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An interesting article about the possibility of declaring an official language in the United States. There is no official language in the US<, but the most widely spoken languages are English, closely followed by Spanish.

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On July 31, Carlos Steven Baez was enjoying a meal with his mother at a Southern California IHOP when an older white woman dining nearby overheard them conversing in Spanish.

"We speak English here," she scolded as a stunned Baez filmed. "Go back to Spain."

"You can't be doing that," Baez replied. "That's racist."

The woman then launched into a nonsensical yet seemingly well-rehearsed denunciation of bilingualism-linking it to Nazism and Stalinism while name-dropping every autocrat from Hitler to Castro. "We want English in the United States," she said. "We have freedom of speech ... we want that freedom."

Though clearly not representative of most Americans, this woman is hardly the first to conflate American patriotic identity (as symbolized by a superficial understanding of "freedom" and "liberty") with policies mandating English-only communication. Geopolitical history demonstrates the authoritarian bent of one-language policies, as well as their inability to produce greater nationalistic cohesion, as is so often their stated purpose.

Geopolitical history demonstrates the authoritarian bent of one-language policies, as well as their inability to produce greater nationalistic cohesion. Though the United States has no official language at the federal level, bills are continually introduced in both houses of Congress calling for the establishment of English as the nation's sole official language. ( One such bill, proposed this March by Oklahoma senator Jim Inhofe, is predictably titled the "English Language Unity Act of 2015.") Advocacy groups like ProEnglish-an influential Virginia-based nonprofit-are a major force behind this kind of legislation.

The Southern Poverty Law Center classified ProEnglish-founded by notorious xenophobe John Tanton-an active anti-immigrant hate group in 2009. In 2013, ProEnglish provided legal support to an Arizona community-college student suspended for a number of reasons including complaining about students "speaking Spanish in and out of class," according to the Tucson Sentinel.

The student in question, Terri Bennett, became something of a folk hero in the conservative press that year-a courageous figure standing resolute against the tides of forced multiculturalism, reverse racism, and a deterioration of American culture and values.

But what proponents of the English-only movement probably don't realize is that their closest ideological comrades are also some of their most despised: zealots of the Chinese communist party. The People's Republic of China (PRC) is home to nearly 300 individual living languages. And it is also home to one of the strictest monolingual language policies in the world.

"From its inception, the central tenet of PRC language planning was to promulgate Mandarin Chinese, no matter the ethnicity of the speaker," writes Arienne M. Dwyer, a Chinese and Altaic linguistic anthropologist at the University of Kansas, in a May 2014 article for World Politics Review. Though the PRC "emphasizes that fluency and literacy in Mandarin are key for individual economic advancement," as English is in the United States, Dwyer believes these individual-empowerment arguments are "intentionally simplistic."

In Chinese schools, Mandarin is "a primary means of socialization of minority and non-Mandarin Han students," Dwyer claims. "So, in the mid-1980s, Beijing began transferring minority pupils to schools in Han-dominated China under the neidi ban, or inland class policy." Eventually a full third of secondary-school graduates from Tibet were transferred, and by 2011, more than 23,000 of Tibetan primary-school graduates had been forced to change schools as well. In Xinjiang, home to the Uighurs, China's largest Muslim minority, the ministry of education announced in 2014 that "qualified high-school graduates" were to be sent to inland China for four years to participate in "Xinjiang classes." These special courses were engineered to teach Uighur youth to "love the socialist motherland [and] safeguard national unity."

These policies bear troubling similarities to those used by US and Canadian residential boarding schools in the the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Designed to forcibly assimilate Native American/First Nations youth, the institutions did little to ameliorate the overall conditions of indigenous communities in either country. "Little wonder that Tibetans and Uighurs consider these policies to be at best linguicide," Dwyer adds.

The 1976 Soweto Uprising- a bloody protest led by black South African high-school students against the white-supremacist government-is another example of the problems endemic to one-langauge policies. Students from area schools flooded the streets of Soweto Township to protest the imposition of the Afrikaans language in schools, only to be brutally dispersed by police. The uprising is widely viewed as the beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa, although the policy wouldn't be fully demolished until 1994. But it also stands as substantial proof of the divisiveness and ineffectiveness of forced monolingualism policies. Clearly, already disadvantaged groups aren't likely to develop any Good, old-fashioned, anti-immigrant nativism is alive and well. further affinity for a state that dictates how they communicate.

From a communication perspective, these types of one-language policies aren't even necessary in the United States. Immigrant groups tend to linguistically assimilate within a single generation, as was the case with Germans, Italians, Poles, and Greeks in the early 20th century. The same can be said for Hispanic Americans: a2007 Pew study found that English fluency jumps 65% between first and second generations.

Which brings us back to the unfortunate incident at IHOP. While the woman in question is an extreme example, the kernel of her anti-immigrant sentiment is nevertheless identifiable in conservative elements across the US political landscape. As recent comments by GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump indicate, good, old-fashioned, anti-immigrant nativism is alive and well-the same kind of rhetoric used by turn-of-the-century xenophobes to discriminate against immigrants from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe.

The American "way of life" isn't under attack, because the American way of life cannot be distilled to a single cultural condition or experience. As it always has, the story of America is a story that is ever-expanding, growing richer and more textured-which is kind of the point of this country to begin with, isn't it?

In its organizational mission, ProEnglish claims "in a pluralistic nation such as ours, the function of government should be to foster and support the similarities that unite us, rather than institutionalize the differences that divide us." Which is to say that the function of government should be to foster monism-a theory that denies the existence of distinctions or multiplicity in society. Federally enforced linguistic (and by extension cultural) homogeneity? That's about as un-American as one can get.
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Declaring an official language in the United States is unnecessary-and un-American

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On July 31, Carlos Steven Baez was enjoying a meal with his mother at a Southern California IHOP when an older white woman dining nearby overheard them conversing in Spanish. "We speak English here," she scolded as a stunned Baez filmed. "Go back to Spain." "You can't be doing that," Baez replied.

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Here's an interesting article about linguistic diversity in the city of Chicago.

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Visit Crain's Chicago Business for complete business news and analysis including healthcare, real estate, manufacturing, government, sports and more.

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As other people is mentioning, in the Basque County we have 2 official languages, Basque and Spanish, but a lot of initiatives have taken place for the promotion of Basque as it almost disappeared during the dictatorship. After the dictatorship, new Basque music groups and styles appeared: Punk, Radical Rock... the aim of these groups was not only to become popular and commercial, but also to reclaim the identity and values of the Basque society. Indeed, the lyrics of many songs were related to the annoying political situation and opression suffered by Basque people under the control of Spanish government. The basque musical movement became very powerful and pushed younger generations to fight for their rights such as defining themselves as Basques and using their own language: Euskara.
I am posting  video about how Rock Radical Vasco started, sorry that is only in Spanish

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[Documental] Aquellas movidas - Rock Radical Vasco

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Documental emitido por La2 el 2 de Febrero de 2013. En este documental vamos al viajar a los sitios principales donde explotó el rock radical vasco y vamos a entrevistar a sus protagonistas. Todos los derechos de este vídeo pertenecen a RTVE.

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Although most people in the US speak English as their native language, English is not the official language of the country. The federal government doesn't recognize any language as official for the whole country. Some individual states have declared English as the official language, but not all states have an official language.

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The Korrika running is an exhibition race held every two years in the Basque Country to celebrate and support the Basque language.The race is organised by the AEK, the association for education in Basque, and usually it is scheduled to last two weeks. The first Korrika was held in 1980, and each one follows a different course, though they always try to cover a large part of Euskal Herria, the historical territories of the Basque Country: Bizkaia, Araba, Gipuzkoa (the "official" version of the Basque Country), Nafarroa (Navarre) and also Lapurdi, Zuberoa and Benafarroa (the French Basque Country). The race proceeds continuously without even stopping at night. In order to raise money to promote the Basque language, each kilometre of the race is "sold" to a particular individual or company who will lead the race as it passes over the purchased kilometer, and as race leader will carry the original wooden baton from the first Korrika, adorned with the banner of the Basque Country, the Ikurriña.

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The Korrika running is an exhibition race held every two years in the Basque Country to celebrate and support the Basque language.The race is organised by the AEK, the association for education in Basque, and usually it is scheduled to last two weeks. The first Korrika was held in 1980, and each one follows a different course, though they always try to cover a large part of Euskal Herria, the historical territories of the Basque Country: Bizkaia, Araba, Gipuzkoa (the "official" version of the Basque Country), Nafarroa (Navarre) and also Lapurdi, Zuberoa and Benafarroa (the French Basque Country). The race proceeds continuously without even stopping at night. In order to raise money to promote the Basque language, each kilometre of the race is "sold" to a particular individual or company who will lead the race as it passes over the purchased kilometer, and as race leader will carry the original wooden baton from the first Korrika, adorned with the banner of the Basque Country, the Ikurriña.

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As far as I know, euskera has become compulsory in every public school. Nowadays most students get a whole education in Basque Language. The evolution of the educational system started in the 80s', when 3 different models were created: A- Spanish is the language of instruction but there was a subject of Basque language; B- Spanish and Basque are both languages of instruction, altough most of the subjects are taught in Euskera; D- Basque is the language of instruction but there is a subject on Spanish language. This system exists in the present, but A model has disappeared in almost every public school, being relegated to the private ones.

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This is a short summary of the changes The Basque Country has suffered during the last years, exactly, with the dictation of Franco.-- Created using PowToon -- Free sign up at http://www.powtoon.com/ . Make your own animated videos and animated presentations for free.

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Yesterday, we discussed about the different initiatives that should be conducted for the promotion of Euskera. As you know, during the Spanish dictatorship, Basque language was about to die, but thanks to the efforts made by many speakers who believed in their unique identity, it was possible for the language to survive and to gain an important status inside the Basque Country.STUDENTS: A. With the help of the Basque speakers you'll find in this group, you should try to discover some of the initiatives that have taken place during the last 4 decades. Those initiatives can be related to politics, education, society, culture, arts... or any other sphere that might be important for the promotion of a minority language. You can post public questions for the native speakers and I'm sure they will be able to help you.B. Please, try to summarize the information you get, you can also contrast it with ideas taken from other sources. By next Thursday, I'd like you to send me an email with your individual summaries and conclusions (try to include your own ideas).C. In exchange, I would like you to post some information about the status of foreign languages inside the US ,or any other country you are originally from. For instance, is there any other official language in the US? has any initiative been carried out for the promotion of foreign languages? Is there any school where you can be instructed in a foreign language? Do native speakers of other languages have the same opportunities? Is there any foreign symbol, tradition or culture that has become particularly significant in the US? etc...BASQUE SPEAKERS: please, you can start writing your ideas on this, I'm sure you have a lot to say. You can add videos or articles in English if you think that could be useful for the students.In case you have any doubt, do not hesitate to ask me.GOOD LUCK AND THANK YOU!

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Yesterday, we discussed about the different initiatives that should be conducted for the promotion of Euskera. As you know, during the Spanish dictatorship, Basque language was about to die, but thanks to the efforts made by many speakers who believed in their unique identity, it was possible for the language to survive and to gain an important status inside the Basque Country.STUDENTS: A. With the help of the Basque speakers you'll find in this group, you should try to discover some of the initiatives that have taken place during the last 4 decades. Those initiatives can be related to politics, education, society, culture, arts... or any other sphere that might be important for the promotion of a minority language. You can post public questions for the native speakers and I'm sure they will be able to help you.B. Please, try to summarize the information you get, you can also contrast it with ideas taken from other sources. By next Thursday, I'd like you to send me an email with your individual summaries and conclusions (try to include your own ideas).C. In exchange, I would like you to post some information about the status of foreign languages inside the US ,or any other country you are originally from. For instance, is there any other official language in the US? has any initiative been carried out for the promotion of foreign languages? Is there any school where you can be instructed in a foreign language? Do native speakers of other languages have the same opportunities? Is there any foreign symbol, tradition or culture that has become particularly significant in the US? etc...BASQUE SPEAKERS: please, you can start writing your ideas on this, I'm sure you have a lot to say. You can add videos or articles in English if you think that could be useful for the students.In case you have any doubt, do not hesitate to ask me.GOOD LUCK AND THANK YOU!