We Speak English Here, Right?

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) wants to change the German Constitution to make German the official language of the nation. The United States is also familiar with that debate, but Americans have found other solutions allowing them to deal with their multitude of languages.

Whoever rides the New York subway sees station names in Chinese and warning signs in Spanish. Flyers in German and French are available in the museums; the owners of small shops speak Arabic or Hebrew, and the taxi drivers from Sri Lanka or Bangladesh a broken form of English.

But New York – or Miami, Chicago or San Francisco – isn’t America. They speak English in America. And that’s not written into their Constitution. In earlier times, agencies, schools and businesses made certain that immigrating Europeans were integrated as quickly as possible. Whoever wanted to leave the immigrant quarters learned English. After 1906, if they wanted to become citizens they had to demonstrate knowledge of the English language.

For a while, German was a viable alternative. German schools, churches and theaters existed in New York, Texas, Minnesota and Missouri, among others. But that changed dramatically with the outbreak of World War One. German books were banned from libraries, German street names changed to English and words like sauerkraut were forbidden. A Minnesota pastor was nearly lynched because he prayed in German with a dying congregation member. Many German immigrants quickly Anglicized their family names. Today, only a few archaic religious groups like the Amish and the Mennonites still speak a dialect of Low German. But that’s folklore.

The treatment of Native Americans was also ruthless: their children were forced to attend boarding schools. If they were caught speaking their own native tongues or praying to their traditional gods, they were beaten or their mouths were washed out with soapy water. Today, few of the Native American languages survive.

The civil rights movement of the 1960’s changed the cultural atmosphere and, in addition, today’s immigrants are not Europeans eager to integrate, but predominantly Mexicans, Chinese and Filipinos.

The United States has changed from an almost completely white country with black ghettos into a multicultural nation. While over 80 percent of the population speaks English, the percentage of Latinos is growing. There are cities in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas – all of which were part of Mexico 150 years ago – where up to 75 percent of the population speaks Spanish. Among them are San Diego, Los Angeles, El Paso and San Antonio. Here, one finds Latino businesses, Spanish-language TV and radio stations, newspapers, schools and churches, as well as the Bancó di México.

Many telephone hotlines today are bi-lingual, a concept not readily accepted by some citizens. Several members of Congress have already suggested amending the Constitution to make English the nation’s official language. These attempts have thus far been unsuccessful, although 30 states now designate English as the official language in their own state constitutions.

The first state to do so was Louisiana when they abandoned French as the official language in 1807. Most states, however, didn’t do so until very recently. The last state following suit was Missouri in 2008, when 86.3 percent of the voters approved the change.

The “ProEnglish” initiative still seeks to make English America’s official language by constitutional amendment. They cite former President Theodore Roosevelt’s wish that the United States not become a “multi-lingual hotel.” Mandatory English puts pressure on immigrants to assimilate and avoid poverty-stricken ghettos, ProEnglish argues. Opponents say the United States has always been multi-lingual and that language laws were originally used to discriminate against immigrants from Italy and Eastern European countries who wanted to apply for government jobs. Additionally, they say, Americans all sooner or later became assimilated without such language laws.

New York, as usual, will go its own way. The city’s fathers have already instituted a service hotline where information is available in 170 languages. Even in German.