Re: Why Americans feel no compulsion to learn foreign languages
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.
On Wed, 27 Mar 1996, Michael Helm wrote:
Americans are typically thousands of miles away from those speaking Japanese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Polish, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Hindi, [...] 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
On Mar 27, 3:13am, Timothy C. May wrote: 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!).
Undeniably true. I think Tim's point was more, "Who cares? Everyone *I* want to talk to speaks English." One may quibble with the wisdom or morality of such a statement, but if the second statement is true in your case, then there is no reason you should have to learn another language. Most upper-income Americans have no need for esoteric languages. Almost all upper-income Americans have a need for English. For example, *I* only really need to speak English, TCP, Spanish, HTML, AppleTalk, and occasionally French and Perl. Most of the time, I have no need to know C++, IPX, Tagalog, higher mathematics, German, or Java; I've got "people" for that. I'm probably wrong to put my faith in y'all to write the code I use, but hey, we can't all do everything. I don't write crypto code, and I don't haul my trash to the dump or tend to the landscaping around my apartment. Why should I? Then again, I do find it worthwile to be on the cypherpunks list, and I will say hola to the gardener. -rich
If a person who speaks three languages is tri-lingual If a person who speaks two languages is bi-lingual What do you call a person who only speaks one language? ---------------------answer follows: An American.
participants (3)
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mikeļ¼ fionn.lbl.gov -
Rich Graves -
Syed Yusuf