ABSTRACT
According to recent census figures (McLeod, 1993), an increasing proportion of the U.S. population speaks a language other than English. In California that proportion is nearly one in three. So far, the United States has been spared the difficulties experienced in other parts of the world, where bitter cultural, ethnic, and class divisions have been exacerbated by linguistic differences. At least one commentator attributed this relative calm to the dominance of a single, national language (English), coupled with the appearance of tolerance from the absence of any official language (Ruiz, 1990).
