Bad Bunny Aside, Is the Use of Spanish Peaking in America?

Bad Bunny’s half time show last Sunday — 13 minutes of Spanish to a national audience of 128 million — touched a core fear for many Americans: Is the United States on a track to become a bilingual nation? With an estimated 50 million Spanish speakers, America already has the second largest ‘hispanophone’ population in the world, second only to Mexico’s 130 million. Over the last half century, growth has been explosive, reaching about 14 percent of the population compared to 5 percent, or 11 million people, in 1976.But the fates of the German and Italian languages in 20th-century America seem to indicate that a combination of assimilation, the desire for upward mobility, and government pressure will take their toll on Spanish. Time and again in American history, society has rallied around a belief in the primacy of English. Fears of bilingualism are not new. Almost 250 years ago, on July 5, 1776, a German newspaper in Philadelphia, Der Pennsylvanische Staatsbote scooped the English press, publishing the Declaration of Independence in German — one day before it came out in English in the Pennsylvania Evening Post. In 1794, a decade after Independence was achieved, the House of Representatives narrowly defeated a motion to require the translation of American laws into German.German remained strong through the early 1900s, when there were 900 German language newspapers in the United States. Sudden death came with World War I and strong anti-German sentiment. Over 20 states banned the teaching of German in schools. The United States Post Office required foreign language newspapers to provide certified English translations for mailing. Instead of sauerkraut, patriotic American restaurants served up “liberty cabbage.”Similarly, speaking of Italian dropped precipitously after the United States entered World War II against the Axis powers — Germany, Japan, and Italy. “Don’t speak the enemy language,” commanded one poster. “Speak American!” A Cleveland English-language school took a softer approach, proclaiming: “Many Peoples, one Language.”During the first half of the century, repression of minority languages was the vogue in Europe. The French sought to wipe out Breton. The British repressed Welsh and Gaelic. In America, a leading English-only chauvinist was Governor William Harding of Iowa. In 1918, he banned the use of any foreign language in schools, trains, streets, on the telephone, and even in churches. “Let those who cannot speak or understand the English language conduct their religious worship in their home,” he told the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce. “Those who insist upon praying in some other language are wasting their time for the good Lord up above is now listening for the voice of English.”Far from a fringe position, such a view won the endorsement of one prominent visitor to Iowa, a former president, Theodore Roosevelt. “America is a nation — not a polyglot boarding house,” he said at Des Moines. “There can be but one loyalty — to the Stars and Stripes; one nationality — the American — and therefore only one language — the English language.”America’s current president, Donald Trump, is sympathetic to the modern day English-only movement. Upon taking office, he dropped the Spanish-language version of the official White House website, whitehouse.gov. Then, in March, he issued an executive order designating “English as the official language of the United States.”Echoing the philosophy of Roosevelt one century earlier, Mr. Trump’s executive order said: “A nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society, and the United States is strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language.”Mr. Trump was scathing in his review of Bad Bunny’s celebration of Puerto Rican food, dance, and Spanish dialect. “The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER!” he wrote on Truth Social. “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying.”While today’s winds from Washington push for assimilation, polls of Latinos indicate that economic and societal pull factors also are at work. Despite social pressure among Latinos to speak Spanish, real language skills are decaying.A Pew Research Center poll found that 75 percent of Latino respondents said they could carry on a conversation in Spanish “pretty well” or “very well.” Among those born in America, that portion fell to 57 percent. Among third generation Latinos, the portion tumbled to 34 percent.Another Pew survey, conducted in 2023, found that 54 percent of non-Spanish-speaking Hispanics have been shamed by other Hispanics for not being able to speak Spanish. In a sign of future directions, 78 percent of American Hispanics say it is not necessary to speak Spanish in order to be considered Hispanic.A Pew survey conducted in 2024 found that 36 percent of Latino respondents thought that it is “extremely’” or “very” important that English become the official language of America. Among third generation respondents, 54 percent supported making English the nation’s official language. Asked if speaking English is key for being “truly” American, 75 percent of all Hispanics agreed.In light of these trends, some language analysts argue that use of Spanish in America may be peaking. The southern border is now closed to mass immigration. Latin birth rates are falling. Puerto Rico has the highest prevalence of Spanish speakers in the country — 95 percent of the island’s 3.2 million residents speak Spanish. It is also the American territory with the nation’s lowest birth rate and oldest population.While last Sunday’s all-Spanish, no subtitles, spectacle unnerved some American football fans, demographics and the undeniable allure of joining the American mainstream seem to indicate that America’s future will not be bilingual.

Bad Bunny Aside, Is the Use of Spanish Peaking in America?

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