English as Official Language

English as Official Language

English was fist spoken during the times of early medieval England and has been a West Germanic language since its beginning. I the present world, it is a language that is widely used all across the globe, irrespective of any differences. Majority of the population in many sovereign states speak English as the first language; these states include the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, and numerous Caribbean nations. Besides this, following Mandarin Chinese and Spanish, English has been ranked as the third-most-common native language in the world. It has been adopted by the European Union as an official language and is also learned by people globally as a second language. The United Nations and majority of the Commonwealth countries along with a lot of other world organizations use English as their official language.

English as Official Language in United States

The United States has declared English as its official language. By making such a declaration, it means that all the official government business and documentation at each and every level is conducted in English solely. Moreover, this refers to the fact that all the records, public documents, regulations and legislations, along with any other public meetings, court hearings, or official ceremonies will be undertaken in the English language (Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne, 1979). There are some exceptions of common sense in the official English legislation that allow the usage of other languages instead of English for many things like the judicial proceedings, public health and safety services, promotion of tourism and foreign language instruction.

It was during the year 1996; H.R. 123 was passed by the United States ENGLISH in an instrumental manner, "The Bill Emerson English Language Empowerment Act of 1996." This bill made English the official language of the United States government and was passed in the House of Representatives with a bipartisan vote of 259-169. However, it was not before the session ended that the bill was acted upon by the Senate. At present, the U.S.ENGLISH is functioning with the Rep. Steve King of Iowa for the purpose of assisting in passing in the 112th Congress an official English bill. H.R. 997 which is still pending in the U.S. House of Representatives. The official English law is present in thirty-one states and the most recent was the official English legislation that was passed in Oklahoma during the year 2010.

There are official languages in other countries too and this is shown by the fact that, at present, there are 23 working and official languages in the European Union. They include Czech, Bulgarian, Dutch, Danish, Estonian, English, French, Finnish, Greek, German, Irish, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Maltese, Romanian, Portuguese, Slovene, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish. The Community Regulation for the determination of the official languages was first passed during the year 1958. According to this regulation, French, Dutch, Italian and German were the first identified working and official languages that were introduced in the European Union and were the Member ...