West Virginia’s legislature never saw it coming.

A bill addressing the number of members a city can appoint to its board of parks and recreation seemed safe enough – so long as no one reads the fine print. Hidden in the back of the proposed bill was a separate proposal which stated that ‘English shall be the official language of the state of West Virginia.’

It’s nothing the state hasn’t seen before. In fact, efforts to make English the official language of the state have been around since the late ’90s – but nothing ever came of it until now.

So when the Senate majority whip, Billy Wayne Bailey, tacked it onto the end of another bill, it came unexpectedly.

No one read it, no one questioned it and no one quite noticed what had happened when the bill passed on a vote of 30-4: West Virginia had just passed the most frivolous law in years.

But who cares? English has been the official unofficial language of the entire country since the Declaration of Independence was written in English in 1776. Now, 229 years later, West Virginia is the only state in the union to have made it official. The federal government must never have gotten around to it.

So far, reaction to the bill has been scattered. Many call it discriminatory, claiming that since English already is the primary language – and taught in schools as if it is – to officially name it as such simply antagonizes those who don’t use it as their first language. Others, well, they simply don’t care. And they shouldn’t.

It’s a ridiculous bill – it’d be like if California guaranteed sunshine to the masses. Wait, that’s actually a law, too, according to dumblaws.com, a Web site that lists the strangest and quirkiest laws found in the United States. To be fair, most of the laws on dumblaws.com are outdated. Few of them are still enforced, but were just never officially removed.

In all honesty, West Virginia’s new official language means nothing. In a few years, we’ll all look back on this and have a good laugh.

And we’ll joke about it in English.

PETE FREEDMAN IS A JUNIOR NEWSPAPER MAJOR. E-MAIL HIM AT PJFREEDM@SYR.EDU.

Published on April 14, 2005 at 12:00 pm