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Comment by kutkloon7 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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  > 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...

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.

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.

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