I don't believe it should be a requirement for countries to have an
official language. If countries feel like they need to have an official
language i feel like it limits their people in the ability or care to learn
other languages. Most western culture first world countries are
places that less privileged countries people move to have the
opportunity to be more successful and provide better for their
families. If these countries had an official language it would possibly
deter people from moving there.
A lot of countries use their native language but also know multiple
other languages that make it easier for them to communicate. In
most western cultures they do not teach multiple languages. Some
people are intimidated by learning other languages because they
look and sound intimidating to them. Not requiring an official
language and urging people to learn multiple languages could benefit
a lot of cultures and help the world communicate better.
Should a country have an official language? I think that a country
should have established a language of primary use but I don’t think
that it should be mandatory to consider it an official language. The
U.S. for example, does not have an official language even before its
discovery the natives spoke their language, during its independence
you could say that English was the most spoken language but we
have to remember that the U.S. has been seen as the land of the
free for a really long time and has become the home for millions of
people all over the world.
Should English be the main ‘international language’, if so why in
America people judge people by their fluency in English? I think that
English should be use as the ‘international language’ not because I’m
an American and it is the language I speak but because it seems that
almost every single country in the world that does not speak English
as their primary language teaches it as secondary. I think that in the
U.S. people judge other people by their fluency in English based on
the generation that they were born. For example, after WWII a lot of
Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and most did not speak English so
during that time with in their communities it was more acceptable to
speak their native tongue but as generations go by they tend to
forget or simply don’t practice their families native language.
I’ve never tried to learn Arabic, Persian, Hebrew or Turkish. I’ve tried
learning a little Italian and Portuguese and just because they are
similar to Spanish. Now that I’m stationed here in Bahrain I would
definitely like to learn some Arabic.
Having an official language in a country can be observed to be crucial to the
operations of not just the government, but the education, economics, and
basic communication methods of any nation. There is most likely a
connotation with having an official language that it pushes aside all other
languages, which is true in certain cases. The government of China has made
Mandarin the official language of China, and pushes for it to be taught in the
southern regions like Guangzhou or Hong Kong where part of my family
originates, and where Cantonese is the dominant language. The forcing of
Mandarin has caused a steady decrease in the speakers of Cantonese, and
many Cantonese speakers I know observe this phenomenon as the Beijing
Elite forcing the rest of China to conform to them.
c The importance of languages seems to imply that the observation of
languages is based on some criteria. Utility comes to mind initially, and that
would lead to the answer that the most widely utilized languages are the most
important. That again would bring up Mandarin Chinese as second with
English as the most widely spoken language. Another way of thinking of
what language is 'important' would be the beauty of it, which is impossible to
measure since it is a subjective standard. Being important as a language
seems to imply too many possible criteria that it's very difficult to ascertain if
there is any, unless for example the criteria of utility is used, in which case an
answer can be derived.
c The international language is not set by any one person, but by
circumstance and the collective decisions of large populations. Setting an
'international language' seems superficial since any large group of people can
overturn it on a whim, or even decide not to have one.
c American people do not collectively judge people based on their
proficiency in the English language than any other country and their
population. Many countries do judge individuals on their linguistic skills, and
this behavior is not particularly endemic to the United States. I have
encountered less people with dire attention paid to linguistic skills in speech
in the United states than every other country I've visited. In my personal time
in Japan, not being able to speak Japanese or English branded one with the
connotation of being unlettered.
c I have learned Arabic from high school, and I report my experience of it as
positive. The teacher helped me in the process of learning the Arabic
language, and I enjoy looking at Arabic writing as well as learning the
definitions of those words.
Sources
Klappenbach, A. (2021, March 21). The 12 most spoken languages in the
world – Busuu blog. Busuu Blog. https://blog.busuu.com/most-spoken-
languages-in-the-world/
ThinkImpact. (2022). US Literacy Statistics 2022.
https://www.thinkimpact.com/. https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-
statistics/#:~:text=Adult%20Literacy%20Statistics,across%20the%20U.S.%2
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