Is there a Language Crisis in America?
10 March 2005
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Yes, there's a language crisis in the U.S. We need language qualifications for REAL jobs that have tremendous importance to the country. Because of concerns about terrorism, shortages in defense and intelligence have received the most attention. But they aren't the only needs: the globalization of business has radically increased demand for people who can move information from one language to another. Every new Windows release or American movie has to meet the language expectations of markets in other countries. And other country's products need to meet ours. You wouldn't be happy if instructions for the radio in your BMW were only in German. Or if the help wizard in your computer understood only Japanese.
Americans buy from, sell to, compete with, or worry about almost every other country on the globe, and our newest citizens come from many of those countries. Consider Arlington, Virginia. Responding to demand, the cable service has a South Asian TV package. Staffers in a local bank speak several languages to set up accounts. Hardware and paint stores sell to foreign-born owners of small construction firms. Businesses have found that multi-lingual service is good business, both globally and locally.
But the U.S. needs professional-level competence in over 100 different languages. We have some of it. But there are huge gaps.
You might ask: How can there be a problem when there are thousands of kids studying languages in high school and college every year? Well, first of all, our schools and colleges aren't focused on the most important tongues. How many schools do you know that teach Mandarin Chinese, the most-spoken language on the planet? And how about the languages of Afghanistan and Pakistan? To say nothing of Arabic, the federal government's highest priority.
Second, when we talk about professionally-usable skills, the output of our education system is modest at best. It's not the fault of teachers or students. It's a result of the small amount of time we spend on language learning. In many countries, children start a foreign language in fourth or fifth grade and continue it through high school, adding a second language along the way. We don't do that. Professional-level skill can come from living in a country where the language is spoken, but we send far fewer students abroad than most countries. When they do go, it's often to places like Australia. Learning to say, "G'day, Mate" doesn't count! Of course there are exceptions: people who love languages and other cultures gravitate to the Peace Corps, or a year of teaching English overseas, or the diplomatic corps. But it's a relatively small number of people.
So how about the immigrants who bring language skills to the U.S? Aren't they filling the gap? In the 2000 census, 47 million people reported speaking another language at home at least part of the time. The count includes 2 million speakers of Chinese, over 600,000 speakers each of Arabic and Korean, and 300,000 speakers of Hindi. When the FBI asked for Arabic speakers after 9/11, the flood of volunteers crashed the phone system. These folks are critical for our capability in less-taught languages. But here's the catch: most newly-arrived immigrants don't speak English well enough to fill the jobs. The children of immigrants may speak the family language at home, but once they're in school, they quickly switch to English. And by the third generation, the family language is gone. You know the story. A lot of us have grandparents who spoke another language -- Ukrainian, Italian, Spanish -- but we, their offspring, may not know more than a dozen words -- mostly about food! So despite being a nation of immigrants, we have a language problem.
If we want the next generation to fill critical roles in government, business, and community service, we need to provide wider and deeper education in far more languages -- both for new language learners and for people who speak another language at home.
In 1958, the Soviets surprised us by putting the Sputnik satellite into space. Congress responded by creating a generation of scientists, engineers, and linguists who helped win the Cold War. After September 11, 2001, we found ourselves facing another Sputnik moment. Shouldn't we have a national commitment to languages of the Middle East and Asia, as we did for Russian? Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey has proposed the National Security Language Act, which would invest in teaching languages of critical need for national security. Why not write your congressman about it? That's the National Security Language Act. We need it.
That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Dr. Catherine Ingold, Deputy Director of the National Foreign Language Center in Washington. If you want to read the proposed bill on languages, go to our website at www.cofc.edu/linguist. And keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.
Comments
My youngest daughter goes to a school for gifted children; they have instituted Chinese language into their weekly program this year -- each child in kindergarten through 8th grades takes a 50-min. Chinese class twice each week, along with another two classes of Spanish per week. Does this seem like a valid practice to you? Can too many languages be too confusing to young children,especially if they are not using them at home? I would be interested in your opinion on the value of these particular language programs.
Posted by: Marci at March 17, 2005 12:11 PM
I want to teach Mandarine in America.
Posted by: Jackie Fan at May 20, 2005 05:19 AM