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Let’s learn our way to world citizenship

There’s a standing joke in Europe and in Latin America and parts of Asia and Africa about language skills.

It asks, “What do you call a person who speaks three languages?” The answer, of course, is trilingual.

Then it asks, “What do you call a person who speaks two languages?”

Bi-lingual, almost everyone replies correctly.

And, “What do you call a person who speaks one language?”

A second of mild puzzlement or a murmured “monolingual?” may be allowed before the jokester answers: “An American.”

It’s meant to demean the American way of life as being one-way, inconsiderate and ill-considered as it applies to other cultures. Right on all counts, in spite of the efforts of a good number of thoughtful Americans to correct that widespread overall impression.

Americans are admired for many things about our own culture. Our insistence on conducting the whole world’s affairs in English is not one of them, nor is our smugness that the American way is the only way.

It is true that lots and lots of the world’s people are learning English as a second language. For the time being, at least, the business of the world, meaning its commerce, is conducted pretty much in English. We’ve scattered our influence in business interests that widely. But, there’s more to this world than business.

In Sweden, where learning several languages is part and parcel of the country’s history and geography (Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Dutch and German are the languages usually learned in addition to Swedish), the public schools teach English for 10 years, starting in the second grade. It’s not so much the commercial dominance of English that causes that concentration, it’s the idea that knowing English opens cultural, literary and artistic doors all across the globe. Chinese children and young adults are learning English for the same reasons. We can take some pride in that—but not too much.

English is not the predominant medium of communication in our own half of the world. There are more Spanish speakers than English speakers in the Western Hemisphere. In fact, though English is more widely understood (by as many as a fourth of the world’s people), it is a poor third or fourth as a first language. Mandarin Chinese and Hindi are tops, and Spanish vies with English for the next spot.

So, why are we so nearly resentful of Spanish as it is spoken in the United States? Why do we seem to insist that our Spanish speakers learn English and use it? Simply put, it is this country’s official language, whether or not that designation is official. It’s nice that we are helping Spanish speakers to understand English better by engaging in such gestures as the Tennessee State Library’s offering of special software to libraries all across the state, encouraging the 180,000 Spanish speakers who live here to learn English-language “survival” skills. But it is still a crying shame, bordering on the unthinkable, that our kids aren’t taught Spanish as a second language on the Swedish model, starting in the second grade and continuing through high school.

Growing up bilingual broadens the learning experience immensely, and it allows for much easier learning of a third or fourth language. In a world that is shrinking by the minute, with its inhabitants’ multiple language skills growing almost as fast, leaving our own progeny off of those globalizing curves by simply allowing, but not requiring, them to become proficient in a second language, is almost criminal.

It should be obvious to anyone, let alone our educators and their establishment, that Spanish, which is the native tongue of nearly twice as many citizens of the Americas as is English, should be the cornerstone for second-language learning in this country. It would be an incredible step toward cross-cultural understanding if we English-speaking Americans knew Spanish well, just as it makes sense that our Spanish speakers know English.

The fact of being bilingual opens many doors that are closed to those who want to require everyone else to accede to their tongue. Suppose, for a moment, in the rhetorical sense, that the American way of life is the best way, if not the only way, the world’s people should be leading their lives. That may be a silly notion, but any American who believes it and wishes to communicate that concept to others would stand a much greater chance of posing a convincing argument if he or she were to be able to discuss that idea in the native language of the people being proselytized.

English is not a lingua franca. It’s an important language, difficult and imperfectable, but beautiful. And its usefulness and beauty can be grasped easily only by someone who knows another language or languages. Let the world keep shrinking. But let’s get aboard in the first-class section, where we aren’t insulted for our insularity.

¿Comprende?

June 10, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 24 © 2004 Metro Pulse