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Who knew? The U.S. doesn't have an official language
By AprillBrandon in Pop Goes the Culture
January 26, 2009

With the discussion forum blowing up over the controversy of a Goliad county commissioner's answering machine message, some of the comments piqued my curiosity. Namely the posters that were up in arms over people who come to America and don't speak English and people's resistance to learning a second language.

Believe it or not, the U.S. actually does not have an official language. The majority of people speak English but as of yet nothing has been passed by the government making it the official language of the country (although attempts have been made). By the same token however, about half of the states have passed laws stating English as their official language. Texas is not one of them.

As for American's resistance to learning a second language, blogger Gabriel Braun wrote about this topic in 2007 and made some interesting arguments for learning a second language. One of the most interesting things I read in it is that English is not the No. 1 spoken language in the world. It's actually Mandarin (Chinese).

Braun is not alone in his encouragement of Americans learning a second language in order to be able to participate in an increasingly global economy. During his campaign, President Barack Obama also encouraged Americans to learn a second or third language.

When I was in college, many of my friends were business majors and almost all of them were taking two or three foreign language courses (mostly Mandarin, German and Spanish). Considering I dreaded every day of Spanish class in high school, I asked them why they would submit themselves to such torture voluntarily.

Their answer?

"Who do you think is going to get hired? The guy who can speak with the clients overseas, or the guy who can't."

Personally, I don't speak a foreign language and it is one of my biggest regrets. As much as I hated my Spanish class, I wish now that I had paid more attention and could at least carry on a decent conversation, rather than just being able to ask where is the library and order a beer.

In many other countries, it is commonplace to speak two languages, if not three. And I think it's time America catches up.