By Harrison Leone
English is an amazing language. It is the closest thing the human race has ever had to a universal tongue. It does not have the most amount of speakers worldwide—that distinction belongs to Chinese, with over a billion native speakers to English’s 335 million—but it has a global breadth that no other language can boast. You can travel just about anywhere and be safe in the assumption that no matter where you go, someone is going to have at least a loose grasp of English. Through historic, cultural and economic forces, this Germanic language from an isolated Atlantic Island has achieved unprecedented levels of linguist penetration.
Americans are lucky to be native speakers; but this luck has left us with a dangerous complacency. As a result of the ubiquity English has achieved, there is a sense that learning a second language is an unnecessary redundancy: Why learn Spanish if all the Spanish-speakers know English? I know I felt this way when my high school demanded that I take two years of German. I could not imagine a scenario where I would need to know any language besides the one I was born into.
This attitude is myopic, ignorant and more than a little arrogant. Learning another language, whether it’s French, Russian, Chinese or whatever your heart desires, will greatly broaden your world view and provide you new insights that would have been left in the dark should you chose to remain monolingual.
There should be a greater emphasis on second languages throughout all levels of education. Children should be taught, or at the very least exposed to, another language at an early age to take full advantage of our natural ability to absorb language while young. A language that is studied seriously from grade school through college has a greater chance of becoming part of a student’s academic routine, rather than an annoyance forced upon them while entering high school.
According to Forbes magazine, one out of every five Americans can converse in a second language, compared to over half of Europeans. This discrepancy is partially a result of geographic realities—it is much easier for us to avoid other languages in a way that is impossible in Europe, Africa or Asia. It is also a result of the aforementioned belief in the total supremacy of English. The lack of importance placed on language education will nonetheless place Americans at a disadvantage on in an international market and robs them of an opportunity to think of the world through a totally different lens. This could be the greatest benefit of learning a new language: a greater understanding of communication and thought. The study of another language will force you to see your own language in a new light, and it will give you a glimpse into how different cultures think.
Before you think these are the condescending ravings of an anti-American polyglot, I should say that I don’t have a second language. The German didn’t stick from high school, and my two years of Bonaventure Spanish-which was ludicrously taught only twice a week-have rusted to the point of uselessness. This is my own fault, of course, but with greater and more consistent emphasis on language studies from an earlier age, it would be possible to expose millions of Americans to fascinating and enriching languages that are currently underappreciated and undervalued.
