"In a free, or even semi-free country, no one is forbidden to speak any language he chooses with those who wish to speak it. But he cannot force it on others."

"The tribalists clamour that their language, preserves their 'ethnic identity.' But there is no such thing. Conformity to a racist tradition does not constitute a human identity. Just as racism provides a pseudo-self-esteem for men who have not earned an authentic one, so their hysterical loyalty to their own dialect serves a similar function: it provides a pretence at"collective self-esteem, "an illusion of safety for the confused, frightened, precarious state of a tribalist's stagnant consciousness.
    "The proclaimed desire to preserve one's language and/or its literary works, if any, is a cover-up. In a free, or even semi-free country, no one is forbidden to speak any language he chooses with those who wish to speak it. But he cannot force it on others. A country has to have only one official language, if men are to understand one another -- and it makes no difference which language it is, since men live by the meaning, not the sound, of words. It is eminently fair that a country's official language should be the language of the majority. As to literary works, their survival does not depend on political enforcement.
    "But to the tribalists, language is not a tool of thought and communication. Language,t o them, is a symbol of tribal status and power -- the power to force their dialect on all outsiders. This appeals, not even to the tribal leaders, but to the sick, touchy vanity of the tribal rank and file.
    "In this connection, I want to mention a hypothesis of mine, which is only a hypothesis, because I have given no special study to the subject of bilingual countries, i.e., countries that have two official languages: But I have observed the fact that bilingual countries tend to be culturally impoverished, by comparison to. the major countries whose language they share in part. Bilingual countries do not produce many great, first-rate achievements in any intellectual line of endeavor, whether in science, philosophy, literature or art. Consider the record of Belgium (which is French-speaking in part) as against the record of France -- or the record of Switzerland (a trilingual country) as against the record of France, of Germany, of Italy -- or the record of Canada as against the record of the United States.
    "The cause of the poor records may lie in the comparative territorial smallness of those countries-but this does not apply to Canada versus the United States...
    "My hypothesis is as follows: the policy of bilingual rule (which spares some citizens the necessity to learn another language) is a concession to, and a perpetuation of, a strong ethnic-tribalist element within a country. It is an element of anti-intellectuality, conformity and stagnation. The best minds would run from such countries: they would sense, if not know it consciously, that tribalism leaves them no chance."

          ~ Ayn Rand, from her essay 'Global Balkanisation'