On American Monolingualism

It is an old stereotype that Americans, especially if they are not immigrants, are less likely to have second language skills than people in other, comparable countries, and especially less likely to be fluent in a second language than they.

Of course, all this is tougher to estimate than it sounds. Statistics based on self-reporting, for example, likely exaggerate capability, especially given the vagueness of concepts like “fluency” — and the demonstrated inability of a great many people to function at a high level in their own native language, even after lengthy formal education. (Perhaps one can carry on a simple conversation in a given language — but cannot speak it, let alone read it, at a very advanced level, such that so simple and mundane a task as understanding a common bus schedule can defeat them. Can that truly be regarded as command of the language?)

Still, there seems to be at least some truth to the image, sufficient that those interested in those subjects point out a couple of factors with some regularity. One is that an English-speaking American (as compared with a citizen of the European Union, for example) generally has to travel a long way before they are in a place where the people predominantly speak, write and read a language that is not their native one (and less often need to do so than, for instance, people in countries where hard circumstances drive their people to go abroad looking for work).

Another factor is that Americans are far more accustomed to exporting pop culture than importing it — the songs they listen to, the movies they watch, much less likely to originally have been created in something other than their own. (Indeed, Americans much more often see Hollywood’s remakes of foreign movies than the movies they are based on.)

All of this implies a great deal for the pressure to learn, the opportunity to practice — that they are less likely to have just “picked up” other languages in childhood, or acquired something of them in everyday life, instead making this a thing one goes that much more out of their way to do, indeed specifically, consistently commit time to over a long period for the relatively distant payoff of competence in the language, which is often little more than an end in itself.

There is also what all this means for those taking the deliberate, academic path to which they have no recourse — that they get language instruction conceived by linguists for other linguists, rather than for more general users; instruction by teachers inclined to a scholarly perfectionism rather than offering up a package the student can quickly begin using as a basis on which to build that subtler knowledge. Is it quite so important that the student be enjoined to remember every last form of every verb to which they are introduced, the vast majority of which forms they are unlikely to see anytime soon, practically before the student has acquired any vocabulary at all? I doubt it. But that is what the textbook writers insist on, and the implicit enjoinment to perfectionism — which leaves potential learners thinking in terms of a far greater competence in the language than most native speakers of that language are likely to have as the standard of acquisition, and the choice between this or nothing at all. And that would seem to be another problem in itself, for when it is perfection or nothing I imagine many resign themselves to nothing. (I suspect contributing to this further is the pop cultural garbage inundating us in false images of hyperpolyglot geniuses who all speak a dozen languages perfectly, in spite of never actually studying or practicing, making it look easier than it is, setting impossible standards that make the onlooker feel inferior.)

There is, too, the way a purely academic effort can produce a very uneven capability. (One may end up in a situation where they can read the second language at a very high level, within some field in which they are competent perhaps far more adroit at reading the relevant material than a native speaker who has not been trained in the field — but at the same time find that coming up with the words with which to carry on an everyday conversation defeats them.)

And of course, that those most likely to make the academic effort are people who probably speak their own native language with exceptional skill and polish is likely to pose obstacles for them as well — by leaving them the more impatient of their difficulties and crudity in that other language, all while they are perhaps juggling other intellectual or cultural interests as well with less than all the time in the world for all of them. (For example, they have only so much time to give to discretionary reading. As a result they find themselves having to choose between reading a book they are interested in reading in their own language for the knowledge it contains — and struggling along with a book in another language just for the sake of practice.)

Of course, all this does not in itself mean that Americans might not be doing better — but it does at least call into question the tone of accusation and moralizing that American social critics tend to assume (and the sneering of a good many foreign observers) when discussing American monolingualism.

Originally published at https://raritania.blogspot.com.