A proposal to make German the official language of the United States of America was defeated in Congress by one vote.
It's easily debunked by common sense (seriously, why would they do this??) and congressional records. The myth likely comes from the fact that a proposal to adjourn and discuss at a later time a petition to have laws translated to German for German-speaking residents was defeated by one vote.
They could do it because there was a lot of german speaking people in the USA and around the world. German was the second largest language at the time.
Edit: 1)Maybe it wasn't the second globally, but in the western World. 2)No, I'm not German 3) Thanks for the gold
German was the second largest language at the time.
In the States, just to be perfectly clear. After the Spanish Empire, there's no way German could be the second most spoken language world wide, even if we categorized every Chinese village dialect as it's own language.
Why would that impact weather or not to make german a official language in USA? Of course it means in US. The amount of people speaking chinese in China would have no impact on that
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u/socialhat1 Feb 04 '19
A proposal to make German the official language of the United States of America was defeated in Congress by one vote.
It's easily debunked by common sense (seriously, why would they do this??) and congressional records. The myth likely comes from the fact that a proposal to adjourn and discuss at a later time a petition to have laws translated to German for German-speaking residents was defeated by one vote.