You can unwittingly buy the wrong kind of toothpaste.

You can unwittingly wear socks of a different color.

You can even unwittingly call your spouse by the wrong name, though minty breath and nice footwear may not get you out of that one.

What you cannot do is unwittingly pass a bill in the Legislature that affects thousands of lives and has the capacity to set a precedent to affect millions of others, and then say, "Oh, we did not know what we were doing."

Such is the situation in West Virginia, where the state legislature thought they were passing a bill related to members on parks and recreation boards and realized afterwards the bill had an amendment put in that declared that "English shall be the official language of the state." And they had no idea of what they had done until two days after they had passed the bill, amendment and all.

I am not going to get into a diatribe about how clueless some of our leaders are, because space is too limited and ink too expensive to waste in stating the obvious.

When the representatives of a state that is 95 percent white feel they need to sneak their native tongue by, something is wrong. Seriously. When minority groups in the state have such whopping numbers as 3.2 percent (blacks), 0.7 percent (Latino) and 0.5 percent (Asian), and its leaders still feel like they need to be surreptitious, it may be time for representative democracy to throw in the towel and make Richard Nixon the new father of our country.

But what about this idea of making English the official language? Not a new idea and one that still manages to cause enough antibodies so that a predominantly Anglo-Saxon state had to disguise it as a parks and rec meeting in order to pass.

Several other states have adopted similar measures. There is even a movement called U.S. English, headed by, of all people, an immigrant from Chile. This movement hopes to make English the official language of the United States, saying that it would unite this country even more.

Here's a little surprise. It already does. More states declaring English the official language is the equivalent of having mouths be declared the official human food intake pathway. It's unnecessary.

If you think I am exaggerating, think about this. This country is inundated by people of all races, from everywhere in the world, speaking all sorts of tongues. There are signs in Spanish pretty much everywhere you go and I am sure more than once you've become more than slightly irritated when dealing with somebody with a thick accent like mine.

And yet, according to the U.S. Census, a large majority of this country, thick accents, rolled R's and all, can speak at least a manageable English.

Furthermore, if you took one look inside these cultures, especially the Hispanic one, you would be surprised at how little the government needs to push English down people's throats. Turns out, Hispanics do a fine job of that on their own.

Turn on the Latino TV channels and you will see a gazillion commercials advertising English-learning programs. Immigrants, from day one, even in the depths of their isolated cultures, are aware, or made aware that to advance in this nation, they need to master English. That is something that no bilingual "Men/Hombres" sign outside a public restroom is likely to change.

Just ask that immigrant lady who ordered a "Mon-Fri" at a restaurant because that's what the sign outside said. Or that gentleman who answered the question "Do you have any issues," with "Yes, several pairs at home," (say "any issues" really fast and you'll get it). Or that guy who still remembers not being able to get off a bus because he did not know how to tell the driver "I want to get off this bus," in English.

You don't need the government or any silly argument about unity to tell you that you need to catch up on your ingles after that one.

And that is the adults. From a very early age, the children of Hispanic immigrants are encouraged to learn English at school. As the kid grows up, so does the need for further vocabulary. Even ESL classes in high schools tend to discourage the speaking of other languages in class.

Besides, the argument that we need a language to feel united was lost a long time ago. Probably around the same time we started naming cities with names such as "Los Angeles" and states with names such as "Nevada" and "Oklahoma," and the republic survived.

There is no need for authorities to panic if salsa sells better than ketchup. An immigrant's need to progress in this country is closely tied with the tongue of Shakespeare. And for as long as that holds out, our leaders won't need to disguise their intentions in order to keep us united.

Sebastian Moraga is the city reporter for the Columbia Basin Herald.