Did Hebrew almost become the official U.S. language?
Dear Cecil:Some time ago I came upon this little tidbit of info: that during the debates over the United States constitution in the 1780’s, disgust for the British was so intense that a proposal was advanced to ditch English and adopt some nice pseudo-dead dialect as the new nation’s official language. Is this true? If so, can you confirm that Hebrew was seriously considered as a replacement but came one vote shy of being adopted? — Terrence Levine, Mount Royal, Quebec Cecil replies: Hebrew the national language? Oy, such meshugaas you talk. (And yes, Cecil knows the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish.) There was some discussion just after the Revolution about switching to a language other than English, but it’s not known how serious this was–probably not very. Nonetheless there’s a 150-year-old legend that English was almost replaced, not by Hebrew but by German. Supposedly it lost by one vote, cast by a German-speaking Lutheran minister named Frederick Muhlenberg. Some say the vo
