<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">There's another new post on <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; "><a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">the Web of Language</a></span>:<br><br><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; "><p class="blog"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Lucida Grande'" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px; ">Louisiana school district may require English-only valedictory addresses -- why not call them bye-bye speeches instead, to avoid all foreign-language entanglements?</span></span></font></p><p class="blog"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; "><p class="blog">After co-valedictorians Hue and Cindy Vo flavored their recent Ellender High School graduation talks with a pinch of Vietnamese, the president of the Terrebonne Parish School Board, who wants English-only school ceremonies, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/us/30english.html" mce_href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/us/30english.html">proposed banning foreign languages in future graduation speeches</a>.</p><div>...</div><div><br></div><div>some people in Terrebonne were unhappy to hear an immigrant language spoken at a high school graduation.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The name Terrebonne – which means ‘good earth’ in French – reflects an earlier time when French was the most widely-spoken language, after Choctaw and Spanish, in the multilingual Louisiana Territory.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Initially there were few anglophones in Louisiana, also called Orléans, one reason many Americans were skeptical about the Louisiana Purchase. It’s said that at one point Thomas Jefferson contemplated sending 3,000 English-speaking settlers to the region to make the acquisition more palatable to the rest of the country.</div><div><br></div><div>....</div><div><br></div><div>So adamant had Louisiana’s English-only crowd become by mid-century that its secessionist constitution of 1861 ordered that all laws be printed in the language of the United States Constitution, forgetting in the zeal to promote English that the federal Constitution had been dumped when Louisiana joined the Confederacy.</div><div><br></div><div>.....</div><div><br></div><div><p class="blog">But reports of the death of Louisiana French were premature.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The state constitutional convention of 1864 once again rejected proposals to protect French, but the convention’s opening prayers were recited in French and English, and its proceedings were published in both languages.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition, schools in predominantly French-speaking areas were allowed to continue using French as a language of instruction.</p><div>n the other hand, that 1864 constitution also contained a provision that should sound familiar to today’s supporters of official English, who incorporate it in their “defense of English” legislation: no public official in Louisiana could be required to speak any language other than English.</div><div><br></div><div>But while the official language of Louisiana remains English, and the most widely-spoken language in the state is Spanish, not French, the Terrebonne school board proposal for English-only graduations might actually conflict with the state’s most recent constitution: “The right of the people to preserve, foster, and promote their respective historic linguistic and cultural origins is recognized” (Constitution of 1974, <a href="http://senate.legis.state.la.us/Documents/Constitution/constitution.pdf" mce_href="http://senate.legis.state.la.us/Documents/Constitution/constitution.pdf">Art. XII, sec. iv</a>)...</div><div><br></div><div>read the rest of this story on the controversial Louisiana graduation, which even got a notice on Fox News, on <a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">the Web of Language</a></div></div></span></div></span></p></span><p></p><div><br></div><div><br>DB<br><br>____________________<br>Dennis Baron<br>Professor of English and Linguistics<br>Department of English<br>University of Illinois<br>608 S. Wright St.<br>Urbana, IL 61801<br><br>office: 217-244-0568<br>fax: 217-333-4321<br><br><a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron">www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron</a><br><br>read the Web of Language:<br><a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage</a><br><br><br></div></body></html>