No Stupid Questions

I've almost never been in a situation where speaking Spanish was gamechanging...

So yea they've been teaching Spanish for like 2 years in middle school, never retained much except basics like uno dos tres cuatro cingco seis... and me llama pizza, and me no hablo espanol...

since I never got to use it outside of class

But yes I agree, its cool to have another language, but then it again you just lose it anyways since you never have the opportunity to use it, most people will never use it.

Also its about a person's will

I remember school used to make me read boring shakespeare shit or the oddyssey, yeah I just can't... soooo boring

Same logic with language learning...

Honestly I have more chances of using Chinese (I'm ethnic Chinese living near a lot of Asians) than using Spanish... so yea there's that

And an average non-Asian that never goes to Chinese restaurants probably don't need to learn any extra languages at all.

Also a lot of countries teach English because its a lingua franca so I think English speakers just expects others to be able to communicate anyways and so theres a less of an incentive to learn anyways.

Oh btw my high school does requires two credits (aka: two years) of learning a foreign language...

So guess what:

I chose the easy way out and just picked Chinese since I already knew it from two years of school in China 😎 (you can boo me all you want but who wouldn't just do this for an easy A?)

They actually put me in Spanish at first but all the kids (I know its "high school" but people still act like "kids" so I'm gonna use that word) were misbehaving that I was just like why not just switch to Chinese, a language I already knew LOL

I'm glad I did make the switch, so comfy there lol, literally everyone behaved better (cuz no mishaving kid is gonna choose the hardest language, they'd probably be trying to change out of that class)

Edit: Went to school in Brooklyn, NYC for elementary, never got spanish class, then for middle school and high school it was Philadelphia, PA, and it was Philly that I had Spanish classes for two years in middle school.

Edit 2: Also I'd like to add: Learning a language later on as you get older plus the lack of immersion... for like a one hour class 5 days a week for two school years... yea that's nearly impossible.

I'm lucky to come to the US as an 8 year old so I had that advantage of learning English. My dad never really learned English, still a non-citizen... 👀

My mom did, but still struggles to express things

So I sort of have a weird language barrier with parents...

Because the US educational system is not made to give students the upper hand anymore, it's meant to make yall obedient and dumb enough so that what's going on politically could happen. An educated public would've never voted for Trump.

Back in the renaissance ancient Greek and Latin were needed to study ancient texts, so knowing them was needed for university. These requirements lasted into the 20th century so high schools taught it for college track students. These days they'll take any language. The methods of teaching and the structural contours of this shape how language learning is thought of to this day

The country broadly has what's called a monolingual language ideology. English is prioritized above others. Multilingualism just isn't viewed as a skill. And thus there's no large pool of L2 speakers with which to interact regularly enough to learn and maintain an L2. I mean, they certainly exist, but the landscape is quite different from somewhere like Belgium or South Africa or, idk, most countries. Really anywhere where there's like a home/cultural language, a market language (maybe a pidgin), and an official state language.

The wall was meant to keep you in.

Wait...

Japan tries to teach everyone English and it does not work well. Most people don't want to learn it and the way they teach it is also to a test not to communication. I have no faith that the same wouldn't happen in the US.

Because money. More classes more money. Less common skill set, more money.

to be done right it has to be done early. This means parents or schools have to choose the languages learned. It needs to be immersive to. Schools will have to have teachers for every language. That can be expensive. Its a bit easier with non english speaking countries as they generally teach english and like catholic schools at one time taught latin. Now personally I would love the whole world to standardize on one sign language and teach that so that in a generation or two everyone would be able to communicate.

For me it was a requirement for at least a few years.

Capitalism relies on dumber citizens, don't seek anything more than consumerism, work consume and die. Otherwise they would teach financial education in school too.

Texan here. 2 years in HS was required when I was there. I took Latin.

The US is allergic to other languages. Hell, it's even allergic to English depending on where you look. It's all just part of the government's plan to keep people stupid.

Learning a second language takes a lot of time and effort, and I don’t think the US likes either of those things, not the funding required for them.

West coast Canadian who is proud of Canada's French history but can't speak French.

Language needs to be used in daily life for a lot of people.

I've met countless immigrants who can't speak very good English after being here for years because they just don't speak it at home, only when they need to put in public.

Which is no different than me learning French from grade 6 to 8 and not being able to learn it, though I do understand it more than I expected that one time I was in Quebec City for 2 weeks (absolutely lovely city, and the Thai soup I had from Don Vegan, the cities first vegan only restaurant, was the best Thai soup I've ever had. DELICIOUS! But I digress) It's just a symptom of not needing it in your life because I'm just not around it. I'm not a super outgoing person either and I've never been good at getting a conversation going so my own hurdles are certainly part of this, but I've worked with a lot of immigrants and I think in spite of my bias, it's pretty accurate.

America isn't much different in that regard, unless you are on a southern border there's significantly less opportunity to have other languages be part of the fabric of the average americans personal lives. Not impossible but just a lot less likely

Ok so well then all the work is on OUR kids then and not the rest of the worlds kids to learn American? Why is the world so unfair to USA? We are too big of a country, it is unrealistic to learn languages, even one is hard given how rural and unique the American countryside is. The only hope we have is if pickup trucks evolve to be able to speak for us and keep us connected when we finally become unable to learn even a single language.

How common is it for students in non-English speaking countries to learn a second language that isn't English? I would imagine not very. Learning a second language isn't very useful if you're not going to use it, and learning it won't be easy if you aren't immersed in it.