The United States Congress wants to pass a law making English the official language of the United States. No way, dude! That would be totally bogus! NFW, man, that would reek!

The first issue of course is what would such a law mean. What category of communication would this law apply to? Does it mean my mortgage has to get rewritten so I can understand it? (I guess I might be for such a law.) No, typically such proposals mean to be restricted to official government correspondence. So would it mean that all the laws, rules, regulations that come out of Washington have to get rewritten? I suppose a law making "plain English" the official language might be palatable. I say that facetiously, because the second issue of course is what is English?

The categorizing of communication into languages is used by linguists and teachers to aid in understanding the communication. It is not a "real" division. Languages include vocabulary and syntax, but this is determined after the fact. After we have learned a language we can divide it up into nouns and verbs statements and questions. These so-called rules are internalized and judged by what "sounds right." There is no law of language like there might be laws of physics. We could make a language however we wanted, in fact we do. We color code things, we have little triangles that mean "push this to fast forward the tape." We grunt and swear and wave and give the thumbs up sign. [I have heard that in Australia the thumbs up sign is offensive, something about seating arrangements.] Ever since Webster decided to help us out with his book we've been duped into thinking that because they were written his rules were requirements instead of descriptions. Real languages change as cultures change. That's why there are new dictionaries every year. Besides the meaning of words, syntax also changes, forms become obsolete, new forms arise. That's why people strain to understand Shakespeare.

If we have an official English, very soon it would diverge from what is used by the people. Who speaks Latin anymore? Latin is a well defined, specific language useful because it is not used. One can read Latin from the second century (maybe not me, but someone could) and understand it as well contemporary Catholic Church documents. I leave it as an exercise to determine the percentage of Muslems who use Arabic in their day to day discourse.

I think the government does a poor job of communicating with the people. This is probably done purposely. Making English the official language will not solve this. Electing honest legislators would. (I'm not naming names.) If a large proportion of the population speaks a language other than English, I believe the government has a duty to communicate in the language that the people will understand. If that means Newt Gringrich learns to Hula then so be it.

The problem is the cost of all this communicating. I understand this very well, the government spends far too much money on frivolous enterprises. It is costly to print a ballot up in Spanish and English and mail these out to everybody. Once again I must emphasize what I believe to be a basic principle of life: Don't use a broad sweeping fundamental solution for a specific problem. The problem is spending money, there are myriad solutions to that problem besides curtailing a basic governmental duty.

Another cost is bilingual education. People see the American education system costing too much with too little gain, and it's easy to point at bilingual education as a monstrous cost which simply isolates minorities even more. This is a real problem. However, I do not think the solutions to education can be solved by federal government micromanagement. Of course this whole problem would be solved if we had a voucher system, people would choose the school that fit their particular needs, but that is beside the point. The language we use is part of our culture, and I don't believe it is the governments job to determine what our culture is. We hear the argument that a common language is what binds us together as a nation. My easy answer is no, what binds us together is a common principle of freedom. It is not the government's job to keep our culture going, it is up to us as citizens to keep our culture going, if our particular culture is worthy of continuance. It can be argued seperately whether the government should fund education at all, but just because it does give money, it would be equivalent to censorship to specify the culture that is taught and therefore what language is used.

If fifty years from now, or even just twenty years from now, Spanish is the dominant language spoken in America, then I would have no problem with my descendants having to learn Spanish. If they can't read great grandpa's web page then so what? If an idea cannot be translated into another language, then it is either so transcendental that only a select few could understand anyway, or it is so convoluted as to be false.

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