On Mar 27, 3:13am, Timothy C. May wrote:
Americans are typically thousands of miles away from those speaking Japanese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Polish, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Hindi, Talegu, and the hundreds of other languages. It is not at all clear what language Americans should pick as a "second language" to study.
I don't really disagree with the conclusions drawn by this poster, or with the quasi-economics argument he makes. However, I must say that the above is completely wrong. MOST Americans live in large urban areas, & as such are within seconds/footsteps of people whose native languages are not English (or who don't have a single "native language", but several!). There are probably _hundreds_ of languages spoken in the San Francisco Bay Area. The school districts here routinely report double digit languages in the school age population. There are 3 Spanish language channels (& another 2 ... "multiple choice") on my tv cable system. That anglophones choose to tune them out, or to not even notice the Noah's ark around them, says something about this culture.