Official Language Status Debate

Posted by Daniel on May 21st 2006 to Edublogging



Taking a quick look at two bits of news coverage regarding the Senate’s promoting some kind of “official” status for the English language in the US, I can’t help but feel that there’s no story here.

Apparently the terms in question are “national” versus “common/unifying” with regards to the English langauge. I’m curious as to why any statement has to be made about it at all. Is it because that the “path to citizenship” provided by this legislation has a language requirement? That’s not made clear in either article.

Look, it’s not such a complicated issue: there is no need for an official status given to any language. All the business of citizenship should continue to be conducted in English until such a time that the population of non-English speaking people is too great for this to be done. In other words, we should let “market forces” come into play here. If people wish to become citizens, then they’ll learn the language needed to do so. No government is obligated to accomodate non-citizens by providing native language support in the applicant’s quest for citizenshhip.

I once tutored an elderly couple from Ukraine for their citizenship test. They had the questions transliterated into Ukrainian and memorized. I don’t know if they ever got their citizenship, but I wouldn’t begrudge them if they did. They did what they could to do what it took to do things legally and I hope they were rewarded for it.

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2 Responses to “Official Language Status Debate”

  1.   Emily
    May 22nd, 2006 | 7:56 pm

    I like your “market forces” idea – to me it seems most logical to just let it be and not push things too much. Suddenly naming English as Official Language almost looks . . . defensive? reactionary? Dunno, those are just ideas falling off the top of my head.

  2.   Daniel
    May 23rd, 2006 | 1:03 am

    i agree…i think that there’s something defensive about this. it’s an attempt to identify who is “us” and is “them” so we can take steps to protect ourselves in some way from them. as a nation, the US is going through a very difficult time with feeling secure in our status as the sole super power and this is just one of the many ways this crisis is being manifested.