Yes

by T. Scott Randolph

Created on: October 17, 2010

In the United States, English (or more correctly American English) is the official language. The question at hand is should Spanish be accepted as an official language as well? That answer is definitely yes. Why yes? There are several reasons. Many are obvious, yet for the country that loves to brag that it is "the melting pot" of the world, the U.S. seems to want anyone who lives here to conform to an accepted set of rules. One of which is to speak English.

While the U.S. started primarily as British colonies, and therefore spoke English, there was also Dutch, French, and Spanish settlements (as well as Russian on the west coast and Alaska). You can argue by reason of numbers, that at first English was the primary language.

Geography plays a very large role in this argument. Since we are talking about the U.S. we will keep it in the close neighborhood for now. North America is dominated by 3 large countries. Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. Excluding the hundreds of languages that barely exist anymore (they were eradicated along with most of the people by European settlers and the diseases that they lacked immunity for), you have 3 languages.

In Mexico, Spanish is spoken. In Canada it is English. There are parts of Canada that have held onto their French history and speak French, but a large part of the country speaks English. Now that leaves the U.S. As stated earlier, we can say that the eastern seaboard was dominated by English speaking settlers. This could be a reason that English is the only language, of course the fact that you have large populations of Spanish speaking people in most major cities and in the south of Florida should be considered.

As European powers ate up the continent of North America (right or wrong is not the question at hand), Spain and then Mexico controlled vast areas that would eventually become the U.S. We took this territory through war, buying land, and just plain annexing it. All over the southwest of the U.S. things are named with Spanish names. We may have changed the borders, but it is harder to change the culture. In many ways, Spanish is the second official language already.

If we spread out of our immediate neighborhood a little more, the need to be able to speak Spanish as well as English becomes even more apparent. In the western hemisphere, most of the countries are Spanish speaking. Canada, the U.S. and Brazil are the big exceptions. There are other places as well, such as French Guiana that are placed here and there, but most of the hemisphere speaks Spanish.

We are not saying that you cannot speak English, but it may be time to get on board with the rest of the world and become a bilingual society. If both Spanish and English were official languages, and therefore taught throughout school, it would unite most of the continents of North and South America under two common languages. This would have positive effects in various fields. The fields of science, economics, politics and others would be benefit. Information could be shared and tensions thawed.

Most of this discusses the bigger picture. If you look closer to your own home, being able to communicate with more people in your own city would be very rewarding. After all, anyone that is not Native American came from somewhere else at some point. If the language is already in use over such a large area, why not give it the "official" stamp and have it taught in the schools.

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