Colonial America: The English Only Movement

The English-Only Movement

The English-Only Movement ' is a rather interesting , bitter , and emotional of debate which has drawn the attention of Americans from all walks of life for almost three decades already . Basically , the purpose of the movement is to have English formally declared as the official language of the country both in the level of the states as well as the federal level . In for this to happen , it would necessitate amending the country 's constitution in such a way as to force all the fifty states to comply and declare

English as their official language Once English is declared the official language , all government agencies would be issuing their rules and printing their official documents in English , without any need of translating the same for the benefit of people who find difficulty in understanding the language . Education too , would no longer be bilingual but would be solely conducted in English whether or not the pupils or students from immigrant families are able to cope . It should be noted that when the founding fathers wrote the country 's constitution , they decided against adopting an official language for fear of alienating the other ethnic groups which were then important elements of the fledgling colonial America (Bosiak . The debate concerning the issue started as early as 1780 when John Adams came up with a proposal of adopting English as the country 's official language . His proposal , however , was considered undemocratic and a threat to individual liberty ' Since then , the heated debate has continued without any clear resolution on the horizon . Interestingly the United States appears to be the only industrialized country in the world without an official language , although English is currently its de facto language ' owing to the fact that it is the language which majority of the population speak (Strictly Spanish LLC . For instance the United Kingdom has declared English as its official language Denmark has Danish The Netherlands and Belgium has Dutch Czech Republic has Czech Russia 's official language is Russian Greece has Greek Austria and Germany has German as their official languages Italy 's is Italian and France has French as its official language (Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia

In spite of the fact that English is its de facto language , however , the United States has remained a multilingual country . As a matter of fact the U . S . English , Inc ' which has been campaigning for the use of English as the country 's official language has estimated that a 322 languages are spoken in the country , with 24 of those spoken in every state and the District of Columbia ' In California , the state with the most number of languages , 207 languages are being spoken while the state with the least number of languages - Wyoming - has 56 languages (Strictly Spanish LLC

The language problem is undoubtedly rooted in the issue of immigration Proponents of multilingualism maintain that since the United States is a country which has been built and is still being nourished by immigrants having...