Languages in general

When I was a kid I used to watch all the Hispanic kids speaking Spanish to each other and I was jealous. Not exactly jealous of their ability to speak another language, but that they had each other to speak it to. I mean, I can't really imagine what they talked about, probaly boasting about how many bushels of tomatoes their octagenarian uncle could pick in one 17 hour day, or talking about what hubcaps they would steal that night. The fact is I couldn't know what they were saying and that made me angry. Of course I could speak German and Afrikaans as well as they could speak Spanish, but I had no one to talk to except my grandparents and a couple other kids. But ...

The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower. [Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941), U.S. author, columnist. The Worst Years of Our Lives,’Language Barrier’ (1991; first published 1989).] A LONG DILLEMA Do parents need to teach or ask their children to learn a foreign language? It has been a dilemma in parent’s forums formally and informally. Some agree that it is an ...