When Everybody Speaks English

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/25/opinion/letters/english-language-europe.html

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To the Editor:

In “Parlez-Vous Anglais? Yes, of Course” (Sunday Review, Aug. 11), Pamela Druckerman frames the surge in Europeans who speak fluent English as a threat. “English will mutate,” she says, and “natives are losing their competitive edge.”

But she falls short in exploring the primary reason this trend — which extends well beyond Europe — is most concerning: It reinforces our complacency with speaking only English.

The United States does an abysmal job of teaching foreign languages. We start too late, and typically divorce classroom learning from relevant context. A result? Less than 1 percent of adults in the United States speak a second language they learned in school.

Expecting others to learn our language isn’t just arrogant; it’s shortsighted. Bilingualism improves memory, attention and mental dexterity. And when young people learn that there is more than one word for a color, feeling or thing, they are hard-wired to know that multiple perspectives coexist.

The rest of the world isn’t gaining on us; it is already ahead in recognizing what we still don’t: that monolingualism is the new illiteracy. It’s time to make foreign-language proficiency an integral part of education in the United States.

Abby FalikOakland, Calif.The writer is the founder and chief executive of Global Citizen Year, a nonprofit offering students global immersion between high school and college.

To the Editor:

Pamela Druckerman’s article about the spread of English does not even begin to describe the widespread use of English throughout the world. I have heard a Russian couple struggling to speak English with an Italian waiter in Venice and a Danish couple ordering in fluent English from an Icelandic waiter in Reykjavik. We could have been in New York.

This phenomenon has now spread beyond Europe and beyond the spoken language. As a translator of Indonesian and Malay into English, I am seeing more and more bilingual documents, like Indonesian birth certificates in both Indonesian and English, and Malaysian university transcripts entirely in English.

All of this is good for international business and tourism, but not so good for me as a translator.

Alan M. StevensNew York The writer retired as a professor of linguistics at CUNY.

To the Editor:

While Pamela Druckerman makes some good points about the linguistic anglicization of Europe, what struck me was a sense of sadness and loss.

How can you have anything but a good day when you are greeted in the morning in Paris with a musical “bonjour,” more sung than spoken? A waiter describing the dinner menu in Sicily can sound almost rhapsodic in his native tongue, but so ordinary in English.

Rather than homogenizing the spoken word, enjoying the wonderful diversity of languages is one of the real pleasures of traveling. Vive la différence!

Lawrence A. GordonGreenwood Village, Colo.

To the Editor:

What Pamela Druckerman doesn’t mention is that there is growing concern (in France, in particular) that the national language is being distorted, if not actually replaced.

“Franglais” is the common tongue among young people here, and innumerable English nouns have been adopted without even trying to create a French equivalent (weekend, brunch, shopping, babysitter and so on).

It’s not a struggle between Shakespeare and Molière. It’s a clash between tradition and globalization.

Joan Z. ShoreParis