I mean the whole school I went through kept nailing in our heads how much a foreign language would benefit you. I guess this went under the noses of whoever like teaching kids to balance a checkbook.
I think this is a matter of the microeconomics concept of “scarce resources”? It’d be lovely if everyone in the US learns at least Spanish. But school can only teach a limited number of subjects, so in the US where most people don’t need to use anything other than American English, it might be argued that it is more beneficial to spend more time on, say, STEM and history, rather than getting kids to learn Spanish/German/Chinese… I guess there are foreign language electives for that reason? They are still highly valuable after all
Besides, learning and teaching a foreign language is hard lol. China used to (I’ve heard rumors that some places changed, not 100% sure) require mandatory English education from 1st grade elementary… social issues with the English teacher expats aside, the English literacy rate in China still looks like that. There are even multilingual countries in Europe where a good number of people struggle to learn/speak the other national languages so… Even if the US wants to do it, it’s not that straightforward
Learning a second language might open perspectives and expose children to ideas. The GOP can’t afford such smart kids.
If you don’t live in a border state the chances of using a second language enough to really learn it well and become proficient are really small unless you have close family members that speak it.
I took a couple of years of Spanish in high school but live about 12 hours from the Mexican border so I didn’t use it enough to retain much.
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…
Speaking another language is game changing, it doesn’t matter which language it is. It’ll make it much easier to learn another language, for example, because you’ll get a better grasp of grammar. In fact, that grasp of grammar will help you speak your own language better.
You’ll also be more likely to treat people who speak a different language as people rather than things.
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.
The Netherlands teaches everyone English and it works.
You also have a lot more contact with English speakers and media to consume in it. Japan localizes everything and there are few jobs where being multilingual actually matters (and those are usually specialized roles outside of hospitality). There are a lot of problems with the way Japan does its English education which does factor into it, but people do not see it as useful, don’t want to use it, and almost never use it (very little overseas travel with most going to Hawaii and Guam which have Japanese language support all over the place).
I say this as someone working on his 5th serious language (with a smattering of Spanish, Albanian, and Hebrew I just puttered around with a bit) and strongly believe that teaching kids languages is a good thing for a variety of reasons.
I have zero faith that the national, state, county, and municipality levels could come together to have something that is justified, works, and is properly-implemented. Tax-payers would also not want to foot the bill for what many would consider useless. Not that many people in the US have passports, either, and a lot that do travel to Canada where English is widely spoken, the UK, etc.
The college I graduated from required a year of foreign language for graduation – actually take it and pass, not just test out of it.
OK, that’s not quite true. For some reason, the mathematics department was grouped with the languages for purposes of this requirement, so you could take a year of calculus in lieu of a foreign language if you preferred.
Unless you were a math major. Classes in your major didn’t count, so all math majors absolutely had to take a foreign language.
Unless you were a dual major like math-physics. Dual majors could apply classes from both majors towards distribution requirements. I knew several “math” majors who took just enough physics classes to qualify as a dual major for the express purpose of not having to study a language.
In my own experience, if you pick up another language but don’t use it on an at least a semi-regular basis, your skills in it get real rusty real fast.
Everyone coming up with conspiratorial reasons why this is not the case but it’s much simple than that. It’s not feasible and it’s expensive and the returns aren’t really worth it.
Kids in school have a bunch of other subjects they have to learn besides foreign languages. You can add one or two languages but then at some point you will need to remove other subjects to add more or you need to keep kids in school even more. Both are not really feasible. Then you need to hire teachers for all these new languages which most places won’t do.
Another issue is with the way they teach languages in schools. They expect you to pass a test and not actually learn the language so a lot of the languages will not “stick” as the students lack immersion and practice with that language. I can speak for myself, I have learned two languages besides my native language in school: French and English. I had French since 2nd grade, which is 10 years of French classes and English since 5th grade which is 7 years of English classes. Today I can speak English fluently and like 3 words of French. The difference was that I was always immersed in English, though video games, movies, songs and so on. Not so much with French. I have noticed the same pattern with most of my friends and family members.
Do Americans really not learn any other languages in school? I was under the impression that Spanish lessons were part of the public school system down there. I’m not trying to be rude I’m genuinely asking
We didn’t have any foreign language classes until highschool. We had one month in 5th grade (~11 years old) where we went over some French, Spanish, and German like once a week. By the time I got to highschool, the only options were Spanish and French and I was only able to get into French due to the way they sorted people. That was fine for me, though, since I went to Canada basically every year. These were not, however, required. Some tracks would have things like Ag Sciences and more vocational classes instead. I graduated in the late '90s.
I see. That’s a little surprising to me. I didn’t realize that there is basically no language education there. It is true that you guys probably don’t need it as much as other countries though I guess
At least in my time, people going the “college prep” route generally were expected to take two years of a language in highschool. I moved for my final year to a bigger city and more affluent area and they had French, Spanish, Latin, German, and Japanese, though at least some of those were being phased out the next year (I think Japanese may have been phased out the year I moved there, but I had already had 3 years of French and was more focused on music classes as I thought I wanted to be a music teacher).
So in high school languages are just an elective, not a requirement?
In my generation, yes. I doubt that’s changed in the last
51015really?20ohno2530ish years.Edit: Rural Ohio for the first part of my schooling, but not really different from what I could tell in the big city when I moved for my final year.
Okay. I didn’t realize that’s how it worked over there. Thanks for sharing.
Generally not till highschool or college.
So you’re old enough that it doesn’t come easy and generally no one retains much without a lot of effort.
I see thanks for clarifying
When I was a kid in public school, everybody had to take a foreign language, the elective part was that we had a choice as to which language we took. Some chose French. Some chose Spanish. If you came from money, you also had the option to take foreign language courses at participating colleges, which opened up a lot of other options like German, Japanese, and Latin, amongst others.
Has that changed? Or perhaps it’s different in different jurisdictions?
For me personally, I wish Latin had been an option for me, as it’s used extensively in biology and it would have been incredibly helpful. In terms of foreign language courses I’ve taken, I’ve had Spanish, French, and German. I don’t use any of them, except on rare occasion I’ll hear/see something in Spanish that I can vaguely understand the highlights of given enough time. French is pretty much 100% useless in my day to day life. German has been helpful once or twice when watching a movie or listening to music, but otherwise, useless as well.
Keep in mind, however smart you are, most people are not that smart. They’ll never be curious enough or smart enough to learn another language. They don’t have enough exposure to another language to really remember it. It’s basically of waste of their time and educational money. I’m all for teaching these things in schools as electives, but forcing kids to learn multiple different languages? I think we should have universal/single payer healthcare, better medicare/medicaid, free school lunches (and breakfasts), true livable minimum wages, and a myriad other things first.
For me personally, I wish Latin had been an option for me, as it’s used extensively in biology and it would have been incredibly helpful.
My wife and I studied Latin in middle school and high school.
My kids were also able to take Latin in school.
Rather than list all the benefits of learning Latin, I found this, Top 10 Reasons For Studying Latin, which says it better than I could.
I would struggle to translate anything today (although I still know that all of Gaul is divided into three parts), but I know I have benefited from an improved understanding of English grammar and vocabulary.
Fight for Latin in your schools!
In Canada when I was growing up, if you didnt take french immersion, they made you take 1 french language class a year up until grade 10.
They also taught Japanese in my highschool and for senior year if you’d taken them all you could go on a trip to Japan.
Same experience for me. Once in highschool (at an English speaking school) you could choose to branch off from French and learn either Spanish or Japanese (or all the above) if you wanted to.
Around me, the only language spoken with any frequency other than English is Spanish. In a half dozen different varieties. Even that wasn’t all that common until, maybe, 10 years ago. About midway through President Trump’s first administration.
Most schools encourage kids to take a language, but they are kinda a use it, or lose it thing. Unless you just happen to be part of a community or household that speaks a language other than English, you are unlikely to need it.
Because the system is designed to make it so you never leave and you never have the upper hand.
English has 1.5B fluent speakers spread across the entire globe. Hardly an insular language.
This is far more about discrimination - freezing migrant families out of public sector jobs and services, segregating English speakers from minority speakers, abolishing First Nations language and culture.
Also very important to keep Americans from reading foreign language press.
Sorry, but I really am failing to make the connection between how learning a second language as an optional class leads to “freezing migrant families out of public sector jobs and services”. You don’t even need to speak English to access those most of the time. In my city, nearly all public services are available in English and Spanish at the minimum, and frequently Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian as well.
I really am failing to make the connection between how learning a second language as an optional class leads to “freezing migrant families out of public sector jobs and services”.
American public school kids don’t normally get access to electives until at 6th grade (sometimes not until 8th or 9th grade depending on the state and district). So “optional” in theory is a deliberate effort to delay bilingual learning in practice.
Mono-lingual populations are more easily primed towards hostility against minority speakers. So your senior staff is biased towards English as a primary language when hiring the next generation of public workers. And these workers are increasingly both unable and unwilling to provide services in secondary languages. This creates a natural barrier for any minority speaker from even interacting with public bureaucracies.
In my city, nearly all public services are available in English and Spanish at the minimum, and frequently Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian as well.
Bigger and more egalitarian cities, with large minority-language populations can staff their departments with fluent minority-language speakers. And under more liberal and egalitarian governments, they do. But as the population grows more reactionary, these kinds of skills get drummed out of the bureaucracy.
This isn’t even a new problem in government.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told 2,500 troops Tuesday about the foreign-language skills he championed as a congressman, an active-duty Army officer was complaining about the paucity of military personnel who can speak anything other than English.
But it has become an increasingly domestic issue, as fascists take command of the bureaucratic core.
On March 1, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 13166, which designated English as the United States’ official language. This Executive Order is no longer theoretically in effect, and existing federal civil rights laws and regulations require language access for individuals with limited English proficiency in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
Nonetheless, numerous federal entities are pursuing policies prioritizing English as the only language, effectively reducing or eliminating Spanish.
It hasn’t really been an economic necessity or cultural priority like other countries.
Most countries who have a population who speak more than one language usually either have a variety of languages spoken within/near the country or rely on ESL speakers to participate in the international workforce.
With English being the current lingua franca, Americans already know the current dominant language. There is really only one major language which is relevant to neighbors, but Americans are usually in the more dominant economic position and there is a cultural aversion to adopting Spanish more.
This is the correct answer.
If you live in SE Asia for example you speak your local language at home but you need to learn English for work.
If you already speak English at home then you already know how to speak English at work.
There is really only one major language which is relevant to neighbors
Spanish
French Canadians would like to have a word with you
They could, if they were economically relevant on the continent. Spanish and Portuguese are far more relevant when interfacing with international trade in the Western Hemisphere.
I pointed out cultural reasons for maintaining a language as well. The USA, as a country, has no current cultural reason to have portions of the country maintain a different language.
Is Canada not economically relevant to the continent? French is an official language of Canada, on equal footing as English. By law anything sold in Canada must include both English and French labelling, software, instruction manuals etc. For parts of the US that trade a lot with Canada, French is at least as economically relevant as Spanish.
Quebec isn’t Canada.
Having to get documents translated is a cost of doing business in Canada. You don’t have to speak both languages to conduct business in Canada.
Quebec is in Canada, it’s also not the only Francophone region in Canada. There are also most certainly major economic zones in Canada where you would need to know French to conduct business. And I assume you could also hire a translator for Spanish, no?
But we’re talking about economic utility. Quebec isn’t Canada; it is much smaller.
In contrast, Mexico has a GDP near Canada as a whole and there isn’t a bilingual legal framework to support business deals. Furthermore, there are more Spanish speaking countries to make deals with in the Western Hemisphere; the closest that French has is Haiti.
Quebec is one of the most economically active regions in Canada. But we can out that aside for now because, again, Quebec is not the only francophone region in Canada. The province I’m from doesn’t even recognize French as an official language, yet there are people who live here who are born here, are educated here, and work here, and die here, all without ever achieving more that basic English proficiency because they are so immersed in the Francophone subculture here.
So if what you are worried about is legal frameworks, then yes, you don’t need your lawyer to be bilingual to do business with Canada in some cases. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that the people who you hope to do business with, and your potential customer base, might not know anything beyond broken English (if they know any English at all).
I’m 1.5 Gen immigrant to the US and idek Cantonese/Chinese volcabulary outside of basics, like 2nd grade level words, so I’m probably gonna be speaking a weird Canto-glish to my future children, or maybe just English only 🤷♂️
I even struggle to talk to my parents lol
Because it would upset the racists (republicans)
I know it varies from state to state, but where I’ve lived it’s an “elective” in that you got to pick which language to take of the available options (some schools might only have two choices, others four or even five), but taking a certain number of foreign language credits was required for graduation. If you wanted to go beyond the minimum and had room in your schedule you could.
Same way where I grew up in South Dakota, except each school only taught one language.
