What the heck is an "official" language?

[rbhatt at uiuc.edu]

There is a nice piece on this matter, on Official English for the US, written by my colleague, Dennis Baron, that should be of interest to this list.  The URL is:

http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/view?blogId=25&topicId=589&count=1&ACTION=VIEW_TOPIC_DIALOGS&skinId=286

Or you can access it from:

http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/view?blogId=25

All best,
Rakesh

---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:49:56 +0100
>From: "Anthea Fraser Gupta" <A.F.Gupta at leeds.ac.uk>  
>Subject: RE : What the heck is an "official" language?  
>To: <lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu>, <lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
>
>Absolutely. We had  some discussion about this a couple of months ago. In actuality, the US, like the UK already has an official language. But even if English were to be made de jure the official language, I fail to understand why this designation would entail the proscription of other languages or a ban on any funding of other languages. 
> 
>Anthea
>
>*     *     *     *     * 
>Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr) 
>School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT <www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg> 
>NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk 
>*     *     *     *     * 
>
>________________________________
>
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Associate Professor, Linguistics and SLATE
Department of Linguistics
University of Illinois
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