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Whatever happens in Colorado, happens first in California: from campus rebellions to holistic materialism, hot-tub karma to far-right politics, it all starts in the Golden State and migrates to the Centennial State.
Thus it came as no surprise to hear serious talk of making English the official language of Colorado; California recently approved such a law. I'm all for it, because once English becomes our official tongue to the exclusion of all others, life here will become immeasurably simpler.
For example, we've never been able to agree on what to
call a resident of our fair state. In the Denver papers,
you're a Coloradan,
but in Pueblo or Fort Collins,
you're a Coloradoan.
Once English is official, we'll all live in the State of Red; the geographic name will echo our fiscal reality. And that will make all of us, even the right-wing crazies from Pass (nee El Paso) County, into Reds. The mayor of Denver will no longer be Federico Peña, with that troublesome unamerican tilde; he'll be plain old Fred Rock.
We won't have to put up with newly arrived TV announcers
who can't pronounce Costilla
or Conejos,
because our state will contain Rib and Rabbit counties, as
well as the jurisdictions of Orphan, Table, Cow, Soul and
Pain.
Our map will display an enchanting variety of Saxon nomenclature: Silver, Snake and Tooth among our 14,000-foot peaks; the principal city of the Saint Lewis Valley will be Cottonwood, on the Grand River, and about 30 miles south of Red Springs will be the City of Town; various small towns will be called Little Anthony, Gulch, Ox Driver, Small Box, Unruly, The North, Lame and Red Apple; we will visit the Blood of Christ and Saint Ian mountain ranges, crossed by such passes as Spoon, Vein and Mole.
Of course, once we become the State of Red, we'll have to change more than just Spanish names. Beulah and Manassa, both Hebrew terms, will become Married and Forgetting. The Ute-named peaks and towns of Antero, Pagosa, Saguache, Toponas, Uncompahgre and Tabeguache shall be Graceful Walker, Healing Water, Blue Earth, Sleeping Lion, Red Lake and People Who Live on the Warm Side of the Mountain. Fred Rock won't have to contend with that latinate Aurora any more; the treeless maze of shopping malls to the east will be called Sunrise.
The French also passed through here, way back when, and the place names they left -- Platte, Cache La Poudre, Laporte, Bellvue -- will become the Flat and Gunpowder Storage rivers and the towns of Exit and Pretty View. However, the Spanish-named municipalities of Salida and Buena Vista will also become Exit and Pretty View as soon as English is official, so there's likely to be some arguing as to which towns get the Anglo-Saxon versions of their traditional names, and which ones have to change entirely.
For several years, I have argued that Salida's name
should be changed to indicate its current condition; that
is, from Exit
to something like Dead End,
and
this will be the opportunity to replace boom-days romance
with contemporary accuracy.
The legal requirement of English will provide benefits far beyond those of a simplified map here in the State of Red. Both my daughters, for instance, are taking piano lessons, and often find themselves mystified by the Italian terms they encounter: largo, staccato, battuta, lento, mezzo forte, crescendo.
Dealing with various professionals will become much easier, too, once English is mandated by law.
No longer will educators be allowed to call classrooms
affective domain instructional modules
and libraries
multi-media learning resource centers.
Children can
be stupid or smart, instead of developmentally
disabled
or cognitatively gifted.
Doctors will
have to say I don't know what's the matter with you
instead of telling you that you suffer from a chronic
idiopathic condition.
Nowhere is English less evident than in our legal system. The score or so of thick books that make up our revised statutes will have to be rewritten, at tremendous expense, to get rid of alien terms like recuse, concommitant, replevin, covenant, situs, et al. Once ordinary people are able to understand state laws and legal documents, hundreds of attorneys will find themselves out of work.
No reasonable person could be against that. So here's hoping that the General Assembly moves quickly to make us into the State of Red.
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