President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States March 1, once again proudly demonstrating his administration’s continued and determined hatred of the ideals this country was founded upon. The new order is an utterly silly and unnecessary designation, one that symbolically minimizes a truly exceptional element of this country’s linguistic history. Until that moment, the U.S. was one of just five countries with no official language, alongside the United Kingdom, Mexico, Eritrea, and Australia. It’s hardly the greatest harm he’s brought about by executive order over the past few months, but it’s upsetting nonetheless.
I am plenty disillusioned from the passion and positivity for this country instilled into me in my younger years, but I promise that there are still things I like about it. Near the top of that list is the diversity we host as a nation for the nationless, which manifests in a variety of ways. Language is one of the most visible (or perhaps audible) of these, enhancing our culture and daily lives. There are countless examples of this, but perhaps my favorite are all the wonderful words that Yiddish introduced into the American lexicon: schmuck, schtick, klutz, spiel, schmooze — the list goes on. Our culture and our lives benefit when we don’t mindlessly cling to an “official language.”
There are very real benefits that non-English speakers in this country gain from not having a national language. Essential functions of our government, from translated tax documents to interpreters in court testimonies and hearings, were likely facilitated by our lack of a national adherence to English before March 1. Although the recent decree does little to alter these functions, it tramples upon a morally good status quo — one that once demonstrated our unique status as a diverse nation.
And this isn’t the only example of how America takes its multilingual nature for granted — despite the strong linguistic diversity present in the U.S., there remains an avoidance of non-English language instruction in our K-12 education system. In fact, there’s not even a federal mandate for a foreign language requirement in public education. My school district was an outlier, requiring me to choose between Spanish, French, and later on, Latin, which I took for all four years of high school, after taking Spanish in middle and high school. While the Spanish instruction I received during my secondary schooling assists me greatly in my endeavors to learn the language now, I wasn’t offered language instruction until seventh grade. It’s also important to recognize that my experience — flawed as it was — still exceeds the standard we’ve decided to accept for ourselves regarding non-English language education. The fact that large swaths of our country don’t even try to teach children multiple languages hampers their potential to be multilingual as citizens, and our potential to be multilingual as a nation. For example, access to Spanish, the second-most spoken language in the U.S. — as access to virtually any language would — provides employment and quality of life benefits for the country as a whole.
There’s only one way to combat the monolingual directive that this executive seems to set, and that’s to push for multilingualism at local levels. In particular, multilingualism on university campuses must be openly encouraged as a means to advance this aim. In the absence of grade schools pushing students to learn foreign languages, universities are in privileged positions as foremost proponents of cultural and intellectual development. Communities benefit by embracing the linguistic diversity at our University, opening us up to a wider variety of perspectives and backgrounds. Personally, I have benefited from the simple act of being on a diverse campus and meeting all sorts of people from all sorts of places. This cultural enrichment was not available to me in my overwhelmingly white hometown.
Every language, whether spoken or unspoken, is intrinsically and uniquely valuable. English is no different. But to live your life in only one language is to deny yourself access to entire populations of people you otherwise could never communicate with. Such shackles shouldn’t exist near any university, much less one with as sizable of an international student population as ours.
Enhanced emphasis on multilingualism must be pursued in the coming years, especially at local levels like within our University. Let this executive order serve as a warning sign, and a call to action. The Trump administration is actively trying to homogenize this country, uphold and accelerate marginalization, and silence voices. Defying Trump’s nonsensical declaration by further embracing linguistic diversity, rather than shying away from it, is one of the very many ways the University can, and should, wield that power.
