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By now most Americans have either completed their U.S. Census forms or have received a visit from a Census worker sent to complete the survey. During these home visits I am speculating that many of the conversations were conducted in Spanish, Tex-Mex, and/or Spanglish not German given recent immigration trends.  

 

This thought came to me recently as I read Darlene Fuchs' article, "German the official U.S. language?" published in the German American National Congress (www.dank.org) newsletter. Ms. Fuchs' article addresses the urban language that "German was just one vote short of becoming the USA's official language." As Ms. Fuchs goes on to explain that in 1794 a group of German immigrants petitioned the U.S. House of Representatives to translate some laws into German. This petition was rejected by a 42-41 vote with Speaker of the House Muhlenberg later quoted as saying, "the faster the Germans become Americans, the better it will be."   

 

Fast forward to 2010 with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declaring, "the

faster Hispanics become Americans, the better it will be."  To call such a scenario "unlikely" would win the Understatement of the Year Award since the vast majority of Congress would not want to risk losing the Hispanic vote.

 

Now before I am labeled some backward, nativist, Know-Nothing Party member let me offer some context. I like to tell friends that my "family was Danish until the Germans held a referendum that moved the border north thus transforming my ancestors into Germans." My ancestral families promptly emigrated from Germany to Iowa in search of fertile, cheap farmland. If I remember my semester of Iowa History from middle school correctly something over 90 percent of Iowans have Germanic origins. In national terms Ms. Fuchs' article is again worth quoting - "the 2000 U.S. Census reported that 42.8 million Americans claim their ethnic origin to be German, the largest reported ethnic group. Only 1.5 million, however, speak the (German) language at the present time.  Today, German is the second most spoken language in two states:  North Dakota and South Dakota." 

 

My K-12 education in Iowa offered only one foreign language to study -- not German nor Spanish but French - which I studied as a college prep course. During my undergraduate and graduate study years I studied Spanish complete with immersion programs in both Costa Rica and Argentina. To be perfectly clear I am not an "English-only" advocate from a political standpoint but from an economic (and dare I stereotype myself ) and "Germanic efficiency" perspective the time has come for the USA and the 50 states to declare an official language(s).   

 

Having worked in Canada and the European Union off and on for the last nine years I can encourage Americans to avoid the fragmentation and civil strife that exists in those parts of our world. Today the European Union has 27 member-states yet it conducts its business in 23 different languages. Having sat through European Parliament sessions in Brussels it is simply fascinating to see the translators working in their booths where the debate may have to be translated from German into English and then into Finnish due to the translators' inability to translate from German directly into Estonian. Whether the USA and state governments declare English as the official language for managing our government and commercial relations or even declares our nation as bi-lingual with English and Spanish I am not concerned. What greatly concerns me is the threat that the huge military and economic bloc known as the USA could one day fragment into regional blocs driven by different dominant languages. Then again perhaps this has already happened since my Spanish skills are better than my Bostonian!