Common ground and the English-only movement (fwd link)

[phil cash cash]

Common ground and the English-only movement
by Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

The United States is not what it was 200 years ago. It will not be in 200 years
what it is now. It does not belong to the English, the Italians, the Irish, the
Africans, the Hispanics. It belongs to all of us who are American citizens at
this moment in time. Our American patrimony cannot be bought, nor can it be
sold.

Posted on December 8, 2008
El Paso, TX

Twenty years ago, enroute to the Arizona Capitol during the Oct. 22, 1988 march
against the English Only Proposition, I was struck by the fallacies and
inconsistencies persistent in the arguments of those pressing for its adoption.
The English Only law was passed but later declared unconstitutional on First
Amendment grounds And here we are in the year 2008 still beset by those same
arguments for English Only laws by the likes of state Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler)
who has “filed a series of bills for the 81st session of the Texas legislature
aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants and the predominant language they,
along with millions of Texans, speak” (NPT, Nov. 19, 2008). What are the
proponents of English Only afraid of? Recently, a Floridian opined that
“Spanish may be the native language of many Americans, but it is a language
that includes only some, and alienates most.” This is a puzzling utterance
because there are more speakers of Spanish in the Americas than there are
speakers of English.

As a professor of English (now retired), I am not surprised by how little
Americans really know about their language and its linguistic roots.
Unfortunately, many Americans believe that the linguistic foundation of the
United States is English. In the strictest sense of the word it’s not English
that we speak in the United States but “American,” as H. L. Mencken correctly
described it more than 75 years ago.

Access full article below:
http://www.newspapertree.com/culture/3162-common-ground-and-the-english-only-movement