<p>
</p>
<p>I disagree. It’s not particularly illogical to not want to spend a lot of time on foreign language learning if you are the native speaker of the hegemonic world language (“lingua franca”) of the age and have less practical need to learn a foreign language than citizens of non-English speaking countries. Therefore, when you go abroad and try to “immerse” yourself in a non-English speaking environment, you find that everyone else wants to practice their English on you. There are structural reasons why Americans, British, Australian etc. are among the least likely to speak another language. They also live in a vast global popular culture that is mostly English speaking. I’m sure I’d find it easier to learn Mandarin if most of the films I saw and most of the songs on the radio I heard were in it.</p>
<p>I think that learning foreign languages is a fine, fine thing and the mark of an educated person, but I don’t think it’s some unique cultural failure on the part of Americans that they just tend not to do it. We all tend not to do things we don’t have to do unless we like them and are interested in them. The best non-Anglo speakers of English are citizens from countries where the language is only spoken by a few million: the Netherlands, Sweden etc. It’s not because these people are super bright compared to the doltish British and Americans. It’s because it is much more in their interest to learn the lingua franca of their day as a window on the world. So they do it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which attitudes were those? I’m sure it would be great if we all spoke 4 or 5 languages, but the reality is that time and energy are limited, and people study the language that proves most useful to them per their ambitions. What’s colonialist about that?</p>