Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: Bilingualism is not encouraged enough in the U.S.
By Monica Marand
Oklahoma Daily (U. Oklahoma)
02/22/2008

(U-WIRE) NORMAN, Okla. — Gia sou, Salaam, Ni hao, Marhaba, O'siyo, Bienvenue. These are all greetings from languages across the world. Today, there are 6,912 spoken languages in the world. Sadly, many Americans only know one or two.

The fact the United States overlooks this in its education system is troubling. Learning more than one language is the most important way to break the cultural and language barriers set before us. Language classes need to be strictly implemented starting at beginning grade levels in all schools not only in Oklahoma, but across the nation.

I grew up in a trilingual family. My mother speaks Farsi and English, and my father speaks Farsi, English and Turkish. I was raised learning Farsi, and I am thankful it was that way. When I was younger, I never gave it a second thought that I was bilingual. The majority of my friends at the time were not bilingual. I never found it to be cool or interesting, until I started getting older and realized speaking more than one language is a huge and beneficial factor. Whether it is in the job force, school and everyday living, you never know who you will meet or with which language you will need to communicate.

I had realized how important my language was when I visited my family in Iran. It was incredible knowing I was in another country and I could communicate with the people there. I was appreciative that my parents instilled their mother language in me while I was young. The best time to absorb anything is when you are a child. Your brain is like a sponge, ready to soak up information.

After visiting Iran, I became most intrigued about others who spoke different languages, each one in its own dialect, accent and beauty.

Unfortunately, I see a huge problem in our language curriculum in this state today. I do not believe Americans are being taught the importance of speaking other languages. I can not think of any nation where English is not present in one way or another, whether on street signs or advertisements on buses written both in their language and English. Face it; English is everywhere. It is no surprise many people around the world know English along with their own native languages.

Why do other countries make the effort to speak English, but Americans do not put enough effort into learning another? Sure, we say we are learning Spanish, or French, but let's face reality. I have taken four years of Spanish and cannot even hold a reasonable conversation with a fluent Spanish speaker. I am not alone in this. Many people who I know that have taken foreign language classes either in high school and/or college, say, although they are being taught the language, they are not learning it effectively.

It is embarrassing when I go on vacations and find other country's citizens speaking English to communicate with me, and I do not know how to speak theirs. Why should we feel the need of learning a foreign language when we can use English in almost any destination we take? That may be fine for now, but I believe a lack of diversity in languages is harmful to the United States.

As the United States is recognized for its excellence in higher education, it is quite shameful it closes its mind to diverse communication. Knowing a different language not only eases a communication barrier, but it opens the opportunity to experiencing a different culture and lifestyle.

According to Fedstats in 2000, only 7.4 percent of residents in Oklahoma were bilingual, and only 17.9 percent of people in the United States in the year of 2000 spoke more than one language at home.

This means less than one-fifth of Americans speak more than one language. Most likely, this is attributed to the growing number of minorities that have an original language that is not English, and not due to an effort by the United States to learn different languages.

Therefore, I feel the U.S. educational system needs to take an immediate initiative to strive for an excellence in language diversity. I can only hope in the future my children will be speaking more than one language.

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