NO MAS INGLES’?
As we all know, English is the most common language for our country. However, with all the immigrants expanding the population, rumor says that we are going to have to learn their language for better communication. This may be true, but should that keep us from making English the official language?
In Dennis Baron’s “Don’t Make English Official”, says that we should not make English official, but ban it instead. He even goes on to say that we don’t know how to spell our own language and even English teachers have come to rely on computer spell checkers. His opinion makes a strong impact on his readers, especially because of his experience as an English professor. However, I find his proposal just a little absurd.
We speak English. Most of us were born speaking it, just like the Chinese in China, the French in France, and the Germans in Germany. So, why shouldn’t English be our official language? Yes, it is okay for us to learn to speak different languages (as long as it is optional) but we honestly cannot depend on banning a language that may be the only language we know. Besides, if we ban English, what will be our official language?
Baron said, “We should ban English because it has become a world language.” “Remember what happened to all the other world languages: Latin, Greek, Indo-European?” Can we honestly say that English is a “world language”? If so, is English not the strongest language out of Latin, Greek, and Indo- European?
On the other hand, regardless of what our official language would be, we can only speak what we know. It’s not like we can fluently speak Hebrew tomorrow.
Do you think that English should or should not be our official language? Do we rely on the English language too much? If English should be prohibited, what should our language be?
4 comments:
I believe as an AMERICAN english should be our number one language. If someone wants to come into my country legally or illegally then they knew our language was different. They should learn our language. English is the universal language. People in most other countries have to take english during their schooling to graduate. Should Mexicans forget Spanish? I think not bu they should have the common courtsy to speak OUR language.
I agree with Riv on this. If an American were to move to another country, they would most likely learn the language first. America should have English as the official language just to make sure that everyone can at least partially understand one another.
I disagree witht the fact that English needs to be the national Language of the United States. The US is a nationof different cultures so therefore there is no need to legally make the national language something. Like the author said that no other nations has been able to get their citizens to speak a national language quite like the US and it was accomplished without legally making english the national language.
If we are to discuss ownership of a language it certainly would not be enlgish because even that we took from the British.
I agree with Riv and Jordan, English should be the official language of America. The immigrants coming into this country should learn to talk as we do, the same as if an American would go into their country, they should speak as they do. If each country did not have an 'official' languauge then no one would be able to read signs or talk to one another!
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