Oklahoma

 Legal Status of official English in Oklahoma

In 2009 the Oklahoma House passed the revised version of H.J.R 1042 by a vote of 89-8. Oklahomans made their state the 31st state to adopt official English at the polls with 76% of the vote for a constitutional amendment passed on November 2, 2010.

Oklahoma Official English legislation

Article XXX
As English is the common and unifying language of the State of Oklahoma, all official actions of the state shall be conducted in the English language, except as required by federal law.  No person shall have a cause of action against an agency or political subdivision of this state for failure to provide any official government actions in any language other than English.  Nothing in this Article shall be construed to diminish or impair the use, study, development, or encouragement of any Native American language in any context or for any purpose.  The legislature shall have the power to implement, enforce and determine the proper application of this Article by appropriate legislation.


LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN OKLAHOMA

2,977,187 English
238,532 All languages other than English combined
141,060 Spanish or Spanish Creole
18,871 Other Native North American languages
13,445 German
11,330 Vietnamese
8,258 French (incl. Patois, Cajun)
6,413 Chinese
3,948 Korean
3,265 Arabic
2,888 Tagalog
2,546 African languages
2,546 Japanese
1,865 Persian
1,467 Urdu
1,315 Hindi
1,310 Italian
1,251 Russian
1,046 Laotian
982 Thai
774 Gujarathi
756 Portuguese or Portuguese Creole
658 Scandinavian languages
585 Greek
553 Polish
437 Navajo
407 Hebrew
376 Miao, Hmong
302 Hungarian
287 Mon-Khmer, Cambodian
194 Serbo-Croatian
180 French Creole
71 Armenian
28 Yiddish