French 1412. The United States Should be a Bilingual and Not an “English-Only” Country

French 1412
30 June 2020
The United States Should be a Bilingual and Not an “English-Only” Country
The United States continues to witness a resurgence of the debate on whether the English language should be used as the only official language. Proponents of the “English-Only” movement, such as President Donald Trump, claim that since the country is English, citizens have to speak in English. However, these claims have no legal basis and in a country with a growing number of Spanish-speaking populations, English should not be declared as a formal language (Diez). On another note, it is common for citizens from other countries in the world to learn English as a second language. In a globalized world, bilingualism facilitates international commerce by enhancing communication to solidify business relationships and strengthening transnational supply chains.
Bilingualism enhances communication, an important ingredient in solidifying business relationships, and international commerce. Liberman et al note that early exposure of children to multiple languages largely builds their communication skills as one of the social gains of multilingualism (1). While the promotion of literacy and bilingualism has an added advantage to students since they can thrive and work in multilingual settings, about 80% of the U.S. population is purely monolingual despite the country being recognized as an “‘immigrants’ nation” (Billings and Walqui; Giambo and Szecsi 56)). “English-only” will, therefore, limit the way of doing business with Americans’ international counterparts in business as they are not capable of communicating in their native languages to strengthen their relationship in commerce.
Besides communicating with global counterparts and enhancing business relationships, bilingualism allows the development and strengthening of transnational supply chains which leads to lowering of prices of consumer goods and thus benefiting all Americans. In Canada, the bilingualism argument is not only based on historical grounds, but also on the social and economic reasons that have exposed the ...