The Horror of a U.S. Politician Speaking Spanish.
During last night’s Democratic presidential debate, where candidates once again spoke a few sentences in Spanish, Josh Hammer, the editor-at-large for the conservative Daily Wire, tweeted:
“It is unconscionable that a major political party dabbles in a foreign language during its presidential debates.”
Hammer isn’t the only fragile soul whose delicate sensibilities were scandalized by having to hear a few jarring seconds of non-English.
In recent polling, about half of white Republicans responded that it would bother them “some” or “a lot” to “hear people speak a language other than English in a public place.” Eighteen percent of white Democrats responded similarly.
Setting aside how Hammer could interpret speaking Spanish as “unconscionable,” perhaps the more fascinating question is whether Spanish can accurately be described as a “foreign” language in the United States at all.
More Spanish speakers than Spain
The United States does not have, and has never had, an official language — English or otherwise. According to 2015 data, the United States has about 52.6 million Spanish speakers, compared to Spain’s 46 million. About 13.6% of the United States population reports speaking Spanish at home. In my home state, about 1/3 of all Texas households speak Spanish.
Putting that in perspective, the number of Spanish speakers in the United States is greater than the population of 23 entire states combined. In global terms, the United States is second to only Mexico in terms of both Spanish speakers and number of Hispanic residents.
Put another way, the United States is one of the largest Spanish speaking countries on earth.
The multilingual character of America is hardly unique. Looking no further than our northern border, about 22% of Canadians speak French. While the United States boasts the largest population of English speakers on earth, perhaps to the surprise of some, the country with the second largest English-speaking population is India (approximately 125 million speakers, or about 10% of the population).
What does make America unique, however, is the extent to which use of its largest minority language is for some reason controversial. No half-informed person would question why a Canadian leader would include French in a speech. And though only 10% of the Indian population speaks English, it is the language India’s Supreme Court and all its high courts. Since roughly half of the world population is bilingual or multilingual, by some estimates, countries elevating the importance of minority languages should hardly come as a surprise.
The American Question
There’s no genuine dispute that English is far and away the dominant language of the United States. But the stigmatization of the use of Spanish in politics (in a country with over 50 million Spanish speakers) borders on bizarre.
Consider this final example:
The last census reflected approximately 42 million African American residents in the United States — coincidentally, virtually the exact same number as native Spanish speakers (41 million). Can you imagine a political commentator saying, “It is unconscionable that a major political party is trying to appeal to African Americans during its presidential debates”? Both groups consist of more than a tenth of the U.S. population and its voters, respectively. Yet, for some reason, some depict an appeal to the Spanish-speaking population as a novelty, or worse, as offensive and “Anti-American.”
Why?
