Pakistan, the first language of 90% (as is the case now) was something else. Israel has been mentioned. I believe that Italian was not the language if the majority of Italians in 1860.
That depends a lot on your definition of what’s a language and what a dialect. If you consider Neapolitan or Milanese as dialects of Italian, then most of Italy spoke Italian. If you consider them separate languages, then very few people did.
I think just that you’re going to have a hell of a time getting the Quebecois to speak Spanish? (Which is true, but not the biggest problem with the plan.)
Israel is a special case, but is probably as close as we’ll get.
I’m suspicious about Pakistan. What was the language before, how close we it to Urdu, and how much of the change was because of the mass migration accompanying partition?
Now you’re getting into dialect territory.
But getting back to the OP, I’m wondering why the whole word doesn’t speak English. Don’t other people get tired of speaking foreign languages all the time?