Will We Soon Be Speaking in “Plain American”?

Letter to Romans: After wincing at my bank’s long-winded automated answering service finish repeating in Spanish its lists of Qs & options, I smiled & nodded in approval the news piece titled, “Trump urged to declare ‘American’ the official US language ahead of 250^th Anniversary.”

Of course, if No. 47 were to take that historically supported & logical step as recent Fox News coverage suggested, it would mean diminishing the antiquated term “English.” But wouldn’t that satisfy the progressives who have been trying for decades now to turn America into a bi-lingual nation? Maybe not so much. Nor would it likely be applauded by the never-satisfied progressives who have convinced my health insurer to include a translation of every communication mailed or emailed to me into 10 different languages. As it happens, it was writer Rob Lockwood whose Washington Post op ed that had called for the US to adopt its own language ...

“Enough with English. Enough with American English,” Lockwood wrote. “Let’s call it what it is: ‘American.’”. He called the ye old name a “relic” of the time two and a half centuries ago when the King’s English dominated most of the world. Surely, starting with the American colonists’ revolt and founding of its own nation, then, saving the world’s butts in two world wars, the so-called United Kingdom is anything but while the USA dominates. Meanwhile, Lockwood notes, America has evolved its own, unique, even “dominant,” language that deserves formal recognition. Nor is the idea new. Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt & Noah Webster advocated for it. Ironically, in 2025, President Trump issued an executive order declaring “English” to be the official language of the US because of its “unifying” reality. Now, Lockwood is arguing Trump should take the next logical step. “If there ever was a time to take a stand for America & for speaking AMERICAN,” Lockwood concluded, “the 250^th anniversary of freedom is it.”

Davd Soul