Before making English official, consider this

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

Before you make English official, consider this: If Kyrgyz is the  
official language of Kyrgyzstan, then why is everyone there speaking  
Russian?

Supporters of making English the official language of the United  
States should learn a lesson from the Kyrgyz Republic, whose  
constitution requires all government officials to speak Kyrgyz, the  
Central Asian country’s official language. Plus anyone who wants to be  
president of Kyrgyzstan first has to pass a Kyrgyz language test.  
That’s not as easy as it sounds. Seventy-eight percent of the  
presidential candidates failed the Kyrgyz test this year.
...

find out why official English and official Kyrgyz might not really be  
the same thing. Read the rest of this post on

the Web of Language:   http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage



Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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