There seems to be a debate going on that I can't get fully on either side of. I think languages can be viewed as similar to religions, and I don't think either should be strictly enforced by a government.
That is to recognize that everyone has their own version with their own meanings, and even for their own reasons. And, some people interpret certain ones to be superior to others, and some heavily advocate that theirs is for everyone. But, the only actual authority that language and religion have are in the numbers of people practicing any specific one.
I don't support any effort to try to fill the needs of a small minority. If 98% of a community speaks English and the other 2% are a mixture of languages with speakers in the .0-something percent range, than the official language of that community is English, no law is even needed. I don't think that community is responsible to put street signs up in anything but English.
But, if there is an area that has a population speaking something like a 60/40 ratio of two languages then I think that it becomes important to use the amount of communication it takes to communicate with a large majority of the population. Maybe the constitution should be made available in that other language. I think official language use would be best decided at a local level. Our large federal government does not have any place telling a local community to use English.
Also, I don't necessarily think that a place needs to be an English speaking place to be a part of the United States. I think I could be in support of places like Puerto Rico becoming actual states, if the local people wanted it first. And, I don't think that places in the southwest that have a high percentage of Spanish speakers should secede from the United States because of their language. But, I think it does put more responsibility on the government to be accountable for providing necessary communication to the people of that area.
So I guess to me, making any language the official one by law, would be similar to making a law for an official god. It is definitely not as clean cut as the separation of church and state idea. But, I do think language use SHOULD BE a choice that everyone is entitled to make on their own terms.
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I agree 100 percent with your analogy between language and religion. You can see the similarity in the intensity of emotion that the issue brings out of people. Our nation was founded on the idea that the government should have strict neutrality on religious matters, so that they may not infringe upon religious freedom. Perhaps it was a lack of foresight that the founders (most of whom spoke English and French, and were at least slightly acquainted with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew) did not also emphasize linguistic freedom.
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