Growing up (as I did) in three different countries, I was immersed into three different environments, three different cultures, and three different (widespread) languages. In my birthplace, the only language I heard was Romanian; once I moved to Canada, I entered school and began to master English but also heard a tidbit of French; in my current home of Troy, Michigan, I hear primarily English-- the unofficial language of America. Yet, not everyone here comes from an English-speaking background. In fact, 32.6% (almost a third) of the people in our city of Troy speak a non-English language while 86.5% are US citizens (who all have to take an English test unless the individual was already born a citizen). Thus, nearly all Troy residents-- foreign or native speakers-- do communicate in English.
After all, I fit into both of those categories (American citizen and non-English language speaker). At home, my family predominantly speaks in our native language: Romanian. It is the easiest form of communication for my parents who lived in Romania until their middle-to-late thirties. Even though my sister and I might respond back with snippets of English, there is still a constant flow of conversation in Romanian. However, once they step outside of the house-- to go to their workplaces, to do errands, etc.-- they can quickly flip a switch and converse in English despite their prevalent accents and handful of grammatical errors. They don’t mind speaking English-- their somewhat foreign language-- no matter how insecure and uncomfortable it makes them feel. They’re fully aware that they had made the choice of moving to a safer environment plentiful of new opportunities at the simple cost of learning a new language (and some paperwork). Even so, with English as an official or nonofficial language, it will not change the fact that we will continue to speak “our” language.
However, America should secure an official or national language (English) to ensure that there is a main way to communicate our thoughts to any other American resident. Even though that occurs now without any trouble or “official language” declaration, there is a possibility with more influxes of immigration English may become less and less prominent. The future is so uncertain that anything is possible so we should not take any chances and allow English to fade in our country. After all, implementing English as the official language is only justified because almost all of American residents speak it and several (like my parents) don’t mind learning it if it means living in America-- the “Promised Land”. The language is a unifying front to bring several different cultures and backgrounds together.
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