Totally agree that immersion is the only way. Much easier to do this when the standard of English in a country is not so high. So easy just to lapse into English to get your point across.

Watching foreign TV shows, especially with subtitles, can be a good way of “immersing” yourself in your living room to enhance comprehension skills…

The statement that I can afford to exclude a large demographic group is one of the misdirections used by folks who believe that unless we learn spanish we are excluding latinos. I cerrtainly hope that the two Latino clients I have coming tomorrow at 11:00am for an appointment don’t feel excluded. They were referred to me by an African American Pastor friend, who is married to a Chinese Hawaiian lady with two biracial children from a previous marriage. Talk about being their own Benetton commercial. I’ve also been the General Counsel of a two different business where the founders and CEOs are Latino and are fluent in Spanish. So no, Latinos are not excluded form my business

But you inadvertently made my point. You state that,

“However, if you have to work in an environment where are lot of your clients or employees speak the same foreign language, you will need to learn that language, or you will be excluded.”

Therefore, the language to learn is not Spanish, but the language of your clients/co-workers. And that’s my point. Most of my clients are Chinese or Indian. I have learned about Chinese New Year, Duvali, where the best Dim Sum, in Silicon Valley is, etc

Conversely, when I practiced on the Westside of Los Angeles, with a large Jewish population, the office celebrated Yom Kippur, etc. When I worked with a Jewish Persian Law Firm, we celebrated Ramadan and Rash Hashana.

The point being is that Spanish is NOT the Holy Grail of multi-culturalism. In being blessed with an international clientele, you quickly appreciate the fact that having a single unifying language that transcends race, religion, or ethnicity is truly the Holy Grail of multiculturalism.

Don’t get be wrong. I’m all for learning a second language if time and desire are there. Its just that the reality of day to day US life is that its not a big deal.

English is still by far the dominant language in this country. So, you can perfectly manage with only English. However, if you have to work in an environment where are lot of your clients or employees speak the same foreign language, you will need to learn that language, or you will be excluded.

Latinos currently do a lot of the “dirty” work. Cleaning, construction, etc. If you work in that area, you will be a better employee, boss, merchant, friend and neighbor if you speak Spanish. If you business is in Chinatown, you’d better learn Chinese.

More and more immigrant children are growing up in bilingual families. They will be better prepared for the multicultural world they will live in than kids growing up monolingual.

I strongly believe that immigrants need to learn the local language. However, a country will only head for trouble if it makes language an issue of pride, arrogance or exclusion. Again, see Canada, Belgium.

I understand your point, although I respectfully disagree. The reason for the fractous relation in other countries is that they don’t have a common language that everyone speaks.

Truthfully, No. I am not that concerned with what is happening in the latino media. There are numerous ethnic groups here in California and I see no reason to pick one over the other.

Speaking for myself, most of my clients are Chinese or Indian. So I keep up with the happenings there. I used to work for a Persian law firm when I lived in LA, so i kept up with the Persian happenings.

I just spend the weekend with an client from Egypt discussing his perspective as a Christian growing up in an Islamic country.

My point is that your statement about learning all the languages is not true. I live in SIlicon Valley. Just amongst my own clients, I would have to learn Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Spanish, Farsi, Arabic, Italian, Greek, and Russian just within the past year. Why should I prefer one language over the other.

I have a better idea. Why don’t we all learn English so we can all communicate with each other. Wait, my clients already did that… *smile*

Ed

I remember a moment on MSNBC a year or so ago, when all those immigration demonstrations were going on. I think it was Chris Matthews who remarked that he was very surprised to see the massive turn-out, to which MSNBCs “Latino-immigration Expert” replied: “Well, Chris, don’t you follow the any Spanish media in the US? There hasn’t been another subject on for the last month”.

Two things are important here:
1) It’s true that most Americans have no clue what goes on in the Latino-culture in their own country
2) MSNBC needs a latino to report on latino business, not only because the press corps doesn’t speak Spanish, but also apparently, because the press corps doesn’t know the latino media exist. Kinda weird, if you realize that MSNBC’s owner also owns Telemundo.

This is why Americans need to learn Spanish. You can not be a united country if you don’t speak all langauges that are dominant in your country. Check Canada and Belgium. Switzerland is the only who pulls it off, but that’s because every Swiss is fluent in German, French and most likely a third language.

Shall I? It’s too easy… So cheesy. But here we go: It’s a matter of national security that Americans learn Spanish!

The other thing that always strikes me about knowing more than one language, is that you learn about the culture of your own language. Especially when you get to the point where to discover that another language may not differentiate between two words of your own language, or when you discover that another language has two words for something you didn’t know could be interpreted twofold. Think of the proverbial 69 Eskimo-words for snow. Or when you discover that certain expressions are simply impossible to translate.

That said, Americans should learn another language, preferably Spanish. Most kids that are growing up now, will mature in a country that has a dominant Spanish population. It is important that everybody can take part of that culture. Or, more cynically: you do want to be able to talk to your neighbors, and construction folks.

It is true that few in the US, UK or South America, speak other languages because they are blessed to be born in areas where their mother tongue is a dominant world language. Humans don’t tend to learn another language unless they have to as it takes a lot of work to be truly fluent in more than one language.

As monolinguals, we raised our child as a trilingual from birth ( actually started in the womb where language learning begins! ) in English, Spanish & Mandarin Chinese. We soon found out how hard that was in a monolingual country and by the time she was 2, we scaled back to fluent bilingual ( although we hope to pick the Mandarin back up during our years in the Far East).

Having done 1,2, and 3rd grade in a local Spanish school, my 8yo is extremely fluent in reading, writing and speaking her 2nd language that she has spoken since the womb. Nevertheless, she is still more fluent in her dominant language, English.

Languages are so important and it does allow one to experience travel at a much deeper level. We have spent the last 3 winters in Spain and our Spanish has helped immensely even in countries like Portugal and Italy. We definitely see the advantages with our Spanish, compared to areas in rural France or Morocco etc where our lack of French proficiency had it’s affect.

Spending extended time in Europe is one of the best places to learn ( and teach children through 1st hand experience) what the value is in being multi-lingual.A young child soon sees that those with 4 fluent languages are at an advantage!

But It is true, even there, one finds English dominates as the one language for expats and travelers to communicate in, but the more dominant languages one has, the easier things are.The key is really in learning dominant languages as they will have the most value. In Dubrovnik or Prague one will see many people from many countries speaking a common English to communicate.

Just as all Scandinavian and Netherlands children learn English, I think it is a shame that all Americans don’t learn Spanish ( especially in places like Ca, Tx, Fl etc with huge Spanish speaking populations).Languages are easiest to learn in early childhood & it would give Americans two dominant languages. Once one has two languages down well, it is easier to add others as one has more keys to decode. Learning languages in early childhood also helps in areas like math as one learns abstract thought very early.

Travel and languages are connected because knowing a language is KEY to deeply understanding a culture.One can get by without it, but one is more enriched with it. We find even learning some phrases in each countries helps, knowing a lot, makes it even better.

I do agree that once you learn even a little bit of another language, though, it is extremely rewarding. You will have a different experience and be able to connect much better to a people and culture. While these days you can get by with English only in many places – you will miss out on a lot if you don’t make at least a small effort.

As for the traveler with a guidebook I think that it is a perfectly legitimate way to attempt communication. Not everyone has the time or inclination to learn a language just to travel. If you’re traveling to many countries, it’s impractical to be well versed in many languages in a short amount of time. Everyone appreciates a sincere effort and even you mangle a foreign language, a smile and a guidebook in your hands will get you a long way.

Consider the following: An American from, let’s say, Boston can get in his car and drive 3,000 miles to California while remaining in the same linguistic zone. A Portuguese making a trip of the same length from Lisbon to Moscow would successively need to use Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, and Polish before arriving in Moscow where he would need Russian.

In my experience, if you speak English and at least one European language (French for western Europe, German for eastern Europe), you can always find someone to whom you can make yourself understood and vice versa.