�Hola! Mi llamo Tyler Gallagher. Yo soy mucho responsable. Yo soy el alumno de la universidad.”
Oh sorry, I was just practicing my Spanish. It’s not as easy as it looks as there are a lot of things to learn about the language of another culture. In America, we tend to only learn one language growing up and that is English. English has become the national language for the US and it is also the language of the UK where English as we know it today has originated. Although many native born people of the US speak English there are most times other languages being spoken which is to be expected as the US is a “melting pot” of different cultures, and ways of life. But one thing that has happened is that people from the US tend to only have one language while people who live in Germany or Europe for example tend to have multiple, fluent languages. Why is this?
Well unlike the US the countries of Europe, many of which have their own unique and diverse languages are very close together and share borders. In order to converse and corporate with the other countries and the people of the countries, an emphasis on teaching foreign languages was placed in their education system. With the US unlike Europe, most if not all of the country has adopted English as their primary language and most people and places tend to speak and write in English, so the need for learning a 2nd (or 3rd) language was not really needed. The fact that English is so widely used in the US is a good thing when conversing with people of the country, but what if you run into a non-English speaker or travel abroad? That is where the US have a disadvantage with the language barrier.
Learning another language is crucial more then ever with the world working together and establishing connections and trying to bring the world closer together. But is the US, even as one of the worlds largest powers, falling behind with its peoples lack of a foreign language knowledge? Actually, it is quite the opposite as the US is growing more cultural diverse as we have ever seen it before. In 2011 the US Census borough put out a map which pinpoints where non-English languages have been spoken the most. These languages are also very different as the article mentions: “Those other languages – spoken at home by more than 60-and-a-half million people – are Spanish, French, French Creole, Italian, Portuguese, German, Russian, Polish, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Arabic and Vietnamese” (Berman, 2013). So from what can be seen here is that there are a lot of people that have come from all over the world and who speak many different languages which helps make the US a place of many diverse people.
English is the “universal language since it is a language that is used all over the world, but that doesn’t mean that the other languages are not important. A countries or peoples language carries with it centuries of a cultures history and is the language that has been spoken from generation to generation It is important that those languages exist and that people learn them so we as a species can come together and be part of one planet.
Till next time, �Adios!