[Sca-cooks] OT OOP "Official Language" was Seville orange substitutions

[Terry Decker]

Pardon me, the "official language" of the United States is English.  It is
the language chosen for the conduct of government in Congress assembled over
200 years ago.  It won out over German by one vote.

By law, certain government documents are translated into other languages,
primarily Spanish, to prevent discrimination in access to government by
residents (and some native born citizens) whose primary language is not
English.  These might be considered "official directed language
translations" in that they are not used for the conduct of government but
are used for dispersing governement information.

What the United States does not have is a "national" language.  English, by
being the "official" languange, is the de facto national language.

I find the entire "official language" debate ridiculous.  The people
petitioning for English as the official language of the US really mean they
want English as the (one true and accepted) language of the US (forcing all
them furriners to learn English and keeping English-speaking Amuricans in
their rightful place at the top of the heap), thereby displaying their
ignorance of English and history.  Had that original vote gone the other
way, they would be petitioning for German as the official language.  Ironic,
eh?

Bear

On 15 Jul 2004, at 16:23, Micaylah wrote:

> I would love to have a larger Latino representation here. It exists but
> is small. Isn't the US's "other official language" Spanish, n'est pas?

The U.S. does not have *any* official languages.  However, Spanish is the
second most widely spoken language in the country (over 28 million people).


Brighid ni Chiarain *** mka Robin Carroll-Mann