This is what happens when ideologies become political
Your beliefs about language matter because language is political.
The U.S. is often called a language graveyard, or a place where languages come to die. Much of the conversation around the U.S. being an English-speaking country is about national identity and the opportunities that come from speaking English in the U.S.
In this newsletter, we’re going to discuss the other side of this paradigm: When English is politically promoted as the only language spoken in the U.S, what happens to all the other languages? First, we’ll learn why almost all Indigenous languages are endangered. Then, we’ll dive into the English-Only movement.
How Indigenous languages have been erased
There were 300 Indigenous languages when the colonizers arrived.
Today there are less than 150, 99% of which are endangered. And they’re not endangered because Indigenous People have seen the social and economic possibilities of speaking English. No, they’re largely endangered because entire generations of Indigenous People were robbed from their homes by government agents, placed in government-run boarding schools, given English names, and forced to speak only English.
Even though the vast number of U.S. children don’t learn about this in school, between the years 1819 and 1969, the U.S. government operated more than 400 Indian boarding schools. The purpose1 of these schools was to, “kill the Indian, save the man,” to assimilate Indigenous People to White American society2. And a major way this was done was through eliminating their languages:
“Schools should be established, which children should be required to attend; their barbarous dialects3 should be blotted out and the English language substituted,” Atkins, 1887.
Students were severely punished for using languages other than English and were repeatedly told about the inferiority of their home languages. Even after they left the schools, generations of Indigenous People felt compelled to not pass down their home languages for fear of the negative repercussions on their children.
Darell Kipp and colleagues created a documentary to tell Indigenous people that their parents and grandparents didn't teach them English because of the opportunities. Rather, they felt they had no choice:
"People realized we didn't give up the language by choice…Our parents and grandparents didn't pass it on to us because they didn't want us to be abused,” Darell Kipp.
Those 100 years are a major reason why these languages are dying. And languages are not just languages: they are beacons of culture, with personal history intertwined; and much of Indigenous culture is lost in English. In the words of Dorothy Still Smoking,
“The language contains everything—our values and wisdom, our outlook on the world,” Dorothy Still Smoking.
At the time, most citizens and politicians talked about how these schools were helping Indigenous people find jobs and become citizens. While the tactics have largely changed, I would argue that that rhetoric is riddled in the same ideology that’s pervasive today: that English—and only English—is key to social advancements and assimilation in this country.
The English-Only Movement
Bilingualism to this day is not given full support in the U.S.—a country which simultaneously manages to be the country with the fifth highest number of “native” Spanish speakers, and a country in which Spanish is dying within two generations (that means that if a Spanish speaker moves to the U.S, there’s a low-chance that their grandchildren will speak Spanish.)
Part of the reason is that English is tied to real material gains in this country—from university acceptance to most jobs. However, a less-talked about reason is the political push to make English the only language spoken in the U.S.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the English-Only movement (which has existed since the 18th century) again gained traction and began going against bilingual education in states like California and Arizona.
Many proponents of these propositions talked about how teaching students in two languages would cause delays in how quickly they would learn English, since so much class time would be devoted to the home language. This idea was false at the time and continues to be false to this day.
But that ideology has had real-world consequences. One consequence, was historically passing propositions in several states which would automatically place students in English-only classrooms (though in some states parents could sign waivers to move them to bilingual classes).
This was done even though research in educational sociolinguistics has shown that it’s more effective to teach language learners using their home language and to transition to the target language.
The English-only approach had adverse effects on students, and after a few years these propositions were reversed in all states other than Arizona—a state with one of the lowest high school graduation rates for English learners.
In order to maintain the home language, children need support through education. The opponents of the English-only movement are not asking for Spanish-only school (or any other language). Rather, they’re asking for children to maintain their home language, while also learning English.
Conclusion
The U.S. is the country with the fifth highest number of languages spoken in the world. It’s also the country with the second highest number of endangered languages. This contradiction can be explained by the fact that the number of languages entering the country through (im)migration is high. But that those languages, once inside the language graveyard, die within a few generations.
If we return to the initial myth that the U.S. is an English-speaking country, we can see that the answer is jein (a German word that means yes, but no). Statistically, the U.S. is home to hundreds of languages. However, due to the power of English, these languages die quickly.
In terms of the argument that English (and by extension national unity) is threatened by other languages, let me be clear: English has never been threatened by another language. On the contrary, English has threatened every other language that has entered this country.
Discussion
Myths are powerful, and in a round-about way the point of this newsletter has been that the ideologies you carry matter. What you think about language matters. It affects how you judge other’s language. It affects how you judge your own language. It affects whose language is taught in schools, and whose language dies within a generation or two. It affects who can have a conversation with their family members and who might not be able to. That’s why reflecting on our beliefs about language is so important.
In the comments below (or by replying to this email) let me know:
What is something you believed to be true about language that you later learned was false?
Why do you think there are so many ideologies about language?
Do you think the ideologies presented in this article are only about language?
Works Cited
Quotes by Dorothy Still Smoking come from this article.
Numbers about the number of boarding schools and the motivations behind them come from this article.
For background information on the history of boarding schools, I read this article, this article,
For revival projects of Indigenous languages, I read this article.
For the English-only movement, I read this article, this article, and this article.
These schools were also created with the goal of taking Indigenous land.
This article discusses how assimilation often looked like training Indigenous People in low-paying trades which benefited mainstream society.
Notice the way that Indigenous languages are described as dialects, while English is described as a language. This ties back to the first newsletter, which discusses why all linguists believe languages are equal. Linguists tend to use words like variety instead of dialect because of the negative connotation around this word.