58 countries have English as their official language. 18 of
them are in Africa, and one of those countries is Barack Obama’s birthplace,
Kenya. (That’s Barack Obama SENIOR, not our 44th president.)
There are only 7 countries that do not have an official
language. Two of them are America and England.
English
has become the world's lingua franca, or second language, but
it is not the 'official' language of its birthplace. The de facto official language of
the United
Kingdom is English, which
is spoken by approximately 59.8 million residents, or 98% of the population,
over the age of three. An estimated 700,000 people speak Welsh in
the UK, an
official language in Wales, and the only de jure official language in any part of
the UK. Approximately 1.5 million people in the UK speak Scots—although there is
debate as to whether this is a distinct
language, or a variety of English.
In
America, the Founding Fathers didn't see a need to have an official language. English
was pretty much the dominant language of the United States at the time so there
really wasn't a need to protect it, and they didn't want to offend their fellow
Americans who helped fight for independence.
People
in this country have been speaking languages other than English since before
the founding of the republic. In fact, common languages spoken throughout the
13 colonies included Dutch, French and German, not to mention the many
languages spoken by Native Americans (roughly 300). In the early part of the 18th
century, there were at least 18 languages spoken in New York City.
In June of this year, a
New York lawyer berated staff members of a restaurant for speaking Spanish to
customers. He also threatened to call ICE because he assumed they were
undocumented. By threatening to call ICE, he equated speaking Spanish with
illegal immigration.
Although the United States, as a country, does not make
English the official language the majority of the states in our country do. At
last count, there were 31 states that did exactly that.
Folks living in other countries are often REQUIRED to learn at
least one other language. The people
living in Switzerland need to be able to speak FIVE languages by the time they
graduate from college. Since we live in a town that is only 60 miles from
Mexico, many of the employees at local stores can easily switch from English to
Spanish and back again.
It’s been more than 50 years since I studied Spanish, but I
know enough to be able to say, “Yo hablo un poquito espanol”. If you wanted to
learn Spanish, there are LOTS of ways to do so, including the online course
called babble.com. Since our grandson will be bi-lingual (due to the fact that
his mom is) learning to speak at least a little Spanish will be very useful in
the future.
Do I think that English should be the official language of the
United States?
At last count, there were 350 languages spoken in our country,
so making English the official language seems like a really dumb idea.
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