Discuss Joshua Kendall's Oct. 15 Op-Ed article
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From the Los Angeles Times
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Not to diminish Webster's contributions, but no way was the new United States ever going to switch to some other language. Responding to a suggestion that Americans adopt Greek, because it was the language of the world's first democracy, Roger Sherman of Connecticut quipped that it would be "more convenient" for Americans to keep English for themselves and make the British speak Greek. Similarly, despite the myth that German came one vote shy of becoming the new nation's language: there was no such vote; there were no such proposals; it didn't happened, couldn't happen.
Dennis Baron @ 1:35 PM PDT, Oct 15, 2008
German or Hebrew could never have become the language of the US. There has been a preponderance of English speakers here since European settlement. British English and North American English had barely begun to diversify. US English has and social dialects, but they're mutually intelligible. European languages, including British , have more dialects, with less intelligibility, because they've been spoken there longer than our English. Language behaves like an organism; when communities speaking a language are separated, the speech of the communities diverges.
Ted Voth Jr @ 12:33 PM PDT, Oct 15, 2008
Americans owe their unity of language to Ulysses S. Grant.
Bernie Quigley @ 12:23 PM PDT, Oct 15, 2008
If we've never been divided by language, then why do I have to "press 1 for English"?
Unindicted Co-conspirator @ 11:10 AM PDT, Oct 15, 2008
"...the English of King George III had suddenly become the tongue of the oppressor." Wasn't the king a Hanoverian who spoke much better German than English?
Peter Andrew @ 1:55 AM PDT, Oct 15, 2008