Horizons magazine is published by Presbyterian Women (PW) the national women’s organization of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
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16 Fluency in English makes higher education accessible, since the SAT and other entry tests are written in English. English as a first-language facilitates entry to employment and social positions, and reduces the like- lihood of negative reactions to the person's accent. Plus the person will be familiar with all the idiomatic expressions common to the language that makes conversation easy. The people who benefit from these privileges have not worked for these language advantages. They were simply born into the dominant culture and language. On the other hand, non-native speakers spend significant time, effort and possibly money to learn English. These efforts may not be recognized or simply deemed not good enough. Who Speaks What Where? English is also the language of power. People and countries all over the world recognize this. It is the third– most-widely-spoken language (follow- ing Chinese and Spanish). 1 But for commerce, business, science, politics and education, English is unmistak- ably the lingua franca, common language, of the planet. In 2014, a research team studied books and web- sites to track how widely languages are translated into other languages. Eng- l ish was the dominant language. One of my biggest "eye-openers" while researching this piece was learning that slightly more than half of the world's population speaks more than one language. 3 (Having a functional level of proficiency in two languages makes you bilingual; three or more, multilingual.) In most of the world, countries have a number of ethnic groups, each possibly with a different language, who have learned the other language(s) in order to communicate with each other. Since speaking English is an advantage in employment and schooling, in many countries outside the U.S., parents enroll their children in English-language classes. Some governments encourage or subsidize learning English. In contrast, many people in the United States are not aware of the benefits of being bilingual or multilingual. That, in spite of the fact that the United States is, in its way, a multilingual country. Hawaii has two official languages: Hawaiian and English. Alaska has 21 official languages: English and 20 languages of the Native American population. In the west and south- w est, many citizens' families have been Spanish-speaking since the time w hen those states were part of the Mexican nation. Due to this history and recent immigration by Spanish- speakers, the United States now has the fifth largest population of Spanish-speakers, following Mexico, Spain, Colombia and Argentina. 4 Language(s) in the U.S. Many U.S. citizens haven't learned a second language simply because they haven't had to. Others feel that if other languages are permitted in the workplace or made official for use in government documents or public signage, English will become endangered. Either way, only about 20 percent of the U.S. population speaks more than one language. 5 In the past, U.S. society in general discouraged the use of any foreign language in public and in the home. While recently many parents, educa- tors and even President Obama have encouraged studying a second language, funding and programs are rarely sufficient to make children (or adults) bilingual or multilingual. In general, bilingualism has little or no employment value, judging from Resources Growing Up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York By Ana Celia Zentella Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997 Lauded as a reference for linguists, this book is also for lay readers (parents, teachers or anyone curious about language) who want to learn more about bilingualism and children or diversity in language. Life as a Bilingual www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual In this Psychology Today blog, two linguists, Francois Grosjean and Aneta Pavlenko, address various dimensions of living and speaking more than one language. Nic Subtirelu, "Language privilege: What it is and why it matters," Linguistic Pulse, June 26, 2013; www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/multilingualism. Jenny Marshall, "Linguistic Privilege and my Native Tongue," www.athingforwords.com/words/linguistic- privilege-native. A