Comment by ldd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ldd | Hacker News Reader

>True bilingualism is a relatively rare and a beautiful thing(...) Highly competent bilingualism is probably more common in other countries, since many children growing up in the United States aren’t exposed to other languages.

I acknowledge that this article is aimed at Americans, but I don't really think that bilingualism is rare in the world, or for that matter, in certain parts of the USA.

Perhaps this is not relevant to the article, but it seems that bilingualism is a forgotten issue these days in the USA. Yet, it is actually a very important issue. One time a person simply told me that they couldn't see the point in Junot Díaz work because it used so many 'foreign' words.

At the time of writing this reply, there were already plenty of other replies that suggested that we should all speak English exclusively or at least that speaking English proficiently should be prioritized. I think that they are probably at least partially right, but it surprises me that there is really not a lot of controversy on this topic.

All I am saying is that here we have a perfect topic in which humans are not entirely rational, and instead of being puzzled and talking about it, we just simply forget about it.

[edited for clarity. Like Celia said, my English is not very good looking, so I'd appreciate corrections :D]

True. People from Switzerland or Luxembourg often speak 3 or more languages fluently. A lot of other people in Europe speak their native language and a bit of English as well.

I don't feel Americans appreciate the luxury of speaking a language that is basically the lingua franca of the Western world.

Also, sometimes I feel that many people don't realize that there is a wealth of information that is in Latin, Greek, Russian, or Mandarin. What's not English doesn't exist for them. In this way, the world is still divided in some sense.

  > basically the _lingua franca_ of the Western world. [emphasis mine]

You're not wrong, but for some reason I always find it hilarious to refer to English as the language of the Franks.

... with a Latin phrase.

To be fair, the original term lingua franca didn't refer to the actual language of the Franks either...

Well sure, but what's the point of learning another language if you're an American if you will almost without exception not ever need to speak anything other than English in the United States? Even if English wasn't the lingua franca what would the point be? Conversely in Europe you're surrounded by a ton of other languages, of course it makes sense to learn them. If they spoke French in Oregon, Spanish in California, and Dutch in Colorado Americans would be just as bil-/tri- lingual as Europeans are. It just doesn't make sense to be.

The point would be something called broadening your outlook.

Yes, but I could spend that time doing something else. It's opportunity cost.

Learning a language is pointless as well as very very difficult if you have no opportunity to use it. I never got really far spending a coupple of years learning Chinese in the states, but got really far spending 6 months in china doing the same.

Learning French doesn't broaden your horizons. Using French does.

Spanish is very useful in the US if you live in the southwest

Agreed.

Why would an American not get a passport? You have French-speaking Quebec and a collection of Spanish speaking nations right on your doorstep.

Why would an American not get a passport? That doesn't make any sense.

But to your larger point about nations speaking other languages on the doorstep of the U.S. -> keep in mind that "on your doorstep (aside from Mexico and Quebec) means a 6 hour flight to South America. Largely depends on where you are, and you'll see in the American SouthWest they do speak a lot more Spanish, but it's not like in Europe where I can live in Germany, drive to France, circle around through Italy, then through a myriad of other countries (all speaking other languages) in a relatively quick amount of time.

The U.S. is fundamentally different that Europe and I think people should just chill out about the language thing.

A lot of us don't appreciate is as much as we should. Some of us do; I've spent time living in another country (and visiting many others), and I've spent a lot of time helping non-native English speakers struggle through technology documents that are only available in English.

Conversely, there is occasional information that I can only find in Japanese (for example), but that doesn't happen often. Every time it does, it makes me wonder how many of my information sources don't have a direct analog in various other languages.

Came here to say the exact same thing. I grew up in India and I can speak 4 languages with full proficiency and 3 more relatively well. And I have seen atleast 30% of every classroom, in every school I went to speak multiple languages.

Also, right in my family, we speak three languages on an everyday basis, it's interesting because, say we speak languages A, B, C; dad, mom and me speak language B with my brother, and dad, mom and myself communicate in A and all four of us switch to C whenever we wish to.

Yeah Bilingualism isn't that rare in America. I live in Texas and there a literally millions of bilingual speakers (largely English & Spanish, but other languages like Vietnamese (~200,000) as well.)

Do they speak both with near-equal proficiency? Most people I've known tend to heavily favor one language over the other. College-level in the first, early high school in the second, or speaking one with a much stronger accent than the other.

Anecdotally, I know many people from Arizona who speak both English and Spanish absolutely perfectly.

The second paragraph begins

"Highly competent bilingualism is probably more common in other countries, since many children growing up in the United States aren’t exposed to other languages."

Don't they count minorities as Americans or do the minorities in the USA don't speak their native language or aren't there minorities? How is it possible to say that it is rare in the USA to be bilingual?

At least in Europe and the Middle East, most countries have large minorities that speak the local and native language since early age and learn English on top of it. So trilingual or even more languages is pretty common thing.

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