“Trigger Happy Idioms” y el idioma de la ley

In the United States, conflicts over language persist, particularly in places with large immigrant populations. Having passed an initiative in 1998 that prohibits teaching schoolchildren in any language but English, Californians may be more cognizant of the possibility of "language wars" than other Americans. But Shell can imagine future scenarios with national scope. - Nell Lake

California Prop 227 – “The Language of the Law”Chapter 3. English Language Education for Immigrant Children

Article 1. Findings and Declarations 300. The People of California find and declare as follows:

(a) Whereas, The English language is the national public language of the United States of America and of the State of California, is spoken by the vast majority of California residents, and is also the leading world language for science, technology, and international business, thereby being the language of economic opportunity; and

(b) Whereas, Immigrant parents are eager to have their children acquire a good knowledge of English, thereby allowing them to fully participate in the American Dream of economic and social advancement; and

(c) Whereas, The government and the public schools of California have a moral obligation and a constitutional duty to provide all of California's children, regardless of their ethnicity or national origins, with the skills necessary to become productive members of our society, and of these skills, literacy in the English language is among the most important; and

(d) Whereas, The public schools of California currently do a poor job of educating immigrant children, wasting financial resources on costly experimental language programs whose failure over the past two decades is demonstrated by the current high drop-out rates and low English literacy levels of many immigrant children; and

(e) Whereas, Young immigrant children can easily acquire full fluency in a new language, such as English, if they are heavily exposed to that language in the classroom at an early age.

(f) Therefore, It is resolved that: all children in California public schools shall be taught English as rapidly and effectively as possible. Source: California Secretary of State. “English Language in Public Schools, Initiative Statute: proposition 227, Fulltext of the Proposed Law.” Sos.ca.gov. California Secretary of State. 26 June 2009 < http://primary98.sos.ca.gov/VoterGuide/Propositions/227text.htm>.

US Census 2000 – California - Languages spoken at homeSource: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau. California

2000: Census 2000 Profile. August 2002. 1 July 2009 <http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/c2kprof00-ca.pdf>

Population 5 years and over ######## 100Speak only English ######## 60.5Speak a language other than English ######## 39.5Spanish or Spanish Creole 8,105,505 25.8French (incl. Patois, Cajun) 135,067 0.4French Creole 4,107 0Italian 84,190 0.3Portuguese or Portuguese Creole 78,403 0.2German 141,671 0.5Yiddish 8,952 0

Other West Germanic languages 30,796 0.1Scandinavian languages 28,653 0.1Greek 28,847 0.1Russian 118,382 0.4Polish 23,435 0.1Serbo-Croatian 23,872 0.1Other Slavic languages 28,696 0.1Armenian 155,237 0.5Persian 154,321 0.5Gujarathi 33,112 0.1Hindi 76,134 0.2Urdu 31,588 0.1Other Indic languages 112,119 0.4Other Indo-European languages 37,750 0.1

Chinese 815,386 2.6

Japanese 154,633 0.5

Korean 298,076 0.9

Mon-Khmer, Cambodian 71,305 0.2

Miao, Hmong 65,529 0.2

Thai 39,970 0.1

Laotian 41,317 0.1

Vietnamese 407,119 1.3

Other Asian languages 76,013 0.2

Tagalog 626,399 2

Other Pacific Island languages 113,432 0.4

Navajo 1,774 0

Other Native North American languages 6,729 0

Hungarian 19,231 0.1

Arabic 108,340 0.3

Hebrew 34,647 0.1

African languages 45,471 0.1

Other and unspecified languages 35,548 0.1

Self-Identification of English proficiency Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau. California

2000: Census 2000 Profile. August 2002. 1 July 2009 <http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/c2kprof00-ca.pdf>

• LANGUAGE SPOKEN AT HOME• Population 5 years and over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31,416,629 100.0• English only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19,014,873 60.5%• Language other than English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,401,756 39.5

Speak English less than ″very well″ . . . . . . . . 6,277,779 20.0• Spanish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8,105,505 25.8

Speak English less than ″very well″ . . . . . . . . 4,303,949 13.7• Other Indo-European languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,335,332 4.3

Speak English less than ″very well″ . . . . . . . . 453,589 1.4• Asian and Pacific Island languages. . . . . . . . . . . 2,709,179 8.6

Speak English less than ″very well″ . . . . . . . . 1,438,588 4.6Only 20 percent of Californians over age five identified themselves as

those who speak English less than “very well.” While self-identification of proficiency has its own inherent questions related to accuracy, this begs the question of whether this proposition is a “problem” to fix in the first place.

CA – Languages Spoken at Home 2006

Ferguson and Heath’s lens upon 227Source: Ferguson, Charles A. and Shirley Brice Heath, Introduction. Language in the USA. Ed. Edward Finegan and John R.

Rickford. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004. xxxiv-xxxv.

Back to the Prop 227 law:(a) Whereas, The English language is the national public language of the United States of America

and of the State of California, is spoken by the vast majority of California residents, and is also the leading world language for science, technology, and international business, thereby being the language of economic opportunity;

Was / Will this law be true in the future for California? How will languages other than English (mainly Spanish) exert its language power over English when it reaches the minority majority?