SANTA MARIA, California -- Imagine ending up in jail for signing a petition requesting that your university offer foreign-language courses. It would be difficult to conceive of in most parts of the world, but it happened in Turkey. Seventeen Kurds were accused by a special security court of "promoting separatism and inciting racial hatred" because they wanted their local university in Eastern Turkey to introduce a course on the Kurdish language.
Although the Turkish authorities' reaction is extreme, fear of languages is not unusual.
In the United States, a land of immigrants who brought in many different languages, this fear is evident in the English-only movement. Twenty-six American states have passed laws declaring English the official language. Several of these states have also virtually banned bilingual education, primarily through the initiative process, which asks voters to choose English-only over bilingualism. English usually wins by 2-to-1 margins.