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Patrick Cox, host of “The World in Words” podcast, talks about Oklahoma’s proposal to make English the official state language.Download MP3

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LISA MULLINS: We’ve got one more take now concerning immigration and the election courtesy Patrick Cox.

PATRICK COX:  And it’s to do with language.

MULLINS:  Which is exactly what you write about as host of our language podcast, The World in Words. What’s this week’s topic?

COX: Well, Lisa, it’s a language issue at the polls next Tuesday in Oklahoma. Voters there are going to decide whether that state should be the latest to declare English as the official language.

MULLINS: And what specifically do you say in the podcast?

COX: Well, I talk with Tim Schultz. He’s of the Washington-based group US English. He talks about the Oklahoma vote. Also about bilingualism and about the rise of Spanish in this country and the threat that he thinks that that poses. Here he is.

TIM SCHULTZ: Bilingualism is really good for individuals, but bad for a country we think. It would mean that most Spanish-speaking people who come to the United States would have increasingly fewer and fewer incentives to learn English. If everybody was learning two languages that would be one thing, but that’s not realistically what’s going to be happening. What realistically will happen by the sort of elevation of Spanish to this sort of co-official status is not that everybody would suddenly become bilingual. It’s that Spanish speaker’s less and less need to learn English to survive in the United States.

COX: Of course, Lisa, they are plenty of people who don’t share that view. Who think that an official English declaration sends a message about immigration and about language learning. And we get into that, too.

MULLINS: Alright, we will. Or you will. On The World in Words This Week. You can hear the podcast at The World.org/language.

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