#monolingualism

As a very whitewashed “no sabo kid” chicana (half-Mexican, half white) I’m feeling this article today.

Proud of my Mexican heritage. Embarrassed about my monolingual English-speaking 🙃 Gaining fluency in Spanish has been a goal for years. I think I need to buckle down and take a conversational class this year, because language apps don’t do it for me…

'Fewer than 3,000 students sat A-level German in 2018. That’s about 5 percent of the number of people who would attend one average football match in the UK. French and Spanish prove more popular, but with just over 8,000 entries for both languages, it is clear that this is a systemic problem within the education system.'

'As Britain marks the 17th anniversary of making foreign language learning optional for secondary students, in 2018 alone more than 96 percent of pupils in upper secondary education in the EU learnt English as a foreign language. If learning one language were not enough, three in five of the same students learn a second foreign language in addition to English.'

When a country allows nearly all of its native researchers/PhD holders to be monolingual, something that's absolutely unthinkable anywhere else but the US, the consequences are cultural isolation and academic lag.

For many people in the world, raising kids who are bilingual or multilingual is the norm - it's the only way to navigate life. For others, especially in predominantly English-speaking areas, it's a conscious decision made for one of many different reasons.

In this bonus episode of Lingthusiasm, Gretchen and Lauren take you through several ways to raise children who speak more than one language: the one-parent, one language method, immersion schools, and speaking different languages at home and in the public sphere. We also talk about the psychological aspect: what do you do when a slightly-older kid starts trying to get their parents to speak the dominant societal language instead of the carefully-cultivated minority one?  

Bilingualism in a monolingual society can be challenging, but the rewards are great. As Gareth Roberts said recently on twitter, "The evidence for bilingualism having cognitive benefits beyond the ability to speak another language is very poor, but I'll tell you this: I've never ever met anyone who regretted being bilingual. I've met many people, however, who regret that they're not."