Trip of the Tongue (33 page)

All of these circumstances combined to make New Mexican Spanish something of an oddity. It is certainly highly unlikely that today a new dialect of Spanish could develop and survive in the United States for any period of time. For one thing, even existing dialects tend to lose their distinctiveness when they arrive in this country. Despite the tremendous diversity of Spanish dialects throughout the world, once they begin to interact with each other, something called dialect leveling occurs. When speakers of two (or more) dialects attempt to communicate, they typically do their best to stay away from any regionalisms that might not be understood. Over time, this process results in a version of a language that is mutually comprehensible but, all things considered, a bit bland. Like every other language to come to the United States, Spanish is not unaffected by the change of scene.

As it turns out, however, what is most unusual about New Mexican Spanish is not that it's different but that it even exists. The more I learned about Spanish in the United States, the more I began to understand that despite its rapid growth and seeming omnipresence, Spanish is nevertheless being rapidly replaced by English.

There is in popular discourse a pervasive and powerful sense that the population of Spanish-speakers is increasing not because of high Latino birthrates or an uptick in immigration but because Spanish-speakers have less and less incentive to learn English—and, in fact, because many Spanish-speakers are no longer doing so. The consequences of such a thing are, for some, far more alarming than the petty concerns of people who hate having to press 1 for English. It suggests that the primacy of English in the United States is being threatened.

For this reason we have organizations such as U.S. English and English First.

This is far from the first time our nation's politicians have turned their attention to language. Most early American language policy was largely concerned with German. Although by 1790 Germans only made up 8.6 percent of the white American population, they were heavily concentrated in areas such as Pennsylvania, where they accounted for a full 33 percent of the state's population and maintained a vibrant language community and a robust German-language press. In fact, the first newspaper to announce the adoption of the Declaration of Independence was a German paper called the
Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote
. The sheer size and visibility of the German population in Pennsylvania gave them a great deal of clout when it came to political maneuvering. Accordingly, early U.S. language policy was actually pro-German. From 1774 to 1779, for instance, the Continental Congress published its proclamations in English and German. Similarly, Pennsylvania printed all official announcements in English and German. All in all, according to sociologist April Linton, of the fifty-eight language policies adopted before 1880, thirty-three relate to German.

This early tolerance toward German has given rise to some misunderstandings about early American language policy, the most notable of which is that German was very nearly the official language of the United States. It wasn't. There was, it's true, some discussion of whether an official language other than English should be chosen. But this was mostly the Americans' attempt to thumb their noses at the British, and apparently it wasn't taken particularly seriously. Roger Sherman, a delegate to the Continental Congress from Connecticut, remarked, “It would be more convenient for us to keep the language as it was and make the English speak Greek.” Though there was some deliberation on the matter, there was never a vote on making any language—be it English, German, or even Greek—the official language.

Not only was German never actually under consideration as the official language of the United States, it was even in the eighteenth century actually the target of some criticism by those who claimed that the language barrier between English- and German-speakers was a problem of national import. No less a personage than Benjamin Franklin held particularly strong views on the Germans. In a 1753 letter, Franklin, never one to mince his words, wrote the following:

I am perfectly of your mind, that measures of great Temper are necessary with the Germans: and am not without Apprehensions, that thro' their indiscretion or Ours, or both, great disorders and inconveniences may one day arise among us; Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation, and as Ignorance is often attended with Credulity when Knavery would mislead it, and with Suspicion when Honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, 'tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain.

It is perhaps not irrelevant to note that Franklin attempted to start a German-language newspaper in 1732. It lasted only two issues.

The myth of this close brush with German as an official language dates to 1795, when Congress considered a proposal based on a petition from a group of Virginian Germans. They were asking, simply, for federal laws to be published in both English and German. The proposal was voted down, but somewhere in the debate there was a motion to adjourn in order to consider an alternative recommendation involving the distribution of German translations of laws and statutes to each state. This motion failed by one vote. It was this motion that somehow gave rise to the idea that German was one vote short of becoming the official language of the United States. To this day the United States has refrained from naming any language “official.”

This is not the case at the state level, however.

Though the nineteenth century was hardly free of nativist legislation and anti-immigrant sentiment, tensions rarely affected language policy on the federal or state level, with the notable exception of assimilationist policies toward American Indian languages. In fact, early language policy generally encouraged language diversity. In California, the public “cosmopolitan schools” of the 1860s taught French and German alongside English. In Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, schools were required to teach German if parents requested it. In 1889 New Mexico passed a law requiring that lower-level government employees be bilingual in English and Spanish.

When the political tide turned toward restrictive language policy, the language at the center of the debate was, again, German. The nativist stirrings of the late nineteenth century set the stage, ushering in legislation such as the 1906 requirement that naturalized citizens speak English and, subsequently, the Immigration Act of 1924. This generalized nativism intensified during World War I, when anti-German sentiment swept through the country.

In 1919, Nebraska passed a law that declared, “No person, individually or as a teacher, shall, in any private, denominational, parochial or public school, teach any subject to any person in any language than the English language.” It further ordered that instruction of foreign languages was illegal unless students had finished eighth grade. Then, on May 25, 1920, a teacher in a one-room parochial school named Robert T. Meyer was caught reading German Bible stories to a fourth-grade pupil. He was tried, convicted, and fined $25. He appealed, and in the case that would forever after be known as
Meyer v. Nebraska
, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the verdict on the grounds that the Nebraska law violated due process. Speaking for the majority, Justice James Clark McReynolds remarked somewhat famously, “Mere knowledge of the German language cannot reasonably be considered as harmful.”

This wasn't Nebraska's only stab at restrictive language legislation. In 1920 Nebraska also became the first state to declare English its official language, which it did by constitutional amendment. This would be the only real official-English legislation in the United States for decades.
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The most recent wave of official-English legislation kicked off in 1981, when Senator S. I. Hayakawa (R-Calif.) introduced a constitutional amendment declaring, “Neither the United States nor any State shall make or enforce any law which requires the use of any language other than English. This article shall apply to laws, ordinances, regulations, orders, programs, and policies.” When this amendment failed to progress to a vote, he tried another tack, introducing an amendment to immigration bill S. 2222: “It is the sense of the Congress that (1) the English language is the official language of the United States, and (2) no language other than the English language is recognized as the official language of the United States.” The Senate passed the amendment 78–21, but the bill it was attached to never passed the House.

Senator Hayakawa didn't run for reelection that year, but he was far from finished in politics. In 1983 he founded the group U.S. English, which bills itself as the “nation's oldest, largest citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States.” Though U.S. English and similar groups such as English First, the American Ethnic Coalition, and ProEnglish have yet to effect passage of any legislation on the federal level, since 1981 twenty-six states have passed official-English laws.
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What is the impetus for this type of legislation? Lucy Tse, an expert in second-language acquisition, looked at congressional speeches made regarding English-language-related amendments between 1981 and 1998 and found that of fifteen speeches, thirteen referred to English as a “unifying and stabilizing force” in American society. Another ten suggested that such legislation would help new arrivals. The 1995 testimony of Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) is representative of this stance: “By encouraging people to communicate in a common language, we actually help them progress in society. A common language allows individuals to take advantage of the social and economic opportunities America has to offer.”

Politically, then, the issue is framed in terms of national unity and economic growth, a savvy choice given the near-universal appeal of such concepts. You might as well argue that official English saves puppies and cares for babies. (What? You don't support official English? Well, you might as well just go kick a puppy and bomb the Capitol. See how that works?) The English-only and official-English movements are, as a result of this rhetorical success, able to point to public polling that repeatedly shows substantial support for the general idea of official English.

The problem is that when you actually bother to study the issue, you discover fairly quickly that these types of arguments simply don't hold water.

Standard reasoning holds that making English an official language will result in economic benefits for struggling immigrants. Now, in the United States, all other things being equal, fluency in English is unquestionably economically preferable to limited English proficiency. Official-English legislation isn't going to make it significantly more advantageous. Nor, to be fair, do supporters of such legislation frequently argue that it will. They do, however, imply that the provision of government services in multiple languages makes it easier to put off learning English. An official-language policy would remove that disincentive, thereby making the economic incentive that much more powerful.

This, of course, is foolish on a number of levels, the most obvious of which is that if the potential economic gains are great enough, it won't matter a bit what language you can or can't vote in. The economic realities at present are far more persuasive than anything that can or can't be found at the DMV. And the fact of the matter is that non-English-language communities are already perfectly well aware of the benefits of learning English. In fact, they might even be more sensitive to the issue than English-speakers themselves. According to a 2003 Pew Hispanic Center survey, 92 percent of Latinos believe it is “very important” for immigrant children to be taught English. Only 87 percent of non-Hispanic whites said the same.

The proposition that a single official language would promote national unity is no more defensible. The implication, of course, is that bilingualism somehow erodes unity, something politicians like to suggest with sly allusions to Quebec, Belgium, and India. But the evidence simply doesn't support this. Nevertheless, politicians continue to reference it in their speeches, alluding to modern-day Towers of Babel as if bilingualism were the evening entertainment in Sodom and Gomorrah.

The more I read about the official-English debate, the more confused I got. I had to be missing something. How could something be so popular and yet so seemingly indefensible? These were the questions flitting about my head as I headed out of Santa Fe and made my way to Laredo, Texas, the closest thing I could find to a bilingual town.

OK, so it wasn't exactly the
closest
thing I could find. But I'm not going to lie: I didn't want to go to El Paso. Like Laredo, El Paso is a bustling border town with a majority Spanish-speaking population. Unlike Laredo, however, El Paso is just across from Ciudad Juárez, the epicenter of the violence that is currently plaguing Mexico. The last time I had driven through El Paso I had been shocked by the crackle of energy and anxiety along the border, an impression that was only reinforced when I drove past a large-scale police operation involving a lot of cars and a lot of flashing lights. It seemed like it would be only a matter of time before there were also a lot of guns. There are few things in life I'm less keen on than a twitchy cop with an expansive mandate, so I decided to skip El Paso and head farther west.

As I made my way through Texas, visiting museums and monuments and out-of-the-way little towns recommended for their chiles relleños, it became almost commonplace for me to happen upon Homeland Security border checkpoints. In one sense they were trifling things; the livestock and agriculture inspection stations on your way into California are more substantial. And though I probably drove through a dozen of these things—maybe as many as twenty—I was always waved through.

Even so, I felt an anxious twist to my stomach every time I approached one. The weapons on display at each checkpoint let me know they meant business. And every time I saw them stop a pickup truck driven by someone who appeared to be Latino—as they did every time—I couldn't help but wonder about the calculations made by each checkpoint guard when deciding whether or not to wave a vehicle through. I suspected I would rather not know. Part of me began to wish I'd gone to El Paso instead.