Official Or Not, English Reigns Supreme

IN TUCSON, ARIZONA, LAST JULY, 76 HISPANIC IMMIGRANTS WERE sworn in as U.S. citizens. While the oath was administered in English, the surrounding ceremony was conducted entirely in Spanish. Last May, Florida's 13-member Dade County Commission unanimously repealed an English-only ordinance that banned the use of other languages in public meetings and most government publications.

Are these harbingers of a long slide into bi- or multilingualism and a culturally fragmented citizenry -- the Quebecification of America? There are those who fear so. "Whatever happend to the idea of E pluribus unum?" asks Robert Parker, chairman of Arizonans for Official English, an...