Sunday, September 21, 2008

English-only lumbers on

I used to think that the fashion for English-only ballot initiatives was a sign that Native languages (or at least languages other than English) were growing in strength. After all, why would anyone bother with such an initiative unless they felt that English was under "threat?" Alaska 1998 initiative was ruled unconstitutional in 2002, but that hasn't stopped the movement elsewhere.

This November 4th Missourians will vote on Constitutional Amendment 1, which reads:
    "Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to add a statement that English shall be the language of all governmental meetings at which any public business is discussed, decided, or public policy is formulated whether conducted in person or by communication equipment including conference calls, video conferences, or Internet chat or message board?"

I wonder what language has been used in governmental meetings up till now?

The state motto Salus populi suprema lex esto is written in Latin, so would this initiative ban the use of the state motto in governmental meetings? The name Missouri is said be an Otoe Siouan word, but given that there are no surviving speakers of the Otoe dialect, that can't be seen as much of a threat. Still, it would be awkward if the word Missouri were to be banned from all official state governmental business.

While Alaska's English-only movement appears to be dead for now, we can learn much from the fear and misunderstanding which give rise to initiatives such as that in Missouri. In order to advance the cause of Native language revitalization, we must first overcome the hurdle of fear of non-English languages.
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1 comment:

  1. James Crippen9/21/08, 2:21 PM

    Generally the English-only people are reacting against the spread of Spanish, and usually are surprised when they realize their laws would run afoul of native languages. In places where native languages are largely unheard, like Missouri, this is usually true. But sometimes the reaction is against native languages specifically, like the recent situation between a restaurant owner and his employees down in Navajo country.

    I think that the English-only people don’t care about native languages unless the speaking population is large, like for Navajo or Yup’ik. They’re not going to actively legislate against Abenaki-Penobscot or Denai’ina, for example. Large populations pose a political threat, but the small ones are irrelevant to them, because they’ve already won their language war against those groups.

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