This letter is in retort to Angie Chipman’s letter from Dec. 4. Now I know this debate about making English the official national language has been going on for some time.ÿ

You say in your letter that people in your class flat out “said yes, leaving no room for ifs, ands or buts.” Did you ever think that they might have though about the question before it was brought up in your class? You obviously have not looked at what would happen if we did not have a national language, no matter what it is, or many languages.

To bring up your point about the Native Americans being here first; OK, so you know a little bit about America’s history. Do you know anything about any other country’s history?ÿ

Take Canada for example.ÿThey have French and English as their national languages, yet Quebec is the only province that speaks French.ÿNow take a look what it’s doing to the rest of the nation.ÿ

Quebec wants to break away from Canada and become its own independent country because it has become so different from the rest of the country. Did you ever think this may happen to America?

Another point I must bring up is which language(s) should we make the national language(s)?

Should we do it the easiest way and count how many people speak which language and use the most popular one?ÿ

Should we do it a different way and use first-come-first-served and use a Native American language? If we pick the latter of the two, now which tribe’s language should we use?ÿThat brings up another question, how will we choose?

Let’s say we decided to make both English and Spanish official languages. Don’t you think that’s a little racist? I mean, why Spanish and not French? We can’t leave others out, can we?

And what is to decide who we leave out? That’s a simple question to answer, we’ll just use every language as an official language. Not sounding bad, is it?

If we choose even one other language to be America’s official language, every document would have to be printed in both languages, like in Canada.ÿ

Which brings up the whole question about not being racist towards everybody whose language did not get chosen.

If you catch my drift, we would have to make every sign and every official document in every language as to not leave anybody out.

I remember reading in your letter that this subject came up in your secondary education class.ÿ

You do realize that if you do want to be a teacher, like most people in that class, that you would be forced to teach in both, or more, languages.ÿ

Do you think you would be able to learn all of the chosen official languages by the time you would be teaching?

To address your question about Americans not being open minded to minorities, look at any other country in the world. Do you think that if you went to Pakistan that everything would be in English for your convenience? No.

Off the top of my head I can’t think of any country that would go out of its way to accommodate foreigners as much and as well as we do.

The statement “learn the language or don’t go” is a very common one.

I realize it sounds harsh, but if you can’t speak German, don’t go and expect anybody to accommodate you with English.

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David Sandgren

Sophomore

Genetics