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Well, yesterday, I wrote about American exceptionalism. Today, I want to write about something that falls in that same school of thought: English-language exceptionalism.

Let me start by explaining what it is that I hate about it: it's the arrogance that the English language is superior. I hate the concept that someone who lives in this country must speak English. I hate people who demand to see a person's immigration papers from someone in the mall just because they hear the Spanish language being spoken.

I'm talking to people who are arrogant in their Englishness. If you agree with me, you don't have to read the rest; you'll just agree with me. Let me start with the thought that English is superior to other languages? I cannot state strongly enough how hard the English language is to learn compared to other languages. English pronunciation is so seriously messed that the words that we learn just might as well be ideograms that need to be learned separately. English has an extensive number of irregular conjugations and declinations. English has an extensive amount of redundant vocabulary: regal, royal and kingly all mean the same thing. (Yes, if you're wondering, this is a plug for Esperanto.) Spanish is great for the fact that every word is pronounced as it is spelled (with the possible exception of the word pizza).

I won't deny that English is the dominant language in the United States, but I will deny that it's official or required to live here. There is no federal legislation mandating that English or any other language has official status (although I must honestly note that all pieces of legislation were written in English). Again, if you want to dispute this fact with me, don't; I mean you can't argue that two plus two equals something other than four.

I've read articles about people visiting Pakistan and considering certain schools there as primitave because English wasn't taught in the schools. (However, these schools were terrorist training camps, so they were privative anyway.) I hear people saying that English is the international language when Chinese and Spanish are natively spoken by more people worldwide. The trend in computer software is moving away from English terms such as cut, copy and paste being universal in every language to more locale specific products which use terms like couper, copier and coller. The absolute worst thing I have ever heard in this area is the thought that God ordained that His scriptures should be preserved in English, and all people should learn English to read His scriptures. I don't have to disprove that statement because no one can prove it.

The way that I see is that people who claim that the English language is exceptional have one reason for believing that: it's the language that they speak. I'm sure that there are some Russians who believe that their language is superior. To that, I say, “Дуракам закон не писан.”.