Template talk:Official languages of U.S. states and territories

Since

Need to add a column for "Since..." before including in Languages of the United States and English-only_movement#Current_law. -- ke4roh (talk) 11:47, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

New Mexico

I cannot find a reliable source that states that New Mexico has official languages. Of the three sources cited for this, this one does not actually state that there is an official language, and the other two ([1], [2]) have other errors, casting doubt on their reliability (both state that NM is the only state with two official languages; however, Hawaii is officially bilingual). The state constitution does not make any statement regarding an official language. It does state that certain activities must be carried out in both English and Spanish, but I am not sure if that scope is sufficient to call them official languages, which implies status (and often exclusive usage) across all government activities. Thoughts? Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 01:37, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. None of them are perfect; however, the source used for all the others seems equally dubious. If the state's constitution specifically mentions that the state will conduct business in a certain language, I think that automatically makes it an official language (President Taft is quoted as saying that very thing in the first of the three sources you showed). Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 04:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think Taft said that. A formatting error in that article makes it look like a quotation. That article also doesn't make it clear that the requirement of publishing laws in Spanish lapsed in 1953 and was not funded for the ten years before that [3].

I don't see anything in the current New Mexico constitution that says what language the state will conduct business in.

The source I quoted above says the idea that New Mexico is officially bilingual is a "myth". Unfortunately, it too has a significant error: it says the state isn't required to publish anything in Spanish, but as Orange Suede Sofa said, it is. Notably, constitutional amendments have to be approved by referenda and have to appear on the ballot in English and Spanish (and we have them regularly)[4].

To me, it's a matter of semantics whether the mostly minor legal requirements of Spanish in New Mexico add up to some kind of official status. In the small space allowed in a template, I'd say the best thing we can say is "opinions differ" and give sources. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 05:44, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe they stopped publishing laws in Spanish in 1949 [5]. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 05:48, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

A nice reference stating that New Mexico can't be considered bilingual (and mentioning 1949) [6]. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 05:50, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

In the absence of comments, I changed NM to "No". The status of English seems to be the same as in the other "no" states: it's used for laws and the like, but isn't declared to be official. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 17:35, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion: This template needs to be redone

This is an oversimplification, but it looks to me as if in this templatr WP editors have been looking at several sometimes conflicting sources and picking and choosing between them on a state by state basis to decide what to put in the English official column of the table.

WP:DUE (part of WP:NPOV) says "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published." It seems to me that this template doesn't do that well.

I suggest that the template be recast something like the following (many rows omitted here; most of this was taken from the current template, but some of this contradicts current template content):

--begin--

A number of sources contain information about the official language status of U.S. states and territories, sometimes with disagreements between sources. Some that information is summarized in the ffollowing table:

Place	English official		Other official	Note
		EF			LP
Alabama	Yes	1990	No
Alaska	No	2002	No	Per LP, a 1998 law was ruled unconstitutional in 2002.
Hawaii	Yes	1978	Hawaiian
Kentucky	No	1984	No
Massachusetts	Yes	No	No	English became official as the result of a 1975 State Supreme Court ruling.
Oklahoma	No	2010	No	Per LP English became official as the result of an amendment to the state constitution in 2010. The Cherokee language has been official within the Cherokee and the UKB since 1991.
Guam			Chamorro
Northern Mariana Islands			Chamorro, Carolinian
Puerto Rico			Spanish
U.S. Virgin Islands			No

--end--

References supplied by the template:

Changes such as described above should not be made without consensus from the editors of articles transcluding this template (currently three articles). For some related discussion, see Talk:Languages of the United States#The Official language status section and its table.

Comments? Disagreements? Suggestions? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 06:54, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Documentation?

I was thinking that we add the documentation for this template. Though I highly doubt the this template will ever be used often. Do you guys support this? Reply with your answer. - Cilabsuhsk (talk | contribs) 06:07, 24 January 2021 (UTC)