Dear indah,
It is claimed quite often that in the early days of the United States
there had been a vote whether German or English should be the official
language of the newly founded country, in order to cut the cultural
connections to the odious former colonial power Great Britain and with
respect to the huge share of Germans in many parts of the 13 States.
Also, it is a frequent part of the story that German lost out to
English by only one vote or at least a very small number of votes.
However, this is only a legend. It is a fact that there has never been
such a vote neither did the United States ever have something like an
"official language" by law:
"The legend usually goes something like this: 'In 1776, German came
within one vote of becoming America's official language instead of
English.' (...) At first it may sound plausible. (...) But a closer
look reveals several serious problems with this official-language
story. First of all, the United States has never had an 'official
language' – English, German or any other – and doesn't have one now.
Nor was there any such vote in 1776. Congressional debate and a vote
concerning German probably did take place in 1795, but dealt with
translating US laws into German, and the proposal to publish laws in
languages other than English was rejected a few months later."
Source: About.com - German the Official US Language?
http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa010820a.htm
The Frequently Asked Questions of the Usenet newsgroup sci.lang also
deal with this question, which comes up rather often:
" 'German lost out to English as the US's official language by 1
vote.' This entertaining story is also told of Greek, Latin, and even
Hebrew. There was never any such vote. Dennis Baron, in THE ENGLISH
ONLY QUESTION
(1990), thinks the legend may have originated with a 1795 vote
concerning
a proposal to publish federal laws in German as well as English. At
one
point a motion to table discussion (rather than referring the matter
back
to committee) was defeated 41-40. The proposal was eventually
defeated."
Source: sci.lang FAQ, by Michael Covington
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/html/faqs/ai/nlp/sci_lang/faq.html
You can read an extensive essay by Dennis Baron, "The Legendary
English-Only Vote Of 1795", in which he proves that this story is
nothing but an urban legend, here:
watzmann.net: Urban Legend: German almost the official language in US,
by Daniel Huber, 2000
http://www.watzmann.net/scg/german-by-one-vote.html
Search terms used:
legend german "primary language" usa vote:
://www.google.de/search?q=legend+german+%22primary+language%22+usa+vote&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de&meta=
"German lost out to English as the US's official language by 1 vote.":
://www.google.de/search?q=%22German+lost+out+to+English+as+the+US%27s+official+language+by+1+vote.%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=
Hope this answers your question!
Regards,
Scriptor |
,
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