There are plenty of good reasons to learn foreign languages, and some are related to national security and economic competitiveness.

Foreign languages are still electives in most US school systems, and college students may find it impossible to get into the foreign language classes they want to take. And while the European Union has set a goal for its young citizens to be trilingual, in the US it takes heroic scheduling sacrifices to be able to study two foreign languages at the same time.

We can now read daily about shortages of language specialists in fields such as medicine, law and military intelligence, but I often wonder just how Americans are going to get up to much-needed linguistic speed.

In an Education Week blog post entitled “The Case for Foreign Languages,” educator Walt Gardner explains the importance of understanding both foreign language and culture in the world of business:

“Executives who do business abroad know how urgent it is to overcome our hubris. More than one deal has been undermined by failure to understand the customs of others. That's because a lot of business is conducted in social situations. It helps explain why American corporations spend heavily on cram courses offered by Berlitz et al. when they would be better advised to fund classes offered by public schools, not only for their own self- interest but for the good of the country as a whole.”

Gardner emphasizes the need for more speakers of “strategic languages” such as Arabic, Mandarin and Korean. This poses a real challenge to the school system, however, as these languages are much more difficult for English speakers to learn than traditionally taught European languages.

Betty Carlson

See Also

• Language Translation, Inc.
  At Language Translation, Inc. in San Diego, we offer quality translation, interpretation and localization services in over forty languages.