No Stupid Questions

In my own experience, if you pick up another language but don't use it on an at least a semi-regular basis, your skills in it get real rusty real fast.

Everyone coming up with conspiratorial reasons why this is not the case but it's much simple than that. It's not feasible and it's expensive and the returns aren't really worth it.

Kids in school have a bunch of other subjects they have to learn besides foreign languages. You can add one or two languages but then at some point you will need to remove other subjects to add more or you need to keep kids in school even more. Both are not really feasible. Then you need to hire teachers for all these new languages which most places won't do.

Another issue is with the way they teach languages in schools. They expect you to pass a test and not actually learn the language so a lot of the languages will not "stick" as the students lack immersion and practice with that language. I can speak for myself, I have learned two languages besides my native language in school: French and English. I had French since 2nd grade, which is 10 years of French classes and English since 5th grade which is 7 years of English classes. Today I can speak English fluently and like 3 words of French. The difference was that I was always immersed in English, though video games, movies, songs and so on. Not so much with French. I have noticed the same pattern with most of my friends and family members.

Because the system is designed to make it so you never leave and you never have the upper hand.

It hasn't really been an economic necessity or cultural priority like other countries.

Most countries who have a population who speak more than one language usually either have a variety of languages spoken within/near the country or rely on ESL speakers to participate in the international workforce.

With English being the current lingua franca, Americans already know the current dominant language. There is really only one major language which is relevant to neighbors, but Americans are usually in the more dominant economic position and there is a cultural aversion to adopting Spanish more.

If you don't live in a border state the chances of using a second language enough to really learn it well and become proficient are really small unless you have close family members that speak it.

I took a couple of years of Spanish in high school but live about 12 hours from the Mexican border so I didn't use it enough to retain much.

Hah!

We can barely teach kids English.

Why?

The answer is Republicans want to fund Christian schools instead, with various variations of extra steps.

Because it would upset the racists (republicans)

Learning a second language might open perspectives and expose children to ideas. The GOP can't afford such smart kids.

I know it varies from state to state, but where I’ve lived it’s an “elective” in that you got to pick which language to take of the available options (some schools might only have two choices, others four or even five), but taking a certain number of foreign language credits was required for graduation. If you wanted to go beyond the minimum and had room in your schedule you could.

When I was a kid in public school, everybody had to take a foreign language, the elective part was that we had a choice as to which language we took. Some chose French. Some chose Spanish. If you came from money, you also had the option to take foreign language courses at participating colleges, which opened up a lot of other options like German, Japanese, and Latin, amongst others.

Has that changed? Or perhaps it's different in different jurisdictions?

For me personally, I wish Latin had been an option for me, as it's used extensively in biology and it would have been incredibly helpful. In terms of foreign language courses I've taken, I've had Spanish, French, and German. I don't use any of them, except on rare occasion I'll hear/see something in Spanish that I can vaguely understand the highlights of given enough time. French is pretty much 100% useless in my day to day life. German has been helpful once or twice when watching a movie or listening to music, but otherwise, useless as well.

Keep in mind, however smart you are, most people are not that smart. They'll never be curious enough or smart enough to learn another language. They don't have enough exposure to another language to really remember it. It's basically of waste of their time and educational money. I'm all for teaching these things in schools as electives, but forcing kids to learn multiple different languages? I think we should have universal/single payer healthcare, better medicare/medicaid, free school lunches (and breakfasts), true livable minimum wages, and a myriad other things first.

Because education in the USA is a sad joke? Republicans have been hollowing out education for the past 5 decades or so and they worked hard trying to shove fundamentalist christianity in schools and science classes specifically

The US is tucked and can get fucked

Some of the immigrant generation learnt English, but preferred to speak their native languages, especially at home. Their children largely grew up bilingual, but many chose to speak English, even to their immigrant parents. When this bilingual generation established their own homes, they usually spoke English at home. “Consequently, by the third generation, the prevalent pattern is English monolingualism, and knowledge of the mother tongue for most ethnics is fragmentary at best,” the study said.

Around me, the only language spoken with any frequency other than English is Spanish. In a half dozen different varieties. Even that wasn't all that common until, maybe, 10 years ago. About midway through President Trump's first administration.

Most schools encourage kids to take a language, but they are kinda a use it, or lose it thing. Unless you just happen to be part of a community or household that speaks a language other than English, you are unlikely to need it.

We needed ~"3" levels of language classes to graduate in my school (7th and 8th grade effectively counted as 1 level, so it was really 4 years). You could elect to take extra if you wanted.

Go on radio.garden and try to find non-english music. My point is it's wild how much English has become a common language worldwide, even if it's not the first language

If every state had a different language they'd be more like europeans that have second and third languages as a normal thing. But it's almost all English, everywhere all the time unless you are near Mexico.

The problem in the US is that besides English, you might be exposed to some Spanish. And not much else unless you seek it out. Or have immigrant friends. Without consistent practice, and some more native speakers, any learned language just rots away.

I learned German for several years in college. It was fun. Went to a local brewhouse with my classmates and talked in simple german while we had dinner, it was a good time. Now, other than my own attempts at saving my whithered skill, and a couple bedtime songs for my kids, I don't use it.

And even when I was better at it, using it as a tourist in germany was moderately helpful, but it wouldn't have been nearly enough skill to pass any kind of immigration language proficiency exams.

Although it's been shown learning another language as a child changes the way your mind works, there's only so much money in the teaching budget and so many hours in the day. Conservatives want to take both from our kids, for their own ends, so justifying the value of the resources to the student is a perennial challenge.

Given the low proficiency of current grads with their first language, and basic skills like punctuation and spelling, I say we're a LONG way before we can open a second language in the curriculum.

To be fair it's tough to be proficient in a language you don't get to use. In some places in the US, there's plenty of Spanish speaking people. Other than that not so much.

Because school in the US isn't about creating a well educated population.

I'd say because half of america's goals involve not understanding other cultures and believing whatever nonsense the corporate overlords want to say about them.

I still have to laugh at when american's went on chinese tiktok to work around the possible bans, and the chinese were all like "wait, you really do have to pay out the nose for an ambulance ride, I thought that was propoganda by our government" meanwhile a lot of american's were learning half of the horrors of china were extremely overstated or manipulated.

I think this is a matter of the microeconomics concept of "scarce resources"? It'd be lovely if everyone in the US learns at least Spanish. But school can only teach a limited number of subjects, so in the US where most people don't need to use anything other than American English, it might be argued that it is more beneficial to spend more time on, say, STEM and history, rather than getting kids to learn Spanish/German/Chinese... I guess there are foreign language electives for that reason? They are still highly valuable after all

Besides, learning and teaching a foreign language is hard lol. China used to (I've heard rumors that some places changed, not 100% sure) require mandatory English education from 1st grade elementary... social issues with the English teacher expats aside, the English literacy rate in China still looks like that. There are even multilingual countries in Europe where a good number of people struggle to learn/speak the other national languages so... Even if the US wants to do it, it's not that straightforward

The college I graduated from required a year of foreign language for graduation -- actually take it and pass, not just test out of it.

OK, that's not quite true. For some reason, the mathematics department was grouped with the languages for purposes of this requirement, so you could take a year of calculus in lieu of a foreign language if you preferred.

Unless you were a math major. Classes in your major didn't count, so all math majors absolutely had to take a foreign language.

Unless you were a dual major like math-physics. Dual majors could apply classes from both majors towards distribution requirements. I knew several "math" majors who took just enough physics classes to qualify as a dual major for the express purpose of not having to study a language.

Americans always have the upper hand in other countries by simply speaking English louder and slower until our needs are met.