Pragmatism, Not Orders, Drives the Languages Americans Speak

The executive order to make English the official language of the US continues a long history of suspicion toward languages other than English that dates back to some of our founding fathers. Benjamin Franklin worried that the German-speaking immigrants of his era would never learn English and therefore not become true Americans.

Yet at this point in our history, an executive order proclaiming that English shall be our official language is like proclaiming that all fish shall be officially wet. English has long ago saturated all aspects of life in America. And besides, Americans have never been much for following orders when it comes to language. That’s why our founding fathers didn’t set up an academy that would dictate what is, and what isn’t, proper English. They were aware of such groups in France, Spain and Germany, but they were wise enough not to try to boss Americans around when it comes to the languages they speak or how they speak them. For us unruly, individualistic Americans it’s never been about following linguistic orders. It’s always been about pragmatism.

WHEN SPEAKING ONLY ENGLISH WAS A PRACTICAL MATTER

From our origins as a nation, if you wanted to get ahead in America, you had to learn English. That was the practical reality 250 years ago, 100 years ago and today. No one understands this more keenly than immigrants.

Yet despite every generation of American immigrants learning English rapidly, we have besmirched this bright fact with a murky myth, given new spin each generation, which would have us believe that immigrants of the past were more patriotic than immigrants of the present. It goes something like this: When our grandparents came to this country they kissed the ground in gratitude. They refused to teach their home languages to their children, insisting that they speak English as well as any other American kid. But today’s immigrants, the myth goes, continue speaking their home languages, refusing to learn English, refusing to become real Americans.

It’s hard to assess relative patriotism across the generations, but what we do know is that being an American bilingual prior to 1960 wasn’t particularly practical or useful.

Before 1960, jobs were overwhelmingly English-speaking jobs. Traveling back to the home country for newly arrived immigrants meant booking passage on a steamship, a costly endeavor that few could afford. And the communication technology of the era was handwritten letters.

WHEN SPEAKING MORE THAN ENGLISH BECAME A PRACTICAL MATTER

Post-1960, and accelerating with the rise of globalism, the usefulness of bilingualism became increasingly clear. Many jobs have begun to either require language skills or will pay a premium for them. With modern air travel, the cost of traveling back to the home country has become affordable. As for communications technology, the handwritten letter has given way to real-time video communication across nearly the whole world.

This change in practical realities explains why most American immigrants over the last two generations have worked diligently to give their children the gift of bilingualism. They speak the heritage language at home, they enroll their children in weekend and dual-language schools, they take them to meet their cousins in the home country and show them cartoons, movies and books in the hundreds of heritage languages spoken by Americans, from Greek to Gujarati.

And outside the home, they speak English.

What most of us don’t realize is just how successful these efforts have been.

Bilinguals, defined as those who use two or more languages as part of their daily lives, have quadrupled in the US from an estimated 20 million in 1970 to an estimated 80 million today, according to the US Census. That means that the US presently has more bilinguals than any European Union country.

Beyond the size of our bilingual population is its even more impressive breadth. Only in the US do bilinguals come from all over the world, and in numbers no other nation can match.

BILINGUALISM, AMERICAN-STYLE

In addition to having millions of American bilinguals who speak European languages including French, Spanish, German and Italian, we now have even more millions of bilinguals who speak Asian languages, including Mandarin, Hindi, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese and Thai. Add to these hundreds more languages–from A (over a million Arabic/English bilinguals) to Z (just shy of 10,000 Zuni/English speakers).

As for Spanish, the important thing is not how many Spanish speakers we have, but how many Spanish/English bilinguals we have. According to Ethnologue, the US has more than 40 million, which is more than the rest of Latin America combined. These American bilinguals, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, can communicate professionally in all of the Americas: North, Central and South.

It’s not just immigrants and their offspring who have dual language skills. Millions of Americans who grew up in English-speaking homes have become bilingual at a professional level through school, study abroad and ever-expanding opportunities to be immersed in the language with the help of digital technology.

A SLEEPING GIANT OF LANGUAGES

In the last half-century, America has transformed itself from a monolingual mouse to a linguistic lion. We should be proud of our growing bilingualism, recognizing the many advantages it gives to our citizens and to our nation, from being more competitive in business to the postponement of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

Thomas Jefferson, who worked diligently on his French in order to represent US interests in France, advised young Americans to learn French and Spanish in addition to English, to prepare themselves to be the best citizens they could be. Fortunately, more and more Americans are today following Jefferson’s practical advice and becoming American bilinguals. Today, Americans know that English unites us and our other languages strengthen us.