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According to Newt Gingrich and other savants, the close election in Quebec last week offered a lesson to Americans: bilingualism automatically leads to disunity which leads to secession movements which leads to rebellion and anarchy.
Of course it means no such thing. Switzerland has four official languages -- Italian, German, French and Rhaeto-Romanic -- and the Swiss Confederation has somehow held since 1499, 277 years longer than the United States.
Belgium also suffers from Multiple Language Syndrome, and should be in danger of imminent collapse. The Flemings, about 56 percent of the population, speak Dutch. Most other Belgians are Walloons who speak French. When was the last time you heard that Belgium was in danger of falling apart on account of linguistic differences?
Our own country was once in imminent danger of dividing,
during the Civil War -- in which both sides spoke and wrote
the same language, more or less. Granted, You all
and Youse guys
aren't quite the same, but no one has
ever suggested that these minor differences led to the
bloodiest conflict in our history.
You'd think that, as a former history teacher, Gingrich would know these things. You'd also think that Sen. Bob Dole, who professes to respect the values of our Founding Fathers, would know better than to promote Official English as a cure for whatever ails America.
Our founding fathers did ponder an official language. Since they had just fought against Great Britain (another conflict among peoples speaking the same language), they were biased against all things English, and thus gave brief consideration to making Hebrew, Greek or German the official language of the United States, thereby completing the process of independence.
However, they decided against it. So did U.S. House of
Representatives in 1923, when one Washington Jay McCormick,
a Montana Republican, offered a bill to make the
American
language our official language.
It died in committee, thereby leaving language a local option. In Louisiana, French is still permitted in parish courts. California and Texas published laws in both English and Spanish for years, and Texas added German and Norwegian for a while. New Mexico still permits Spanish in courtrooms.
Our own Colorado constitution of 1876 provided that laws be published in three languages -- English, Spanish and German.
Somehow the United States survived through all that multi-lingualism which allegedly threatens the nation now. And those who make their political livelihoods by fabricating dangers and then offering solutions have found a potent hot-button issue.
Their first hurdle will be the Constitution that they
profess to love and reverence. It is doubtless within the
power of the Congress to declare that the federal
government will operate in English only,
but if
there is any federal authority to extend that provision to
New Mexico or northern Maine or the Hopi Reservation, I
don't know see it.
So we'll need a constitutional amendment. That should be
good for years of argument, since English and American are
different dialects. Our trucks and elevators are lorries
and lifts over there. We have center
and
labor,
they have centre
and
labour.
Once that's settled, there's the matter of enforcement. The Francophones of Quebec were, and are, quite oppressive in enforcing their official French language. There, you can't put up a sign in front of your business in any language other than French, and similar draconian language laws cover almost anything else that might appear in public.
All this is to preserve a heritage,
just as the
English-Only promoters argue here. But what heritage? The
land I live on was occupied by Nuche and Spanish speakers
before the Yankees arrived. My own ancestors spoke Gaelic,
German and a host of other languages.
At any rate, Official English, if it were adopted like
Official French in Quebec, would require an elaborate and
expensive bureaucracy to determine what is and isn't
Official English -- i.e., can a tack store advertise exotic
lariats
or must it stick with prosaic
rope
?
And so the Official English boosters, most of whom profess to be believers in a smaller government with fewer bureaucrats, would create a bigger and more intrusive government with more bureaucrats.
Besides, with the current Congress, I'm not so sure that
English would always be our official language. Other
supposedly public-spirited operations sell their
official
designations to the highest bidder -- the
Official Candy Bar of the Olympics, the Official Newspaper
of the Rockies, the Official Shirt of the Football Coach,
etc.
Thus, if were in the power of Congress to declare an official language, we'd probably wake up some morning to discover that the lobbyists and PAC bagmen had been in Washington, and the Vatican had outbid the Koreans and Saudis, and so Latin will be the Official Language of the United States. E pluribus unum, Nil sine Numine, et cetera...
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