Re: Why Americans feel no compulsion to learn foreign languages

[Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>]

On Wed, 27 Mar 1996, Michael Helm wrote:

> On Mar 27,  3:13am, Timothy C. May wrote:
> > Americans are typically thousands of miles away from those speaking
> > Japanese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Polish, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Hindi,
> [...]
> I don't really disagree with the conclusions drawn by this poster, or
> with the quasi-economics argument he makes.  However, I must say that
> the above is completely wrong.  MOST Americans live in large urban
> areas, & as such are within seconds/footsteps of people whose native
> languages are not English (or who don't have a single "native language",
> but several!).

Undeniably true. I think Tim's point was more, "Who cares?  Everyone *I*
want to talk to speaks English."

One may quibble with the wisdom or morality of such a statement, but if
the second statement is true in your case, then there is no reason you
should have to learn another language. Most upper-income Americans have no
need for esoteric languages. Almost all upper-income Americans have a need
for English.

For example, *I* only really need to speak English, TCP, Spanish, HTML,
AppleTalk, and occasionally French and Perl. Most of the time, I have no
need to know C++, IPX, Tagalog, higher mathematics, German, or Java; I've
got "people" for that.  I'm probably wrong to put my faith in y'all to
write the code I use, but hey, we can't all do everything. I don't write
crypto code, and I don't haul my trash to the dump or tend to the
landscaping around my apartment. Why should I?

Then again, I do find it worthwile to be on the cypherpunks list, and I
will say hola to the gardener.

-rich