Germans start learning English at school in 5th grade and continue until 10th or 12th grade, depending on which level of secondary school (high school) you attend. Students who attend the 12th-grade program, the only one from which you can proceed to go to university, have to take a second foreign language. Usually it's either French or Latin, but many schools also offer Spanish. I myself took French from grade 7-13 (school still took 13 years when I was in it, now they cut it down to 12 to match international standards). Because of the big German population, everything is dubbed. The only occasion you will see something with subtitles on German TV is when they show an obscure movie on an arthouse channel, everything else is in German - unlike in Scandinavia or the Netherlands, hence their good English like you said. Still, German's English skills on average are way superior to Americans' foreign language skills. A small part of this is contributed to the common exposure in media to English and, to a lesser extent, French. The biggest reason, however, is that the German school system emphasizes speaking and essay-writing in their language programs, there is next to no multiple choice at all. Americans learn everything without speaking and are being tested by filling circles, no one can pronounce jackshit (no offense, but it's true and my American friends confirmed that their language education sucked and they are sad about it, too). Austria is not the grandpa because it's not older, it's simply another German-speaking part of Europe that for various historical reasons became a country on its own. Austrians speak a German dialect with specific vernacular, but it's not as if they use old German words that used to be common all over Germany before. The dialect just sounds very traditional, but it had always been limited to the Austrian/Bavarian area and hasn't really changed during the past centuries.
Most don't have to since only one of our neighbors doesn't speak English and if your do not live near Mexico then there isn't a reason to know another language, I on the other hand do know Spanish very well, but the last time I had to use it was when I was in Mexico buying fireworks. I'm trying to pick up German since most of my family is German and speak it fluently.
That's making the rather sad assumption that USA:ians don't have a reason for ever leaving north america.
Most people in the U.S.A travel to other places in the U.S.A on vacation. I mean hell when I have been on vacation I have gone to one of 4 places Hawaii, North Carolina, Florida and Germany I guess If its seems that I am living under a rock like most others I somewhat ok with that as I'm happy.
Not to excuse my fellow American's inability to speak anything other than English but there are benefits to it: 1) English is the lingua franca of the world right now which is why everyone else is clamoring to learn the language. Do I need to learn French or German when those I do business with already speak English? Not really which makes it an inefficient usage of my time. Of course learning German may help to alleviate any easily avoided problems caused by cultural and/or language barriers. 2) Given #1, it'd be better for me, as an Electrical Engineering major, to learn Chinese or Japanese given I have come across datasheets only available in Japanese and the Chinese are manufacturing my goods. Being able to communicate with them in their language would be a big advantage. 3) The United States, as a country, is really 50 smaller countries that share a "common" culture and language. You drive up and down the West coast then do the same through the South and East coast and you'll find the US is very, very different. Ultimately I can go through each of the 50 states and conduct business in English, conduct legal matters in English, and converse with an incredible majority of the population in English! In Europe you drive 500 miles and you could easily pass through 5 countries who all have different languages. Learning English as a second language benefits you quite greatly in this case as learning 5 languages on top of yours would be a PITA. Esperanto is still trying to be the lingua franca of the world but it is still largely falling short. 4) Speaking English also helps to avoid airline accidents: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB933090613281869060-search.html (of course any language that follows the English model mentioned in the article will reduce airline accidents as well). 5) Forcing Americans to learn another language from an early age does absolutely no good unless you can practice with it. Given #1 is true I rarely need to dive into my French skills for modding and other technical topics or Spanish for that matter. Given I'm in California it is not remotely difficult to find someone to speak Mexican Spanish with but it can be very difficult with German, French, Italian, etc. Plus my family was never much for travel and I don't have the money (or ability) to drop my world for 6 months and move to another country to immerse myself in the language and culture to truly learn it. That all said it doesn't hurt to be exposed to foreign languages and I have been exposed to French, German, and Spanish lessons off and on my entire life but all that has really stuck are a handful of vocabulary words sadly. I'll be in a bit of a unique situation soon. I've signed up a girl from Germany to be my roommate come mid-August through December. I'm pretty sure a large part of the reason she is coming here is to improve her English so I'm not sure if I should bother brushing up on my German to better communicate certain American-esque concepts to her or should I help her muddle through with English. Granted my spoken German right now is pretty bad but I can read it with some level of accuracy. Any Germans care to comment? Or anyone who deliberately came to the United States/Great Britain to brush up on their English?
APE: Most of your arguments are that everyone should know english, which i don't think anyone have questioned? Only #5 is actually arguing against learning additional languages. However, I strongly disagree that learning many languages at early age is wasted. Learning languages is an ability that drops almost linearly during the first 30 years of a persons life, so the more of them you can learn and the earlier you can do it, the more skill you get out of the time spent. And I think that when a person is 30 and learning a language has become 10x more difficult than when s/he were 10, s/he is far more likely to regreat not learning more languages than to regreat spending time on learning an unneccessary language.
But what would the benefit of learning another language be if you never have to speak any other language than English? The average US citizen really doesn't have much of a reason to speak anything outside of English. If I'm sitting at a desk and sorting out insurance papers in Ohio, do I really need to spend the time learning French or trying to understand the German culture more through their language? What APE was saying was, if the opportunity to use another language never presents itself, why bother spending the lifelong effort towards learning it? This is coming from someone who is bilingual.
I am bilingual I speak both English and Spanish fluently. I learned Spanish back in high school and the only reason I did that was so every summer when me and my friends drove to mexico to buy M80s ,cherry bombs and silver salutes we would be able to negotiate a great price.
I'm German. Me and my family immigrated to Canada in 2011. I didn't really come here just to brush up my English (it was already good, even though I still improved a lot since then, particularly speaking), but to get a degree in English language and to wide my horizon. It may not harm you most of the time, but there is NO benefit to "knowing less" as opposed to "knowing more"! Sorry, guess I'm just picking on how you said it but I think that's important to point out. If those lessons were in high school then I understand - American high schools suck balls. Did you ever write a single coherent essay over 1 page? Or had to have an actual conversations with sentences in class? Exactly... the inability of language skills is mostly due to a bad way of teaching those languages in America. For example, I was never a good French student, usually between C+ and B-, but I can still speak basic French and understand around 70% of what they say. Reading is around 80% I'd say. We always had to communicate in class a lot in French, wrote essays and analyzed books in 20p exams. That's how you learn a language, apparently! Oh, how I hated French class and how I love to speak French. Also: Don't see languages as a tool only. If it was just a tool, almost nobody would learn them because 99% of language learners never go and live/work in any country but their own anyway. Learning another language widens the person's horizon - you gain the ability to understand the feeling and thoughts of other culturies and parts of the world much, much better than if you'd just read a translation. The choice of words, the strength and balance of the words. I read some books/movies in German first and then in English: Even though the translation was pretty accurate, the feeling cannot be translated. You only know how a culture feels if you speak their vernacular. If you only speak English, it's very hard to understand this and it limits your thinking. Without being able to communicate in a different language, it's hard to get a grasp of different cultures, let alone understanding the complexity of cultural differences.
Bingo. I'd imagine if you were sitting in Monaco and had to sort through insurance papers it'd pay heavily to know 7 languages but in my part of the world the people you meet who do speak German, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, etc are here to LEARN English or came here already speaking it fluently. Assume I wanted to learn French, my ability to polish my skills would be limited to the French classes, the faculty teaching French, my fellow French students, and anyone nearby who is fluent in French. Here is the problem though, France is many thousands of miles/kilometers away so the French I'd be learning would be heavily influenced by non-French forces. The result would likely be shitty French unless I spent a great deal of time in France. American High Schools are generally terrible and I was exposed in middle school in the 7th grade. Mostly rote vocabulary memorization and counting. I did give a good go at taking an ASL class and can converse in that in a cave man like motif but it counts. And I completely agree. How cultures perceive reality is difference and languages can affect that greatly. In a Maian dialect when you'd ask someone "how are you doing" they'd say "how is your road?". They're not referring to a literal road but a figuratively one. Just something as simple as inquiring about how a person is doing that day is looked at entirely different from English. I can begin to wrap my mind around such things but without speaking and thinking in that language I'll only really know the English perspective.
My main motivation of learning English was and still is mostly to understand English movies and shows in their original Language. Sure one other big reason is to communicate with peeps from all over the world in places just like here. I also have to use it for a fairly amount on my work, since I'm working in an international organized company, but German and Japanese are still my two prime languages to go atm.
At the same time, efficiency and practicality come into play. I could sit here and start to memorize the names and phone numbers in the phonebook because, after all, there's no benefit to knowing less... Or I could just use a phonebook in case I need to call a company. Which one makes more sense? Sure, there may be that one day where my knowledge of companies in the phonebook comes into play, but considering how slim that chance would be, there's not much of an incentive to spend all that time. Yes. Yes, every day for three years. I still only remember a few short phrases of German these days because I simply never got the chance to use it. Speculative. Why can't I just skip the language learning part and start reading about the culture? Are you saying that it's impossible to translate cultural notes? Nuances, maybe, but the broad details can still be easily conveyed. Does one need to learn every little detail about why a culture does things a certain way ex: counting with hands starting with the thumb vs starting with the index finger? Also, I could spend the effort researching the 70 different languages the Harry Potter books are translated in, noticing all of their nuances and cultural differences through the language and "broadening my horizons" on different cultures in the world...or I could actually work on trying to feed my family by doing my job better.
Some items are "untranslatable" yes. To fully grasp the concept of suadade I'd have to be fluent in a language that uses it. I can understand it on an intellectual level but I get the feeling I'll never fully understand the nuances to the point of being a fluent speaker of Portuguese would.
When you're in school, still young enough to easily learn new languages, have you already decided that you will spend your life sorting out insurance papers in Ohio?
Untranslatable words can still be described in paragraphs to help explain what they mean. If they couldn't, that Wikipedia article wouldn't exist. Think of it this way: Do you need to know exactly how electrons are moving between atoms to build a circuit? Knowing how they flow could help bring a greater understanding of how electronics work in general, but that actual point itself is not exactly necessary and can be described enough to where you get the gist of the idea. You can spend your lifetime learning a language and still never be able to fully grasp certain nuances because you weren't born and raised in that culture. That doesn't mean you can't understand the culture as a whole. I never stated that the foreign language requirement in schools should be dropped. I also never said that people shouldn't learn a new language. I'm simply explaining the reasoning behind why the average US citizen does not speak a foreign language, nor has a real need to do so.
I'm with you on that one, it never ceases to amaze me how I keep finding US people that can barely type/write in their native language, and that I, having English as a second language, have to correct them. (And I don't mean to offend anyone, nor stereotype with this, it's just something that draws my attention) On the other hand, I do think it's great to learn languages, but that's on a personal level, I kinda get what APE says, and if you are catching a new language when in college it should probably be wiser to choose one that would aid you in business. Undergoing a Computer Engineering major I don't need anything else than English, but I'd love to learn Japanese, though I know I don't have the balls and time for it, at least for now or the following years. I also do speak Spanish (native tongue) and Portuguese (which hasn't been of much use to me unless for having an occasional chat with Johnny, or when on a brazilian jiu jitsu seminar every now and then), but I'll be forever grateful with my parents for having me learn English since I was 3 y/o.
If learning languages is such a great waste of time, then tell me how you suppose people would use that massive amount of time in a better way. I am speaking 4 languages, yet I still study a degree unrelated to languages and I have many interests of which only 1 is somehow connected to a language (Japanese for games). I guess learning languages didn't waste such an essential part of my time afterall, nor of my friends who share similar backgrounds? In the end, learning a second/third/fourth language does not consume a whole lot of your time if you put it into perspective, but it enhances your perception of the world. It doesn't mean you have to be perfect at speaking it, it just means that once you reach an immediate or proficient level, you can understand much better what is going on in that culture - and that enhances your interaction with this country. If you want me to show some evident advantages, then let me put it this way: Your chances on the job market are better, you can interact with people of different cultures in foreign countries easily, the anxiety of traveling abroad all alone diminishes and so on and so on. Nothing but benefits, but you make it sound like learning a language turns out to be nothing but a disadvantage due to all the time wasted. NOBODY has the "real need" to do so if they choose to file insurance papers in the most conversative and boring part of their home country.
