AHC: Officially Bilingual USA

Should you choose to accept it, your challenge is to have the United States of America enact a policy of bilinngualism in a significant minority of its states if not the entire country. What this other language is doesn't matter, merely that it is widelyy spoken enough that the US can't stomp it out and has to adopt bilingualism.
 
Hmm, my first thought is...

Maybe a more densely settled Louisiana? With a large French speaking population of both whites and Native Americans? New Orleans being much larger then OTL, and when American buys the area, it finds it easier to slip into bi-lingualness then stomping French out? It might not be official for quite some time, due to prejudice but de facto starting at the Purchase.
 
Hmm, my first thought is...

Maybe a more densely settled Louisiana? With a large French speaking population of both whites and Native Americans? New Orleans being much larger then OTL, and when American buys the area, it finds it easier to slip into bi-lingualness then stomping French out? It might not be official for quite some time, due to prejudice but de facto starting at the Purchase.
Same, I would go for Luisiana.
 
Well, this forum really likes to speculate on how the Maritime Provinces and Quebec could have wound up part of the US, so there is your militantly Francophone minority in the latter. It did for Canada, so why not the US?

Otherwise, the whole sentiment of making English a single official language is relatively recent. Not that there weren't nativism movements, but I don't think it's that much of a stretch for a lot of states or territories to make Spanish official very early in their history. The only reason they didn't is probably because no one really thought about it. Texas, say. Early on the Tejanos were (and arguably still are) a significant part of the Texas elite and Spanish was de facto a second official language for a long time- it was just never made official, and over time the need to do so pretty much evaporated as everyone assimilated so it never happened. Same with all territory acquired via Guadalupe-Hidalgo.

Don't get me wrong- all of this is a stretch. But probably not impossible. I tend to be one of those who think that almost anything is possible given an early and drastic enough of a POD, as opposed to one of the many, many determinists you'll find here.
 
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Less anglo settlement in New Mexico. As a side note, New Mexico was an officially bi lingual state (laws needed to be published in both English and Spanish, state assembly could be addressed in Spanish etc.) for generations.

Even today, they issue birth certificates in both languages. The practice is evidently not done to accommodate recent immigrants. If anything, New Mexico Hispanos are adamant about not being identified as Mexican immigrants. Rather, the practice is a hold over from the old days when Spanish was an official language in the state.
 
Could go with the urban legend of there being a bill in the House about co-officiating German, which would with some arm twisting be more likely than French or Spanish due to the earliness it supposedly happened (hint: It didn't).
 
I've been told that there were proposals to make German a second official language during a big wave of German speaking immigration, just like you hear similar proposals with Spanish during the big wave of Spanish speaking immigrants.

One problem with these is that historically bilingualism is never used to accommodate immigrants, who can be expected to learn the native's language, or for that matter not let in at all. Immigrants' languages become official only when immigrants are conquering outsiders, in which case their language becomes the MAIN official language.

Bilingualism and similar schemes is used to accommodate an already established population that speaks a minor language, which the country has annexed. The situation applies to many Spanish speaking communities in the southern portions of the US and Puerto Rico, but there were never enough to them to make it an issue. You have to increase their numbers pre-annexation, or have the US take in big chunks of Mexico as well, and add Cuba.

The other problem is that the US has never had an official language, nor have any of the states, which is probably an insurmountable barrier to a second official language.
 
Could go with the urban legend of there being a bill in the House about co-officiating German, which would with some arm twisting be more likely than French or Spanish due to the earliness it supposedly happened (hint: It didn't).
Wasn't the reality an attempt to have laws and whatnot translated into German or something? It might help start a trend of co-officiating German if nothing else. At some point Pennsylvania Dutch becomes widespread and official enough to survive the anti-German hysteria of WW1 and establishing a precedence of states making secondary languages official, to the point where most are officially bilingual, albeit not with a common second language.
 
Assuming this is in US schools and not U.K./ rest of anglophone world I think one would need to wank New Netherlands and consequential Dutch speakers' power in US....

Increase population of NN to include more area that can the be broken into more states once British annexation comes around

Allow for Dutch yeomanry to settle the areas and increase Dutch political influence within the greater colonial theatre

I'm talking 13 colonies where New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Vermont, maybe even Pennsylvania are either majority Dutch speaking or have sizable minorities

Thus when Declaration of Independence comes around have it written in both languages

Maybe have some Anti-Dutch crackdown in Napoleonic wars that leads to mass migration to the Dutch states

Eerie canal carries mainly Dutch speaker settlers to the Great Lakes region

Northern prarie states settled by Dutch speaking settlers

US has two official languages to the point everyone is required to learn Dutch even if they live in the South, West, New England in respect to the sizable Dutch speaking populace of the US

People in New York and other Dutch states teach Dutch first English second

This is my post from a thread awhile ago that posed the challenge of having Dutch taught in English schools (as noted the poster didn't specify US/UK)

But I think the general gist of my post carries with the mission to make the US bilingual. Even if some ideas are far fetched (A strong New Netherlands) or not all of them happen (Stronger French attacks in Holland/Netherlands) if some of these events happen I think Dutch has a strong possibility of making US bilingual early on.

I mean Matin Van Buren grew up speaking Dutch first and English second and this was long after New Netherlands was absorbed with the 13 colonies/US.
 

Driftless

Donor
Timing and region are the keys. In the early days of the Republic, there was a significant group of French speakers near Quebec, and all along the Mississippi Valley and upper Great Lakes. They got assimilated pretty quickly (mostly). As others have noted, lots of German speakers at different intervals; and different waves and regions for various Spanish dialects.
 
Hmm, my first thought is...

Maybe a more densely settled Louisiana? With a large French speaking population of both whites and Native Americans? New Orleans being much larger then OTL, and when American buys the area, it finds it easier to slip into bi-lingualness then stomping French out? It might not be official for quite some time, due to prejudice but de facto starting at the Purchase.

Or, to go the other way, have Spain hold "Luisiana" for a longer time? The result is more Spanish communities in the region, and then when the Americans conquer it, Spanish is a much more important language in the region from OTL Illinois to Louisiana.
 
Or, to go the other way, have Spain hold "Luisiana" for a longer time? The result is more Spanish communities in the region, and then when the Americans conquer it, Spanish is a much more important language in the region from OTL Illinois to Louisiana.

I actually like this better since these Spanish people will be part of a chain fo Spanish speaking areas all the way out to California and the Southwest, if America conquers them. That is a lot of Spanish area...
 
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