Learning other languages must be national priority
By Nancy E. Roman Originally published November 15, 2006
The standoff between the United States and Iran over nuclear weapons, the military challenge in Iraq, the threatening trade war with China - the pressing issues of the day all call for dialogue and understanding.
Yet there is no dialogue without speech. There is no speech without language. And while the world is busy learning English, not many Americans are reciprocating in kind.
Three hundred million Chinese are learning English. By 2025, China will have more English speakers than the United States. Meanwhile, only 34,000 American college students are studying Chinese.
Roughly 10,000 American college students are studying Arabic, with only 300 reaching advanced Arabic each year. Fewer than 1 percent of American high school students study Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Russian or Urdu.
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What we may be missing, as we bask in our ability to be understood, is that we lack the ability to understand. They get us, but do we get them? Chinese, Russians, Indians and, increasingly, Arabs have access to our literature, our intelligence, our technical manuals, our academic journals and our culture. We lack parallel access. We are choosing not to position ourselves to understand friends, foes, business partners or competitors.
This looks like one of our biggest failings.
