When did the British force the Americans to speak in only English ?

Question

And when did the Spanish force the Texans, Californios and other Cowboys to speak in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Nahuatl, and and English ?

Answer 1

I am an American from the West Coast, so I Speak Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, French, Mandarin, German, Nahuatl, Croatian, Serbian, Czech, more Spanish, and English with Jamaican accent. :D

Answer 2

Um, I think you're a little unclear on the concept.

North and South America were truly new worlds for the colonizers - they brought their languages and cultures and simply overlaid them in the Americas. The indigenous peoples already here were more decimated by western disease than by deliberate conquest (though the colonizers were no saints to the native Americans) - meaning that in the end, the people left standing were the colonists themselves, people who spoke English, Spanish, French, etc. in their respective colonies.

Contrast this to, say, India or Africa or East Asia, where civilizations already existed and already had contact in various forms over the centuries prior to colonization - thus there was no decimation of the same order of magnitude as occurred in the Americas. In these Old World instances, it was impractical for the colonizers to force the existing native languages into oblivion.

Answer 3

Get over it this is an English speaking country. Any intelligent person knows the language of business is English, if they want to achieve anything in their lives then they will need to no English. People can speak their native tongue at home, its only the Mexicans that are complaining about learning English no other immigrants are complaining about it. In fact most immigrants can't waite to learn English and have all ready taught their children before they enter school. But not the Mexicans they have to have interpreters, because the parents are to stupid. Where are the interpreters for the Russians, Swedes, French, Chinese, Vietnamese, they had none because they learned English.

Answer 4

As a rule, the majority of first Americans were English anyway. The vote to make German or English the official language kind of sorted that out.

Answer 5

There was so much anti-English feeling during and right after the Revolutionary War that a lot of people supported making French our official language--as you remember, France played a big part in breaking England's strangle hold over the colonies. But of course everybody here spoke English at that time, they had either all moved here from England, or their ancestors had, so English de facto (!) became the official language.

Answer 6

You've been misinformed. I can't speak for California but when the Anglos first started moving into Texas, which Mexico then owned, the Mexican government did require them to convert to Catholicism in order to settle here. But if cowboys, farmers, or tradesmen spoke Spanish, if was probably just to make communication easier. They were never forced.

Answer 7

Read the Declaration of Independence. Read the Constitution. Read the Bill of Rights. Last I checked they were written in English.

No one says you can only speak English. But, that has always been our national language. Why should we carry the expense of teaching other languages in our schools? Because some illegal immigrants don't want to learn our language?

Answer 8

And why didn't the Indians force the Pilgrims to speak only Mohican and Naragansett!? That would've cleared things up a lot, methinks!

(seriously...good point)

Answer 9

Never !! Duh, did you just sleep while you were in school?

The only vote for English or German was on to publish the Federalist Papers in both languages or just one. I wish they had voted for English as the official language then we wouldn't be in the fix we are today. To bad they took some some common sense things for granted.

Answer 10

In the East ( South-eastern states ) Black Americans were forced top learn English and forget their African language, religion, music and food.