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Should English Be The Official Language

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Should English Be The Official Language
Designating English as the Official language of the United States
April 3, 2011

Designating English as the Official Language of the United States
The United States contains people from every nation with every language and culture known. All of these people help to make the United States the country that it is today. Each of the cultures has their own language and they are all citizens of this country. A citizen means that you have the same rights as every other citizen to speak the language of your birth, to expect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
This research will be an argumentative paper with information on both sides of the argument using the statement: “Should English be the Official Language of the United States”. …show more content…
the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy group) has helped immigrants learn English and successfully integrate into society at all levels. N.C.L.R. wholeheartedly agrees that everyone should know English. “We would be thrilled with legislation that devoted substantial money to teaching English, but you cannot pass a law declaring English the national language and magically expect everyone to know the language overnight.” (Spokesperson for N.C.L.R.) Making English our official language would hamper the government's ability to reach out, communicate, and warn people in the event of a natural or man-made disaster such as a hurricane, pandemic, or another terrorist attack. This would put the health and safety of everyone in jeopardy. (New York Times Upfront, …show more content…
Passing an Act like this may have been a good ideal a hundred years ago, but now there are too many different cultures represented in the United States to make English the only official language. If this bill was revised to make English one of the official languages of the United States it would make better sense. The United States major languages according to the 2010 Census report are: English (80.3 %); Spanish (12.1 %); Indo-European (3.5 %); Asian (2.8 %) and other languages less than 1%. The question is if according the 2010 census report (2010)19.6 percent of the United States population speak a language other than English as their primary language, why would we only limit our official language to
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