This Is The Anglosphere
It's disrespectful to not even try to learn the dominant language where you live
The Tower of Babel is one of those classic Biblical stories that you don’t forget. We get it from the Book of Genesis:
Now the whole earth had one language and one speech… And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
One way to interpret this story? As a metaphor for the reality that languages evolve and change over time, and that dialects always emerge.
In his insightful book The Power of Babel, the linguist John McWhorter makes the case that “dialect is all there is.” Just consider many varieties of English there are—Southern, Massachusetts, British, Texan, Australian, Irish, Californian, to name a few.
Which one of these is the “pure” English, i.e. not a dialect?
The answer is none. Linguistic diversity and dialect formation are an inevitable, unstoppable processes. Just as Latin gave birth to the Romance languages over centuries, every large language spawns new dialects and accents as soon as communities drift apart and new civilizations emerge.
Although there are innumerable varieties of English—imagine someone from New York City speaking with someone from Scotland—these are still mutually intelligible dialects. That is, some guy from Boston might be talking about how Chahlie pahked his cah near the rivah, but someone from Alabama could still understand him, with enough effort.
However, there is not mutual intelligibility between say, French and English speakers, of course, and this poses a threat to cultural cohesion in ways that dialects do not.
All that is to say, seeing as America’s founding documents, great artistic achievements, and mass communications are in English, it is concerning to observe a situation in which people come to live in this country and aren’t even actively learning it. Which is why I think it is a wise move that the U.S. declared English its official language by executive order.
I’m aware of the issue of people living here without knowing English through growing up in my hometown, and stories from my mom’s experience as an ESL (English as a second language) teacher, in which many of the children’s families speak only Spanish or Portuguese.
But you don’t need to rely on anecdotes from me, you can also look at some data. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey, about 26 million people age 5 and over are classified as Limited English Proficient. That is roughly 8 percent of the population.
The same survey also shows that about 5 million households are “limited‑English–speaking households,” meaning no one age 14 or older speaks English very well.1 This is problematic in every area imaginable, including economic opportunities, community participation, and general safety.
Now, as someone who has learned a language, I have empathy for how challenging it can be. Especially English. My goodness, it must be a nightmare to learn. So many words aren’t pronounced how they are spelled and vice versa; so many rules of the language are counterintuitive and illogical.
And we should always be mindful that certain barriers—poverty, illness, or other tragic situations—prevent people from doing the necessary work to learn.
While we should always approach this topic with compassion, we should leave no doubt: making no effort to learn English is both disrespectful and unacceptable.
In my conversations with people from different countries, it is clear that Americans are often made fun of for being rude when traveling abroad, notorious for not even bothering to learn a little bit of the local language. As far as I can tell, this is a valid criticism.
On the other hand, there are people who spend not just a week on vacation, but their entire day-to-day lives in the America, and don’t even learn the main language. Not good!
Now, the bar doesn’t have to be set that high. Again, I understand that learning English is super hard, especially for adults. But not everyone needs to master English at a flawless C2-level.2 We do, however, need the ability communicate with each other.
We don’t want to end up like the people after Babel, scattered into countless tongues, confused and divided. Learning a language is hard and messy. But the effort to understand and be understood is what holds a society together. In the United States, that effort starts and must continue in English.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 ACS 1‑Year Estimates, Table S1601 and Table S1602.
This is a reference to the CEFR, or Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. It is the standardized guidelines for measuring skill in a language. A1 and A2 are beginner levels, B1 and B2 are intermediate levels, and C1 and C2 are advanced levels.
Then there is the issue of those of us who only speak english at yet find ourselves not communicating well at all with other english speakers. There's the functional aspect of language you are addressing here and then the relational aspect of using it that seems to be something we ought to care about just as much as the mechanics.
As someone born here who didn’t learn English until age four with the help of Sesame Street, I believe cultural cohesion is important and necessary. However, let’s not mistake what this executive order is truly about. It’s not a unifying measure—it’s designed to create hardships for the very people we should have empathy for. This sets a precedent for making multilingual notices illegal, which would affect many essential services, most importantly voting ballots.
Learning another language is difficult, and as many Americans demonstrate, so is mastering the only one they know. A better approach would have been developing a plan to teach English to those here legally through voucher systems to prevent fraud, or as a prerequisite for naturalization. With AI’s prevalence, the cost would be minimal if we genuinely wanted to eliminate language barriers without creating new ones.
I appreciate the sentiment and tone of your article, but you discount the turmoil this creates for people who—whether they know English well or not—may communicate in a different language. Picture some “American” approaching them and demanding they speak English because “this is America.” This was already happening before the executive order; now these individuals will be doubly emboldened to act this way.