For all the hand-wringing about America’s cultural identity, one question often gets brushed aside with a shrug: Does the United States have an official language? According to a new commentary on American Thinker, the answer is an emphatic yes — and the proof is right there in the founding document.
Michele San Pietro, writing for the conservative outlet, argues that anyone who claims the U.S. has no official language is missing an obvious point: the Constitution is written in English, and that alone settles the matter. “Because it’s obviously the one in which the constitution is written!” he writes. “In the United States, only the English-language version of the Constitution is valid.”
The piece takes aim at critics who say English is merely “customary” in America, not legally mandated. Other countries, San Pietro notes, also leave the official language unstated in their constitutions — because it’s self-evident from the language of the document itself.
A matter of common sense, not law
San Pietro dismisses the idea that a lack of explicit constitutional language leaves America without an official tongue. “Such ignoramuses don’t know that lots of constitutions don’t specifically mention the official language,” he writes. Instead, he suggests, the language in which a nation’s founding text is written is by definition its official language.
He goes further, asserting that English is spoken by “everybody” in the U.S. and is the native tongue of anyone born on American soil. Official texts, he insists, are only in English, and multilingual signs appear only in places like airports—and even then, English is on top.
The argument is likely to be controversial. The U.S. federal government has never designated an official language at the national level, though more than 30 states have passed laws making English their official language. The piece’s claim that the Constitution’s language settles the question is an interpretation, not a legal consensus.
Spanish, immigrants, and the melting pot
The commentary also wades into the debate over Spanish’s place in American life. San Pietro scoffs at the idea of counting the U.S. among Spanish-speaking countries, even though “Spanish is spoken by over 40 million people in the United States.” To him, Spanish is simply the language of immigrants, with no claim to official status.
“Hispanics in America often keep speaking Spanish to one another, but they have to speak English every day in quite a lot of official and unofficial contexts,” he writes. He notes that U.S.-born children of Hispanic immigrants typically speak English as their native tongue, though many are bilingual — a benefit he endorses.
“That is something very good, because you should always keep links to your parents’ homeland,” he adds.
What about Native American languages?
San Pietro carves out one exception: the co-official languages of Native American tribes. He acknowledges that “the only co-official languages in the United States, only in the areas where they are actually spoken, are those of communities who have been living on American soil for centuries, such as the Indian tribes.” That nod to tribal sovereignty recognizes the unique legal status of indigenous languages, which are protected in many tribal jurisdictions.
A pointed slogan, and a pointed rebuttal
The piece closes by addressing a familiar rallying cry: “This is America, speak English.” Some find that phrase rude. San Pietro’s response is blunt: “Well, that’s your problem.” He likens English in America to Spanish in Mexico, French in France, German in Germany, and Italian in Italy — each nation’s dominant tongue is its de facto official language, whether or not it’s written into law.
The commentary is part of a broader conservative argument that English is the glue of American identity and that critics who question its primacy are “anti-American.” That framing will likely draw sharp pushback from linguists, immigration advocates, and those who note that language policy in the U.S. has always been more fluid than the piece suggests.
Still, the debate is a live one. Polls consistently show a majority of Americans believe English should be the official language, and lawmakers have periodically introduced bills to make that explicit — none of which have passed at the federal level. Until one does, the question remains open, though San Pietro is confident the answer is already on the page.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/what-is-the-official-language-of-the-united-states/