Asfinkter sez whaa?

I came across this joke recently:
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks one language? American.

Right. Why is it that Americans in general are so unconcerned with this particular skill? How is it that a nation whose citizens represent an incredibly rich collective heritage of different languages could become so aloof and dispassionate on this subject, resulting in one of the most linguistically limited societies in the world. Worse, is our mono-linguistic preference in part fueling that stereotypical but pervasive presumption that Americans are one-dimensional, dense, oblivious- to say the least? Are we doomed to ride the globe’s linguistic short bus, or are our shortcomings balanced by our strengths just like anywhere else?

Unfortunately, the discourse surrounding second language education in the U.S., at least between ‘average’ citizens, tends to include two parts. First, there is the “[They] should learn English if [they] want to live/work in America,” bit, referring to immigrants and refugees living and working here (or even with international associates with whom Americans wish to do business!). The second part of the narrative includes the disinterest in adding or strengthening language programs in our schools and the exceedingly bleak notion that “English is the most spoken language on earth; everyone is learning it or wants to learn it, so why should we waste money/time learning other languages.”

This may be a worst-case scenario, representing the most apathetic, narrow opinions toward second language learning in the U.S. today. However, based on our present education system (and its lack of funding/support/programs in second language learning), these assumptive statements above are not so far from the mainstream view.

Ironically, many others around the world are indeed learning English, but that is in addition to already possessing a native tongue, often as well as other languages. I don’t have a single international friend who doesn’t speak two or more languages. The number of required English language programs, starting children as early as age 5, in schools globally is staggering even compared to a short decade ago. In the next several decades, as these children grow up, we will see a significant growth in the number of world-wide English speakers. In this way, their horizons, their potential and their opportunities expand. By default, so will those of some Americans. But it would be foolish to entertain even a trace of the notion that this is happening to accommodate or ascribe to the mono-linguistic American culture and its business world. Quite the opposite: It is for their or their nation’s own advancement in our shrinking global world.

Even if we should never step off of American soil, increasingly will the successful and indispensable person be one who possesses more than one speaking language. What are we doing to expand the horizons and opportunities for our children via second language education in a world increasingly interdependent?

Language is not only a means for communication. It is a cognitive phenomenon which no less than defines for us what our relationship to the world will be, where its boundaries can be found, and perhaps most importantly on this subject, how boundaries can become permeable, dynamic, creative. When we are children, we pick up language much more quickly than as adults, yet in the U.S., we don’t even introduce (by and large) second language until middle school, when our linguistic learning abilities have already greatly diminished. Because we are an isolated nation, language also serves as a kind of sailboat…a stationary adventure out into the world...

The awareness that others speak other languages is not enough to impress upon the American citizen that not only do others speak differently, they think differently, believe differently, solve differently, live differently. That translation involves maps, not tracings. That to learn another language, whether consciously or not, is to learn another way of thinking, and therefore of perceiving the world. In doing so, we not only make deals and sign contracts; we open gate upon gate to deeper understanding, wisdom and conscious celebration of diversity.



pondi.