A few months ago I was speaking in front of a crowd of American undergraduate students about my work with the Student Language Exchange, discussing the power and benefit of learning a new language. They seemed moderately interested as I spoke, but in the reception following the event, a group of students came up to me:
“Don’t you think there are more productive things we could be doing with our time? After all, pretty much everyone speaks English these days.”
I hear it all the time: We don’t need to be bilingual because we already have the skills we need in the global marketplace. We know how to use Google Translate, we’ve traveled abroad in college, and we watch Anderson Cooper at least twice per week.
Too many young Americans have bought into language learning myths that have led to the proliferation of a national language deficit. Less than 20 percent of American adults speak a language other than English. Compare that to the more than 50 percent of Europeans who speak at least two languages.
The next generation of leaders is not equipped with the cultural and linguistic skills needed to succeed in an increasingly globalized economy. How can we build truly collaborative partnerships with our peers around the world if we wait for others to learn how to communicate with us? Are we undermining our own success if we don’t learn about the cultural norms of other societies?
In a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Institute, people around the world reported their view that the United States doesn’t consider the interests of others in our policy. This same mentality is reflected in our patterns of language learning and lackluster attempts at promoting global literacy.
We can change this. We can start learning languages. We can communicate more openly with communities across the globe. But we first have to debunk the myths of language learning that are holding us back in the social, economic and political marketplace.
Myth 1: Everybody already speaks English (or they’re learning it).
Yes, about one quarter of the world population speaks English to some degree. What about the remaining 5.4 billion people sharing our planet?
Myth 2: Spanish, French and German are the most spoken languages in the world (besides English, of course).
At last count, about 77 percent of American college students in language courses were studying Spanish, French or German. Those languages and English are spoken natively by less than 13 percent of the global population. To put that into context, Javanese and Bengali claim more native speakers than German and French, but they are scarcely studied by American students. If we exclusively learn European languages, we will continue to leave billions of people out of the global conversation.
Myth 3: China speaks Chinese. India speaks Hindi. America speaks English.
You may rush to learn Mandarin Chinese because you will be working in China, only to find that you should have studied Cantonese. You may find yourself in a region of Paraguay where Guaraní is more helpful than Spanish, or in an Indian state where Tamil is spoken more widely than Hindi.
Our world is not two-dimensional—state lines do not determine cultural practices or mediums of communication. As language learners, we need to do our research on which communities we are hoping to connect with, and what we can do to best facilitate exchange.
Myth 4: It is impossible to learn a language after my sixteenth birthday.
Yes, learning a language becomes less natural as we grow older, but it is absolutely possible regardless of age. In fact, most language software is built with adult or college-aged learners in mind. It is never too late.
Myth 5: It is too expensive to learn anything other than Spanish.
Resources are more available in some languages than in others. More universities offer Italian than Vietnamese— that is the reality. Even so there are so many affordable or free resources online. Many libraries, for example, partner with Mango Languages, thereby offering seventy different languages to patrons for free! A few Google searches may uncover the wealth of opportunities to learn languages online or in-person near you.
Myth 6: Urdu won’t help me get a job. Turkish is useless. I will never find a place to use Vietnamese.
In a rapidly globalizing world, it is tough to make a resume stand out. Sometimes “out-of-the-ordinary” is just what you need. Some federal departments, for example, are giving scholarships to students to learn Azerbaijani, Indonesian, Punjabi, and more. Furthermore, many of these underrepresented languages are spoken in major emerging markets. To do work in these up-and-coming economies, we might be better off learning Hungarian, Polish or Thai.
Myth 7: Language learning is unnecessary with modern translation technologies.
Think about the last time you misinterpreted sarcasm or could not connect a cultural reference. In her recently released book, Erin Meyer asserts that the English spoken in the United States is the lowest context language in the world, meaning it requires minimal cultural context in order to understand. In other parts of the world, communication is not as simple. Language instruction introduces us to the nuances of cultures, allowing us to build productive personal and professional relationships with people from unfamiliar cultures.
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If we want to develop tomorrow’s talent and to prepare the next generation for global work with diverse communities around the world, we need to invest in language learning. Not only must we clue into the true value of language study across the board, but we also need to be more conscious about which languages we choose to learn.
Let’s broaden the global conversation and start working to meet people halfway. It is time to invite others as equals on the global playing field, and in doing that, position ourselves as better communicators and cultural interpreters. In learning languages, we unveil opportunity, and who knows where our next language will take us.
Amelia Friedman is the Founder of the Student Language Exchange (@StudentLangX).
