There was a recent post or thread where the issue of a "National Language" was surfaced; I thought it important enough to warrant its own thread (seperate from Immigrant issue)...[Mods...feel free to combine if you disagree]

Success =>

Senate Votes to Call English 'Common Language' of U.S.
Friday, May 19, 2006
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,196152,00.html
WASHINGTON � The Senate voted Thursday to make English the national language of the United States. Sort of. Moments after the 63-34 vote, it decided to call the mother tongue a "common and unifying language."

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I have long felt that our language is the central component of our culture; although a diverse nation, this country has recently - and wrongly - allowed several languages to become commonplace and acted to become bilingual, perverting the wonderful pedigree of the English Language. The problems of bilingualism are legion; Quebec, Canada, stands as a central example of why going down the road of bilingualism is suicide for our culture, particularly for educational systems which would need to comply. Let's make English our shared language and force newcomers to learn our mother tongue and become assimilated in the American Society.

People speaking more then one language is not a bad thing, you make it sound like it is evil. Please tell me how exactly it is wrong to speak more then one language?

Sorry Piccolo if that is what I implied; expertise in foreign language study is not what I was railing on and not what this thread is against. I have nothing against foreign languages per se; however, the language of this nation is English and this thread is geared toward that. Lack of assimilation by new residents speaking a foreign language (not English) is bad the nation and its national language!!!

It is not a bad thing, the more immigrants we have then the more likely we will have an official second language. English will not be replaced, but having a second language, most likely Spanish, is not wrong or bad in anyway.

Recommend you read narrative in Genesis (11): The Tower of Babel. It is happening now in the United States!

If I recall, God seperated the people and gave them all DIFFERENT languages because of the way they were working together using a common language. From what you are saying you want everyone in America to speak English, thus that would actually be going against what God did to the people in that passage. They all spoke one language, all worked together, and all got punished by speaking different languages.

Precisely! Punished! That's the point!

Commonality of a nation requires a single language of communication. Assimiliation into American society requires an education and use in its language. If you are unware of the problem of which I speak: Visit a public school in a big city... half of budget is spent on remedial education for non-English speakers!

You are completely missing what I was saying....their punishment for working together...using the SAME LANGUAGE was that they were forced to speak different languages. Now actually try and read and understand this, I am going to use logic now...now I know its something you are not familiar with. If we go by what happened in the passage...God punished the people for working together using the same language...thus different languages came about. Now if we go by this that means that America is going down the road by forcing everyone to speak English, thus working together using the same language, instead of allowing mutiple languages to flourish, etc. Hopefully your little brain can actually understand that, and again please address everything I wrote.

Allowing multiple languages to flourish is fine in principle. In practicality it causes confusion (hence the Babel reference I provided that evidently went far over your head). If we allowed multiple languages in the United States to be present (several are now) the cost of bilingualism is horrendous (see my initial post where I mention Quebec, Canada as example). Ever been there? I have. Their schools are completely screwed up due to everything needed to be translated in just TWO LANGUAGES... imagine if we tried it here in USA with three or four? Imagine all the municipal signage needing translating, schools needing additional translators, web sites needing multiple bilingual pages, hardware stores needing everything in multiple languages, fire, police, and rescue personnel needing to be bilingual? A complete screw up!

Here's a solution=> You want to be a resident of USA? Speak English. Otherwise please leave!

. . . the bible is a collection of stories. It does not contain fact, truth, or knowledge. Why do you keep using it as a reference?

I don't see a problem with several languages. I do think that immigrants should make an attempt to learn English as they will succeed more with it. However, saying that everyone needs to speak English makes you sound like a total Nazi. Who knows, maybe I'm right. The point is that America is called the melting pot because there are so many ingredients. There are also many sections of states, towns, and cities that speak other languages.