Americans must speak more than just English

Americans must become bilingual or multilingual, like most of the rest of the world is. DP

By Diane Mufson, The Herald-Dispatch

herald-dispatch.com: My University of Vermont alumni magazine arrived this week. After checking the alumni gossip pages, a small article caught my eye. It began, "Caules vacas estan en celo?"

This Spanish phrase has become important in a state that had more cows than people in the mid 20th century and, aside from French-Canadians, has traditionally had few non-English speakers. Now that quite a few Latin Americans are working with Vermont dairy farmers, it is important for the farmers to know, "Which cows are in heat?"

The first week of March is designated as "National Foreign Language Week," which regardless of cows, makes it timely to discuss the importance of Americans increasing our limited foreign language skills.

While many recent immigrants speak a foreign language and have various degrees of facility in English, the great majority of Americans are monolingual; they communicate only in English.

As a nation founded by immigrants, it was and still is vitally important that we have a unified language, English, to simplify communication. But as our globe continues to shrink by way of mouse clicks and airplane flights, it has become apparent that even though many people throughout the world speak English, we Americans are at a disadvantage if most of us cannot speak with others in their native tongues.

This became obvious following 9/11. We learned that one of our country's great weaknesses was ability to adequately decipher communications of those who do not use English or even other European languages.

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages indicates that about a third of American students in grades 7 to 12 are taking foreign languages, but more than 95 percent study only Spanish, French, German, Italian or Latin.
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