From: abostick@netcom.com (Alan Bostick)
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 17:12:23 +0800
To: tcmay@got.net
Subject: Re: Why Americans feel no compulsion to learn foreign languages
In-Reply-To: <ad7e4b691902100484d7@[205.199.118.202]>
Message-ID: <bUbWx8m9LEgB085yn@netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In article <ad7e4b691902100484d7@[205.199.118.202]>,
tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) wrote:

> Americans are typically thousands of miles away from those speaking
> Japanese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Polish, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Hindi,
> Talegu, and the hundreds of other languages. It is not at all clear what
> language Americans should pick as a "second language" to study.

What continent do you live on?  As I write this my next-door neighbor's 
stereo is blaring out music in Yoruba.  When I took my mother to the 
hospital in San Francisco last month, all the signs were bilingual in
English and Russian.  And many, many Californians whose first language
is Spanish are from families that have lived here for generations.

Ya ne znayu o *vas*, no ya panimayu po russki khorosho, et je comprend
Francais suffisamment, aussi. I wish I had had the sense to study a
*useful* language like Spanish in school; one of these years I'm going
to make up that deficiency.


-- 
Alan Bostick               | I'm laughing with, not laughing at.
mailto:abostick@netcom.com | The question is, laughing with WHAT?
news:alt.grelb             |      James "Kibo" Parry <kibo@world.std.com>
http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~abostick