1 English Plus seems to appeal mainly to language educators, advocates of ethnic pluralism, and speakers of other languages in other words, to the minority of Americans who already value bilingualism. Of course, many others will grant the importance of learning foreign languages and will support efforts to teach them to English speakers. Developing heritage language resources would be far more efficient, not to mention more economical, than trying to create them from scratch. Because this potential is unappreciated, however, it remains largely untapped. As a result, the United States is more linguistically diverse than at any time since the early 1900s.
Demographic research shows that precisely the opposite is true.
While the number of minority language speakers is rising, their rate of Anglicization is rising even faster. Language shift is especially acute in Native American communities, where about one-third of indigenous tongues have disappeared since the coming of Columbus. Even languages that were recently considered secure are showing signs of erosion. Similar shifts are evident among young speakers of Crow, Hualapai, Choctaw, and Tohono O odham. At this rate virtually all Native American languages could be extinct within two or three generations.