Is Being Bilingual a Must in Today’s America?

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama created quite a stir during a July 9, 2008 question and answer period when he said:

We live in a global economy. And, you know, I don’t understand when people are going around worrying about, “We need to have English-only.” They want to pass a law, “We want English-only.”

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English–they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it’s embarrassing — it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say, “Merci beaucoup.” Right?

You know, no, I’m serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get a job. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they’re 5, or 6, or 7 than when they’re 46, like me.

Regardless of whatever the political fallout has been from that comment, it is a very valid question: Should Americans–specifically American children–become bilingual, and if so, then what language(s) additional to English should they learn? Does it add value to their lives in any practical way?

In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that being from a family with a long lineage in the desert southwest, I’ve grown up hearing Spanish all my life. My fluency has varied as I don’t really have much reason to use what I’ve learned. I took two years of German in high school and two semesters in college. To build and maintain a web page dedicated to the Brazilian star, Xuxa, I had to be passably fluent in Portuguese, but I’ve forgotten a lot of that as the years have passed. I used to be conversationally fluent in ASL (American Sign Language), but a couple of decades of disuse has caused a lot of atrophy in that as well. I’ve learned bits and pieces of several other tongues, including: Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Hawaiian, French, Italian, tlhIngan Hol (Klingon), Latin, Greek, and Lojban. Additionally, I’ve also had to acquire fluency of dozens of computer languages.

I have to say the value for an American learning a foreign language is very situational. If you are an American dealing with Americans, it pretty much never comes up. English is the country’s de facto language, and is the world’s lingua franca. A huge reason why Americans don’t have an overwhelming need to learn another language is the simple fact that everyone else seems to learn ours. I’m sure it was the same for the Greeks and then the Romans before us.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that it’s a really capital idea that Americans be bilingual. The question is then: in which other language? See, this is where it gets really tricky. Many would say Spanish, as so much of the population knows some sort of Spanish variant…although calling some of the Spanish dialects in the United States “Spanish” might be a little generous. Others would say Chinese, for if China becomes the next country to be dominant on the global stage, then obviously that should be the language to acquire (the same was said about Japan in the 80s). If Iran consolidates its power in the Middle East, then it might be wise to push for Farsi (or failing that, Arabic). But then, what if….

Well, you see the problem. Personally, I think that if bilingualism was the rule, then the single most useful language for Americans to learn would be ASL. Why? It’s immediately useful and practical. Aside from being a great gesture to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, it solves the problem of how to communicate when the environment works against the spoken word: in a factory, a tarmac, under water, during military operations, over distance, etc. And let’s be clear-since the signs have to be learned anyway, I’m saying that the grammar and syntax of ASL be taught, not signed English.

As for a global language…. Right now, I’d say the top two contenders are Spanish and Chinese. Spanish for more domestic (and hemispheric) use, Chinese if you think China will succeed the U.S. as the global power.

Is there any advantage to learning another language (other than ASL) if you are in an English-speaking world? I’d say most definitely. I never learned more about English than when I was learning a foreign language. I also learned a love of my mother tongue that I never would have had I not had to deal with gendered nouns, odd syntax, or simply not enough words to express my idea adequately. Conversely, I came to really appreciate those things in other languages that do things better than English can. Take the German word “gern”. It’s a concept word that doesn’t really translate fully into English…sometimes maddeningly so, as I have a word that will express a concept, but I can’t use it because none of my American acquaintances knows what it means. Every language has those.

There is also another concept that rarely gets mentioned when talking about knowing “only” English. Regardless of the large vocabulary, the fact is that since English isn’t an “official” language with some sort of government board making sure the language is kept “pure”, it’s a living and breathing beast that is constantly changing and evolving. We native speakers learn and absorb a pretty standard English, but we also have to learn so many variants that, cumulatively, it arguably makes us multilingual. I can understand (more or less) and sometimes speak things such as Middle English, Valley, Surfer, Black, Spanglish, Strine (Australian English), Cockney, Jamaican, South African, and a few others. With some, such as Old English, Rapper/Gangstah, various pidgins, and some Celtic/Gaelic variants, I can have a great deal of trouble with. Honestly, it’s tough to keep up.

While it’s a complicated question without a definitive answer, I think it safe to say that as nothing is lost in a bilingual education, and there is some value to be gained, then it probably makes more sense to be bilingual than not. I strongly suggest ASL as it’s very practical, but in any given circumstance other languages will work.

From personal experience, I have to say that while learning other languages has made me more fluent in English, the actual value has been dubious. Generally, at best it allows you to eavesdrop on people who think that speaking a language other than English in the United States is the verbal equivalent of data encryption. Still, if you happen into an environment where being bi/multilingual is an advantage, then you never regret having learned it. Should it be required? Probably not. Strongly encouraged? Sure, why not?

Of course, if how foreign language is taught in schools doesn’t change, I don’t see this being a useful policy at all. I don’t think I know anyone who learned well a foreign language in public school. I think a Rosetta Stone-based system, or something equally immersive, might be better than what we have now–at least until the students get a good enough handle on the language that the minutiae gets taught. After all, I was already a fluent speaker and fair-to-middlin’ reader of English before they started in with all that noun-verb-object subject-predicate stuff.