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January 14, 2012 Are We Really Monolingual? By MICHAEL ERARD AMERICANS atomic number 18 a great deal told that in todays globalized world, we are at a competitive disadvantage because of our lazy monolingualism. For besides long, Americans involve relied on opposite countries to mouth our wrangle, Secretary of schooling Arne Duncan said at the Foreign Language Summit in 2010. exclusively we wont be able to do that in the increasingly complex and interconnected world. The widespread presumptuousness is that few Americans declaim more than one language, compared with citizens of different nations and that we raise little gratify in learning to speak an early(a). But is this true? Since 1980, the get together States Census Bureau has asked: Does this person speak a language other than English at home? What is this language? How come up does this person speak English? The bureau reports that as of 2009, roughly 20 percentage of Americans speak a language other than English at home. This figure is often taken to read the number of bilingualist speakers in the United States. But a moments reflection reveals that the bureaus interrogative mood most what you speak at home is not equivalent heaviness to asking whether you speak more than one language. I take over some proficiency in Spanish and was fluent in Mandarin 20 years ago.

But when the American familiarity raft (an ongoing survey from the Census Bureau) arrived in my letter concussion last month, posing that question, I had to answer no, because we speak nonetheless English in my home. I know Im not alone. There are countless Americans who speak languages other than English outsid e their homes: not just those of us who inv! ite wise to(p) other languages in school or through and through and through living abroad, but also employers who mystify learned liberal Spanish to speak to their employees; workers in hospitals, clinics, courts and retail stores who have picked up parts of another language to make their jobs easier; soldiers nates from Iraq or Afghanistan with some competency in Arabic, Pashto or Dari; third-generation kids...If you necessitate to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderEssay.net

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