WI: A bilingual state in the US

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
Since there isn't an official American language, I guess it's as simple as estimating which state has the largest plurality of non-English speakers speaking a single non-English language at any point in time, which probably changes.
 
What if any of the current state in the US developed as a true bilingual state? It would be possible to Lousiania keep French as the daily languague or any state from the Mexican Cession keep Spanish as the main language?

I actualy had a chat with Dan about this regarding having a New England states being bilingual in the 20th century due to french-canadian immigration between mid-19th century and early 20th to work in the textile mills. The idea wasn't to have 50+ percent of the population but maybe around 1/3 (like New Brunswick).

The big problem though is the US culture itself, it always had a tendency toward the melting pot idea hand following WW1 many of the french speaking school were forced to switch to all english or stop receiving government funding (as other minority language school). The target wasn't the francophone incidently but the german ("can't have our ennemies' childrens keep avoiding assimilation"). Some according to Dan even stopped teaching french to their own kids either due to stigma attach to it or for english being seen as the language of social betterment. The fact that francophone were mostly catholics didn't help matter either.

Assuming we tweak things a bit, Dan report that most active francophone communite OTL nowaday is in Maine and if we go with historical figures, both Rhode Island and Vermont had, at their peak in the 1920s, about 13% of the population being french-canadians.
 
New Mexico is officially bilingual. All government documents and things like that are in English and Spanish. When I went to vote in local and national elections while I lived in the state, all instructions were in English and Spanish.
 

NothingNow

Banned
ALL the area ceded by Mexico to the US was ceded with the provision that the states there would be bilingual in origin, or, better said, that the rights of Spanish speakers there were preserved. That in my European perspective is simply reasonable, though I might be missing something. I gather that New Mexico is and legally always was mostly bilingual on paper at least.
There are other states where languages other than English enjoyed some degree of recognition; this included Dutch in New York, German in Pennsylvania, and, for some time, French in Louisiana. This was on its way out by the forties IIRC, with repressive measures taken against French in Louisiana. New Mexico never experienced any of that to my knowledge.
However, for an officially largely bilingual state I suppose there's Hawaii.

The Federal Government has of course had no language policy at all regarding non-indians, and in the 19th century, much of the US was effectively bi/tri-lingual at any given time.
Nativism and WWI of course changed that, with 15 states banning Non-English instruction during or after the war till it was struck down in Meyer v. Nebraska. It still killed bi-lingual education in the states.
Kill the English-Fluency=American Patriotism meme early on (in about 1905-6,) or have the Americanization movement fizzle out before WW1, and get the US to be more strictly neutral in the war or opposing the UK, and then you could presumably keep a nice chunk of the US as effectively bi/tri-lingual. Like Louisiana, the Midwest and much of New England.

But seriously, this is a pretty cool read, even if it's 23 years old:Language Freedom and Restriction: A Historical Approach to the Official Language Controversy
 
New Mexico is officially bilingual. All government documents and things like that are in English and Spanish. When I went to vote in local and national elections while I lived in the state, all instructions were in English and Spanish.

but is it *de jure* bilingual or simply de facto ? there are many places all over the world where various government services can be obtained out of practicality without there being a piece of legislature actualy saying "such-and-such is the official language of the country". To give one exemple, nowhere does it say that english is *the* official language of Australia but the system works in such a way as to make it appear so.
 
It took a whole lot longer than you think in Louisiana. It took the Civil War for French to cease being the language of state government. It wasn't until after the Civil War that French began to die out in New Orleans, starting with the upper classes. A trip to a cemetery here shows that evolution magnificently, where each family tomb, with its long lists of inscriptions for the enterred, usually having made the switch by 1900. The last weekly French language newspaper, L'Abeille, ended publication in 1917.

French in the rest of Louisiana was doomed by two state laws, the first in 1915 ending French-only education by mandating bilingual instruction in primary and secondary schools, and then in 1921 the outright banning of French from the classroom. Even speaking French on the schoolyard became a corporal offense. The next 20 years saw a systematic, state-sponsored assimilation plan that destroyed French as the language of daily life in all but the most rural areas.

It wouldn't take many butterflies for Louisiana to still be a state where 30% or more of the pupolation speaks French at home in 2013 instead of the perhaps 4% who remain OTL.

I dont know about the entire state of Indiana, but two counties, Benton & Tippecanoe, had a significant German speaking population to the 1920s. The 'Americanism' movement that peaked from WWI more or less ended that. My father generation grew up in the 1920s learning only a few phrases of German.

Further north In Jasper county there several townships were predominatly form Dutch immigrants. There one of the ultra conservative Dutch Reformed Church congregations continues the worship service in the Dutch language until 1962.
 
but is it *de jure* bilingual or simply de facto ? there are many places all over the world where various government services can be obtained out of practicality without there being a piece of legislature actualy saying "such-and-such is the official language of the country". To give one exemple, nowhere does it say that english is *the* official language of Australia but the system works in such a way as to make it appear so.
It's technically only de facto bilingual - About 65% speak only English and about 30% speak Spanish. New Mexico's Constitution does require official documents to be published in both languages, but the state's Constitution also does not mention any "official" language.
 
The important distinction to make is real bi-linguality. In QC for instance, it isn't actually bi-lingual, it's French. The only bi-lingual province in Canada is New Brunswick, with English and French. The best bets for parity would be either New Mexico (Spanish), Florida (really big exodus from Cuba), Rhode Island (because it's so small) or maybe even Minnesota (Super-Swedish migrations).

The real AHC is getting state governments that are tolerant enough to not assimilate the non-english language, while still maintaining that good ol' America-ness needed for bi-lingual.
 
There's Hawaii (or Hawai'i if you prefer).

Actually, historically, no. The Provisional Government switched the schools to an all english language curriculum and suppressed the Hawaiian language newspapers. The Republic and then the Territorial Government are continuations of the Provisional Government so there would be no change in policy. I don't think, tho I maybe wrong, that the idea of a bilingual state arose until the state constitutional convention in the mid-20th century.
 
The Federal Government has of course had no language policy at all regarding non-indians, and in the 19th century, much of the US was effectively bi/tri-lingual at any given time.
Nativism and WWI of course changed that, with 15 states banning Non-English instruction during or after the war till it was struck down in Meyer v. Nebraska. It still killed bi-lingual education in the states.
Kill the English-Fluency=American Patriotism meme early on (in about 1905-6,) or have the Americanization movement fizzle out before WW1, and get the US to be more strictly neutral in the war or opposing the UK, and then you could presumably keep a nice chunk of the US as effectively bi/tri-lingual. Like Louisiana, the Midwest and much of New England.

But seriously, this is a pretty cool read, even if it's 23 years old:Language Freedom and Restriction: A Historical Approach to the Official Language Controversy

Thanks for the link, it seems very interesting.
 
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