Wouldn't it be cool if English went the way of Arabic with its "standard" plus many mutually-intelli
You know the urban legend about how German was almost the official language of the United States? Well, I took that as a launching point to understand how the modern “melting pot” was born from the ethnographic salad of the colonies. The hope is to better predict how Europe’s cultural landscape will fare, post-Schengen Agreement, against modern transportation and communications technologies.
But, here’s a couple neat quotes for you:
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1915
Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.
- Woodrow Wilson, 1919