“Official” is a very English word. It has its roots in the Old French “oficial” and the Latin “officialis,” and now — thanks to a new Trump executive order — describes the status of the English language.
President Trump’s executive action making English our official language repeals a Bill Clinton executive order that required the government, as well as groups receiving federal funds, to provide language assistance to non-English speakers.
Trump’s move will have little practical effect, since the increase in bilingualism in the United States has been driven by high levels of immigration from Spanish-speaking countries rather than direct government action.
Still, the executive order is an important symbolic statement and its basic premises are correct.
“A nationally designated language,” the executive order says, “is at the core of a unified and cohesive society, and the United States is strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language.”
This is certainly true of having an overwhelmingly dominant language, whether it is technically designated the official language or not.
The order is hateful and threatening to all those groups for whom e pluribus unum — to resort to a long-dead language — no longer has appeal.
The communications director for the pro-immigration group United We Dream huffed, “Trump is trying to send the message that if you’re not white, rich and speak English you don’t belong here. Let me be clear: Immigrants are here to stay. No matter how hard Trump tries, he can’t erase us.”
Notably, she made her statement in English.
About half of immigrants in the United States, by the way, are proficient English speakers. Are they “erasing” themselves?
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus commented, “Trump’s plan to make English official is a direct attack on our diversity and history. Millions of Americans speak other languages, and that doesn’t make them any less American.”
It’s no disrespect to speakers of, say, Tagalog or Haitian Creole to send the message that English has been and will continue to be our predominant language.
Anyone not learning English is excluding themselves from the mainstream of American life, and limiting their educational and economic opportunities.
A New York Times headline snarked, “Trump Made English the Official Language in a Country with 350 of Them.”
That’s part of the impetus, rather than a contradiction.
The language police obviously aren’t going to show up in ethnic neighborhoods with copies of Strunk & White. Nevertheless, it is very important that the leading status of the English language not be challenged.
Language-based divisions can cause deep ruptures in otherwise peaceable, well-run societies — just ask the Canadians, Belgians or Spanish, all of whom have been riven by secession movements in regions that speak different languages.
If the United States ever adapts a more fully merit-based immigration system, English-language ability should be one of the criteria.
Ours, it should be noted, is a very good language. The vocabulary is incredibly rich.
Thanks to copious borrowings over the centuries, especially from Latin and Norman French, there are more than half a million words in the Oxford English Dictionary, whereas German has about 185,000 words and French not even 100,000.
The co-authors of the delightful book “The Story of English” note that the English language didn’t exist when Julius Cesar invaded Britain a couple of millennia ago. Then 500 years later, it was spoken by as many people as speak Cherokee today.
By Shakespeare’s time in the 16th century, several million Englishmen spoke it, and, a couple of hundred years after that, it had exploded around the globe.
Today, about 1.5 billion people speak English. Only about 400 million of those speak it as their first language.
It is the language of business, entertainment and the internet. There are more English speakers in India than the UK, and roughly as many English speakers in Nigeria as in Britain.
No language has ever been as ubiquitous, and the US government is now giving it its official due.
Twitter: @RichLowry