Donald Trump signed an executive order today making English the official language of the US. But it was surprisingly diffident:
Nothing in this order, however, requires or directs any change in the services provided by any agency. Agency heads should make decisions as they deem necessary to fulfill their respective agencies’ mission and efficiently provide Government services to the American people. Agency heads are not required to amend, remove, or otherwise stop production of documents, products, or other services prepared or offered in languages other than English.
Trump EOs tend to be full of blustery, maximalist language, but not this time. Trump goes out of his way to say that the EO doesn't require any change. In fact, agencies should actively keep doing whatever they're doing.
Perhaps surprisingly, I'm generally in favor of this EO. In the US it's mostly symbolic and doesn't really matter much, but in broader terms it's always struck me that having multiple languages is bad for a country. I don't mean this in any kind of chauvinistic or exclusionary sense. It's just that in practical terms language is a powerful binding force for a nation, and likewise, having multiple languages can be a powerful disruptive force. Better to take no chances if you can.
"...having multiple languages can be a powerful disruptive force."
As noted philosopher Donald Rumsfeld said, "Freedom is messy."
And the noted linguist, Henry Higgins, observed that in America, English hasn't been spoken in years.
+10
You still have the freedom to speak any language you wish.
However, there should be one language of government, general education, etc. and in the US that language should be English.
Just look at countries like Belgium and Canada. No, not what we want.
That's just nonsense.
+10. The better educated and well travellerd speak more than one language..We are so retarded in this country. I can manage three on a good day but not many others around to speak with.
Switzerland has 4.
What an inane comment.
Lawrence Welk was born and raised in North Dakota and never spoke English until he was an adult.
The idea that a country should have a single language is contrary to the experience of countries that actually do designate an official language.
178 countries recognize an official language, 101 of them recognizing more than one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_language
In the US many more languages are spoken than in most countries. If the majority have multiple languages that are "official," having just one official language in the US makes absolutely no sense at all.
Yes, but a great many of those other languages are moribund Native American languages with a few dozen (at most) speakers. That's sad, but it doesn't argue for the US to designate Native languages as "official" languages. The only one which is really hold its one is Navaho-- and even most of them are bilingual in English. Of other languages only Spanish is perpetuating itself. Immigrant languages generally fade after two or three generations.
I’m surprised he didn’t make English the official language of Earth.
I'm surprised he didn't rename the English language to "the American language" and make that the official language of Earth.
H L Menken beat him to it
If English was good enuff for Jesus Christ, it’s good enuff for us.
100+👍👍👍👍👍
The pitfall with designating an "official" language is that it opens the door to all kinds of unnecessary problems that will affect people in arbitrary ways. Emphasis on "arbitrary." What about the small-town cops who won't respond to anything except spoken English because they only communicate in the "official language"? What about the judge who refuses an interpreter when handing down sentences? What about the neighbor who hears a non-English language coming through an open window and calls cops there on suspicion of conspiracy or sedition, because if it's legitimate, it'd be done in the official language? There's just no end to the kinds of stupidity something like this can encourage, especially in the current climate. WWI provides plenty of cautionary tales about this.
It's written so diffidently in part, I'd bet, because one of the real lawyers somehow got a chance to review it first, and partly because trump doesn't want to alienate the new Latino bros he just recently attracted.
Of course, if encouraging suspicions and divisions within the populace is the goal, this is a pretty decent baby step to go along with this administration's general approach. When evaluating things like this, I often find it's helpful to imagine what stupid people with bad intentions might make of them. And with this administration, bad intentions is probably a safe assumption to start with.
+1
1. We got the Hispanics. Most "Latinos" (and even more the "Latinx") are still Democrats.
2. Most Hispanics are pretty pro-English. They aren't stupid and know that if their families' futures are in the US then they will be in English. Some of the strongest pushback against bilingual education has come from Hispanics.
3. I'm wondering what other languages you think these "small town cops" will be conversant in that they will, however, refuse to speak.
4. Interpreters are already legally required in most court proceedings.
5. Stupid panic over foreign languages already happens - apparently math was quite foreign to this woman. https://hackaday.com/2016/05/09/if-you-see-anything-say-something-math-on-a-plane/
We don't need tto imagine; it's happened before.
This is the easiest ones to find; https://www.google.com/search?q=police+kill+deaf+man
But it's happened to tourists and refugees, too.
I quote from the original:
What about the small-town cops who won't respond to anything except spoken English because they only communicate in the "official language"?
I ask again - what other languages do you think these "small town cops" would otherwise respond to? What languages do you think they would speak but pretend not to understand?
To ask the question is to see how stupid this hypothetical is.
Ten years ago near Huntsville a Gujarati man who spoke virtually no English was visiting his son, in part to help care for the son's newborn. When he went for a walk one day a neighbor called 911 about a suspicious character. Police dash cam video shows the visitor standing on a sidewalk with his arms behind him and both responding officers standing behind him. One of the officers then very quickly pushes him over his own extended foot, pitching him face-down onto the lawn. He was partially paralyzed as a result. You can see the video here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/fxzxebvqqnjimn47ggtv5/APrIjxkqrlgPQi-Ot0YhNRk?dl=0&e=1&preview=2259%4020150206080805.mpg&rlkey=9blojtjgpg87vo21qhmfmke03
One of the main reasons this happened was that the guy, Sureshbai Patel, wasn't able to respond in English when he was asked for ID. He did apparently say in Gujarati and Hindi that he didn't speak English, but the officer didn't understand either language. This is the event that was behind that particular hypothetical.
You'll say this has nothing to do with whether we have an "official language" or not. True enough on the face of it. But having this presidential declaration in his pocket isn't going to encourage the next cop in such a situation to take a breath and try to figure things out. Rather, it can further encourage hasty conclusions and self-righteous belligerence, if that's how the person wants it to go.
And BTW, who said anything about "other languages" a cop might "refuse to speak"? Small-town cops can have all kinds of talents, including linguistic. Maybe they speak Romulan, or classical Greek, or Tagalog, or Italian. But that's inverting the issue in a really misleading way. The question is what the cop does to render the other person's speech and actions intelligible in order to understand the situation. And it's also selling small-town cops short.
So, let me get this straight...
The "small town cops" in your example spoke Gujarati or Hindi but refused to respond to this man because they thought he should be speaking English?
If not, then does not fit the hypothetical.
Might you condescend to tell us all just what it is about this hypothetical-- "won't respond to anything except spoken English because they only communicate in the 'official language'"-- that even remotely implies that the cop has any fluency in the language used, or could even recognize what language it is?
+2
When is Trump going to declare sovereignty over the moon?
You know he's going to do it.
Mars too. For Elon.
Tell him if he goes there he can have it.
One thing you are right about, it does not make an iota of a difference. Cultures are agents of their own change. However, it would behoove this country for the better if we spoke more than one language. And I’m not only talking about the Navajo WW2 soldiers, I’m talking about our relations with the rest of the world, not to mention parts of this country- Yiddish is a wonderful language that’s mostly preserved in America, and not to long ago you could hear German in the streets of Baltimore- and let’s not even get started with South Florida, LA and New Mexico. Having an official monolingual nation is a step in the wrong direction. And one wonders why flyover country (“real America”) is falling further behind.
Language education is vitally important. We might have more time for it if we stopped teaching all the stupid ethnic studies and structural racism.
Huh, we might have more time for it if all those things that people who don't learn other languages also don't learn?
Geez, you can't even manage to be non-bigoted for a single comment?
1. Plenty of schools are teaching various ethnic studies without getting every student to study a foreign language. For example, see California. https://california100.org/ethnic-studies-for-all-californias-new-high-school-requirement/ Note that there is no requirement to take a foreign language.
2. What's bigoted about thinking ethnic studies are a waste of time? I have the same opinion about "White Studies".
Weird, it's kinda like you skipped right past what you said 'replace one with another' and then...
...Ignored that you'd said that altogether to whine about California (not federal) regulations.
Like you're just a bigot who wants to show their bigotry, but then doesn't bother to support it.
I can't even figure out your argument. You have "replace one with another" quoted but that is nowhere in my comments.
I do not see relevance of federal vs state to my comment.
And there is nothing wrong or bigoted with thinking that ethnic studies as subjects for K-12 students or majors in university are garbage. Note that their motivation has always been politica, not pedagogical.
Don’t worry. You can have your white male supremacy back, and delight in the prosperity of Alabama and Mississippi.
"In the US it's mostly symbolic and doesn't really matter much, but in broader terms it's always struck me that having multiple languages is bad for a country."
Yes... having more than 1 official language obviously been super terrible for the economic growth and social stability of Canada, Switzerland, Ireland, Spain, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Poland, Austria, Finland, Belgium, China, Singapore, and dozens of other countries, all of which are about to fall apart any day now after decades or centuries of accommodating multiple languages.
Why, none of the countries on this list of nations with more than 1 language in common usage within their borders has a hope of surviving the decade intact because of how "bad" a resident of California thinks having multiple languages would be for holding a country together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multilingual_countries_and_regions
+10
Don’t try and confuse right-wingers with the truth.
They prefer truthiness.
I, too, would like to issue an EO.
EO 00001
By the power vested in me by God and Me, I hereby declare that Donald J Trump, heretofore identified as a convicted felon, Elon Musk, heretofore known as an illegal immigrant, and JD Vance heretofore referenced as Pig Boy, shall be addressed with first names of "Dick".
Nothing in this Order shall be construed to subsume their inherent rights, nor shall it contravene any law, nor shall it be interpreted to be anything other than snark.
D'Orhk
Grade schools kids have to take English classes..yes.
English as the "official" language...no.
The English we speak now is not the English of our founding fathers, and that's causing all kinds of problems for our Supreme Court. For official filings, we already have legalese, which distantly related to English. As far as making English the official language, it would render agreements made in any other language moot. Even regional dialects would cause problems. We'll need the official dictionary, the official pronunciation, etc.
Silly indeed.
1. Contracts in any language are valid in the US and US courts routinely rule on disputes related to contracts in every language from Arabic to Vietnamese, and probably a few more before and after those alphabetically.
2. Why does an official language require an offical dictionary, pronunciation, etc?
Would be nice to get the pretentious Latin phrases out of the legal lexicon.
Not sure why.
Those Latin phrases have very specific meanings based on hundreds of years of precedents. Get rid of them and you make whole big areas of law unsettled.
Meh. Legal language is functional language; complaining that there are specialized terms in it (even ones in, godforbid, itallics!) is not too disimilar from complaining that doctors or engineers or programmers use a bunch of funny terms and why can't they speak plainly!
Doesn't TFM have anything better to do with his time? Scratch that, we'd probably be better off if he spent all his time on the golf course or the porcelain throne. I say probably, because if the incompetent, ignorant ideologues and conspiracy loons he appointed as underlings were left to run the country, they could well manage to do worse.
It's pointless. Second generation of every immigrant group here speaks English because it's already pervasive. For individuals, having a second (or third, or ... ) language is of benefit (you can look up the research), and foreign-language study should be encouraged.
"Doesn't TFM have anything better to do with his time?" No, he doesn't. Remember this is all a version of a reality t.v. show. It's a distraction from people realizing that Project 2025 is gutting our social safety net. You know project 2025, the thing he claimed he knew nothing about but somehow has people in his administration directly connected to it.
What a goddamn traitor.
First, he declares the body of water south of us is to be called the Gulf of America.
Really? Why didn't he call it the Gulf of the United States of America.
And now he's declaring English as the official language.
Why isn't it American English?
This behaviour by a president who is visibly ageing, without a gramme of sense, is distressing. His agenda is a pile of stinking faeces: budget cuts to the Department of Defence, tariffs on aluminium, and attempts to make our neighbour to the north a state. Trump should realise he's made a big mistake, and with unshakeable resolve, rescind his order.
Valourously spoken
" having multiple languages can be a powerful disruptive force. "
You have evidence for that?
I can think of plenty of counterexamples. Both the Roman and Persian empires had a bazillion languages without much notable linguo-ethnic based dissension.
I personally don't think it matters. Nobody had to tell anyone else that Latin was how you participated in the wider Roman Empire. It was obvious. Same with English here. And in India.
Rome is an instructive example. After the Western Empire fell in 476, Latin soldiered on in the East as the language you did business in, especially government and military business, even as the rest of the languages of the Empire -- Armenian, Syriac, Coptic, Phoenician and Berber -- drifted over into Greek.
The only other language I know of that tries to control its language legislatively is France, and look what happened to them. Quite a lot of science and mathematics was once done in French. From the 17th to the early 19th century, it went slowly away, paralleling the Acadamie Francais, the main entity deciding what counts as French.
French has about 135,000 words. English, which has never had anyone allowed to say what it is allowed to be and has bounced off a lot of different cultures over the years . . . . nobody really knows. Estimates are well north of 1 million words in English. But nobody had to vote them in.
People should untwist their knickers. Let folks speak what they want and acknowledge that languages drift. It isn't that big of a deal. Even English hasn't always been English.
Well said.
Designating an official language doesn't do anything, especially with so many caveats in the EO. It's an empty gesture and not a useful function of government.
But more importantly, language does not come from the government. It comes from the culture, from the people, and it is always evolving. Attempts by the government to limit what is spoken and written is doomed, it seems to me, and antithetical to the spirit of the First Amendment.
Kevin is right; shared languages unite and having multiple languages can be disruptive. That does not mean multiple language countries are destined to collapse and basically monolingual countries will never splinter. But it is a factor. And aren't we divided enough these days?
Fortunately, as a practical matter, English is not under threat. With the possible exception of a few areas in South Florida and the Rio Grande Valley, while immigrants do not always become proficient in English, their kids almost universally do, and that is quite enough. English is fine without an EO.
...In the US it's mostly symbolic and doesn't really matter much...
Agreed. I'm not going to get exercised about this. It just doesn't do very much. California has long had a law proclaiming English as the official language, and yet it's probably the most multilingual part of the country.
PIty Joe Biden's people didn't think of this. Might have pushed back on the (unfair, to be sure, but nonetheless effective) "open borders" accusation a bit.
and likewise, having multiple languages can be a powerful disruptive force.
"Can" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, Kevin. The US grew into the mightiest power in history during an era (call it 1880-1925) when it was effectively a multilingual nation.
On the other hand, America has always been a multilingual nation.
Another point...
California has long had a law proclaiming English as the official language...
Prop 63 made English the official language of the state in 1986. Seems fairly recent to me, but that may vary based on the age of the beholder.
It was not all that long ago that California was a Republican state (13 GOP governors during the 20th century vs. 4 Dems). In '86, George Deukmejian was the R guv. He was followed by Pete Wilson, who was strongly behind the anti-immigrant Prop 187 during his reelection campaign in 1994. It passed, but the unintended consequence of GOP immigrant bashing was to turn California solid and enduringly blue. There's a lesson there.
Anyway, I'm glad Biden didn't pull a stunt like that. The electoral effect might have been more negative anyway.
Thank heaven. My finger is soooo sore from having to press 1 for English.
Does this now mean that knowing how to spell English words will now be a requirement for the presidency?
And with English as our official language, will we have to start putting superfluous u's in our harbors and parlors, and pronouncing "aluminum" as if there were a second 'i'?
Kevin tries for a qualifier, by insisting this isn't chauvinistic or exclusionary, but then he immediately corrects himself by telling us that it is to avoid a disruptive force that cannot be named.
This is the old 'I'm not racist, but we should keep them folks outta this neighborhood or there will be trouble (but I cant say why!)'.....
Which might not be wrong, but it's helpful to be honest about the unnamed disruptive force. It isn't a mystery. Misleading people about this force is a bit dishonest.
Who are we catering to / appeasing with this and why is that the right thing to do?
It caters to the anti-immigrant bigots. That's who. We've always had immigrants and we've always had bigots, yet we've avoided designating an official language through our history. No reason to cave to them now.
The current admin (Trump, of course, but esp. Vance) believes that America is defined in the same ways that other countries define themselves -- a common language, common ethnicity, common religion, common culture. But America is different, if not unique. We are defined by the principles we hold, not by blood or other identification. That is the true strength of this nation. Lose that idea, and we lose everything.
A solution in search of a problem
I lived for 10 years in Switzerland, where they have FOUR official languages - French, German, Italian, and Romansch. It's really more, because Swiss German consists of numerous regional dialects that are quite different from each other. And of course, English is also ubiquitous.
It's still a very community-oriented place. Most everybody is tri-lingual or more. It's quite normal to witness a conversation where one person is speaking German, and the other is speaking French.
The New Mexico Constitution requires -- REQUIRES -- that Spanish be given parity with English. It's worked here for over 110 years.
Of course, everything works weridly in New Mexico, as Gov. Lew Wallace observed b ack in the 1800s.
The state constitution of Hawaii designates two official languages, Hawaiian and English, and requires the state to promote the study of Hawaiian.
One of my father's friends was part of a small team that knew the formal Court dialect of the Hawaiian language. (Which itself was a variant of Polynesian). This was important because a lot of Hawaiian land had been transferred to missionaries - and the original titles and deeds were recorded in Court Hawaiian, and a title search would eventually wind up having to pull out that original documentation.
I thought that God created different languages to keep us apart so we didn’t become too powerful. So isn’t it going against His will to learn other languages? Also, why do we still build tall buildings?
Always wondered why more people didn't make much of the fact that the Bible teaches that God created war specifically because a unified, happy, and productive humanity was perceived as a threat to Him.
+55!!
English is already the de facto official language of the United States. All our government business is conducted in English and the government's internal documents are all in English. Public-facing communications are sometimes offered in translation to serve immigrant communities whose English is still shaky, but those same communications are invariably offered in English first.
Language is also very sticky, because learning a new language is hard. Unless the United States gets conquered by a foreign country or aliens who force us to adopt a new language, we will stick with English forever.
"…having multiple languages is bad for a country. I don't mean this in any kind of chauvinistic or exclusionary sense."
There is no other sense.
So the headline makes it red meat for the base, while the text makes it not do anything. This is more the sort of thing I expected from Trump.
So, the convicted felons ‘wife in name only’ and their son speak other than English, likely in front of him. She does not communicate well in the English language so, does this apply to Melanoma also?
Most MAGA voters would fail both a basic civics test as well as English, so I'm increasingly inclined to require both for maintaining citizenship.
I suppose Vance should bully Keir Starmer into being grateful we chose their language. It's totally unnecessary, but I'm sure it will make many of Trump's racist supporters feel superior to those with brown skin.
It's all just another distraction. Keep the rubes agitated while the real magic is happening behind the curtain.
Surprised he didn't declare English to be the official language of Canada (no more French), Greenland & Denmark, and Panama.
A declaration that Russian is the official language of Ukraine is next.
If English is going to be our official language, we should at least have a president who speaks it halfway decently? Has anyone ever heard Trump? Everytime he opens his mouth it's clear he has a fairly tenuous and maladroit grasp of the English language.
English is not "now our official language" because an executive order *is not a law*. Congress makes laws. The President issues memos (EOs) to express his opinion on how executive branch agencies/officers should interpret and im0lement laws *written by Congress*.
Yeah, just like the EO can't rename the Gulf of Mexico.
Language differences can be a basis for intergroup conflict, but in many cases are not: Canada, Switzerland and many other countries work fine with multiple languages. If anything, insisting on one language and disrespecting linguistic minorities is more likely to lead to conflict than simply letting communities speak their traditional tongue and offering government communications in multiple languages.