went to offered six foreign languages. The school my kids are at offers one, and that's only if you have time for it in your schedule. I wish it were offered earlier and more consistently.

teach Spanish from grade 1 onward. So many of our population speak it, we need doctors, nurses, lawyers, police and other service workers to be relatively fluent in it as a second language.

Instead we run away from a large portion of North American heritage which is Spanish in origin, treating Spanish speakers as enemies.

North and South America, by and large, were settled and colonized and developed by speakers of four major languages, all four European in origin, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. (yes, with comparatively small pockets of German, Dutch, and Italian, Chinese, or Polish) Yet today, with the vast success of growth in English-speaking populations in the US and Canada, and the existence of a couple hundred million other people around the world for whom English is their only spoken language, we somehow find ourselves claiming speaking English is the ONLY way to be "successful".

it's only useful if you are dealing with Chinese speakers for business purposes.

The reality is that there are few opportunities to use Chinese in the US, and not using a language frequently means losing your fluency, as I learned with Russian. I have almost nobody with whom to keep my Russian up, so my fluency has deteriorated dramatically. I'm far more fluent in Spanish, a language I never studied formally, because I have many opportunities to use it. I also have French, but rarely use that, either, although I can, when needed.

Spanish, on the other hand, is everywhere. Fluency in Spanish will benefit an individual who deals with people in this country, rather than in China, and there's no shortage of opportunities to use that language frequently. Knowledge of Spanish has practical everyday applications. Chinese, not so much.

We should learn Chinese for the same reasons that Europeans and Asians put such a high emphasis on learning English.

For most Americans, though, it won't be useful. For most Americans, learning Spanish will be far more useful. The number of people for whom learning Chinese will be a good idea is not large, and will not become very large in the future. That said, anyone thinking about a business career might do well to learn the language, as best they can. Achieving true fluency in Chinese, however, is quite difficult for people who learned English as their first language. Most will never become really fluent.

For example, in the South, Spanish does make sense, but in some parts of the West coast, Chinese would, and in some parts of New England, so would French. It all depends on who you deal with on a consistent basis.

Of course, even for polyglots, there are always more languages spoken than anyone can learn, which is why I would not be surprised if Esperanto, a language made of various families of languages, could take off again.

those are decreasing. For example, here in Minnesota, I hear a lot of Spanish these days, and have had many opportunities to practice that language. I also occasionally get a chance to use French, since we do have quite a few Quebecois in the area from time to time, and there's a small, but noticeable Russian-speaking community in the Twin Cities.

What there is not is a large number of Chinese speakers. I work with a man from China who is an SEO wizard, but he's been here for 20 years and has excellent English, so I don't need to learn Chinese to work with him. Indeed, the last time I called my local Chinese restaurant to place an order, the person who answered the phone had a Mexican Spanish accent.

In terms of maximum chance of using a second language in the US, Spanish wins hands down.

That Spanish is pretty much the dominant language of the Americas. It should be, as Spain settled the Americas long before the English stole parts of them. I laugh at Plymouth Rock, as I know long before those stupid Pilgrims botched the navigation that was supposed to take them to Jamestown, Spain already had warm, civilized places like St. Augustine, Havana, and Mexico City. There are 21 nations that use Spanish, that makes a majority of the Americas, and all of those have people coming to America every day.

It gets amusing when I hear people, even supposedly leftist DUers, talk all about how America is betraying it's workers by letting immigrants in. It's like we are some locust plague that appeared from nowehere, despite the number of Spanish names still on the map. I got news for those people,the terms of service does not allow me to name: we were here long before you were, and you benefitted from looting what we built here, just as you benefit from the food we pick, the labor we do. If you are so worried about your "culture", why not fight for a society where all the people can get a decent wage; it's not like America does not have several generations of work to do, just to get back half of what the GOP got rid off or laid waste to.

However, despite the fact that Spanish is so common, I think it would be dangerous to make it a sort of "official second language" as that will wave a red cape in front of English speakers. Down here in Florida, we have a lot of visiting Canadians, and they all heap vitriol on French and the Quebecois, acting as if it was some lead cross to bear. In my more sarcastic moments, I am tempted to say "Hey Canucks, if it was not for the Quebecois, you would just be a paler version of Yanks!" If we ever tried the second language route in an official manner, then the resentment would stink to seventh heaven; look at how raving mad the right wing got now.

All the major languages of the world are spoken in the US, and most of the minor ones. I've been learning to be polite in all the languages I'm likely to encounter, and in the Twin Cities, that's a heckuva lot of them. I've been working on that for many years, and can do basic greetings and that sort of thing in many languages. It's fun to learn and is a great ice-breaker.

I learned Spanish by osmosis, growing up in a citrus farming town in California. The Hispanic population was about a third, even in the 50s, so it was a no-brainer. Some of my school buddies spoke Spanish, and their parents only spoke Spanish. Then, I took French in high school, and got sent to a total-immersion Russian language school while in the USAF. Since I've moved to St. Paul, I've learned to be polite in two different Hmong dialects, one Somali language, and have learned to be polite in many others on my own. The most important phrase in all those languages, though is "I'm sorry I speak your language so poorly. Please forgive me." That gets me off the hook once I've exhausted my hellos, goodbyes, and pleases and thank yous.

I know there are plenty of opportunities to use Mandarin right here in MN. There are thousands of Chinese immigrants from both sides of the Taiwan Straight who live here and many students who go to the U. They speak English, but if you want to speak Chinese, they're more than happy to converse in their language.

We may have some contracts for translated Chinese websites coming up, so it will help if I can at least be polite in Mandarin when we meet clients. I'll try to learn my usual basic vocabulary and grammar lessons in Mandarin, too, so I can speak simply and apologize for my poor knowledge of the language. It will be my first Asian language, really, although I've been able to speak simply with greetings, etc. in Japanese for some time.

and it would be better if kids started learning a second language in kindergarten or even preschool. The earlier, the better.

Our school district offers immersion programs in several languages, including Spanish, Chinese and I think French, at several elementary schools, and they are very popular. I'm not sure if they start in kindergarten or first grade.

but even adults can learn new languages OK.

My daughter was dropped into French Immersion at age 8 not knowing any French at all (short story: we moved from a place that didn't have immersion to a place that did and I wanted her in it as she was bored with school, it was too easy). She did great, until she left the immersion program in high school (so she could persue different options, the french took up extra class time).

My other kids are started F.I. in Kindy. I went through it too. That's great your schools offer several immersion programs. I truly believe it is one of the best things one can do for their kids is to put them in a program where they become fluent in another language. More than once I landed a job due to knowing French.

He's in a public school in Glendale CA where they have German and Spanish as well as Italian and will start to offer French Immersion next fall. All immersion classes are taught by native speakers.

My grandson's maestra thinks that he is so gifted in language acquisition she recommends that he start in an afternoon session in French. She thinks he will pick it up easily.

Interestingly, twice a week he takes a Capoierra class, whose teacher teaches only in Portuguese. My grandson follows his instructions better than anyone else in the class and we think it must have a lot to do with his acquisition of Italian (another romantic language).

Could it be that smarter people can be bilingual, whereas stupid people have trouble communicating with one language?

bi-lingual people, children raised in a bilingual home, even studies of pre-speech infants.

And its talking about "smarter" in a limited context, not in the sense of traditional IQ.

Given that there are stupid people and smart people, maybe being bilingual puts one into the latter category instead of the former?

There are plenty of people who, though having been raised in a bilingual environment, are stupid in both languages.

...making more pathways, etc.

It's not saying that bilingual people are smarter than non-bilingual people, or that you can't be bilingual and stupid.

It's saying that bilingualism increases brain capability. That is, if a stupid person is bilingual, their brain may be "smarter" than it would have been if that same person were monolingual.

Does that make sense?

speaker of the language. See my post above about my grandson. He is doing quite well in his Italian Immersion class, according to his maestra...

Native two parent or single parent bilingual from birth immersion, versus children immersed at 3-4-5-6-7...etc.

I think those studies are few and far between, and perhaps a bit biased or not fully peer-reviewed.


Children do better at academic tasks, and adults do better at problem solving tasks if they are bilingual.

That's about as far as the research takes us!

The OP, (me) who posted this article disagrees with the title.. bilingualism does NOT mean one is "smarter" than monolingualists. It simply MAY mean that they have more adaptive and coping skills for the rest of their lives. TRUE, that is PART of "intelligence", but not the full measure.

Don't get me wrong, I think ALL children should be raised to speak two or three languages fluently by the time they reach adulthood.

university in So. CA. The research data is pretty impressive. She presented it in a talk given to the parents of the Immersian program at the Glendale public school that my grandson attends. I was present at that talk and came away very impressed with her data and her study.

While the title of the article is really not helpful, it is true that there are real benefits to bilingualism. The sad fact is that in this country, blind anti-multi-culturalism has made people a little crazy. We need to stop with this attack on people who speak foreign languages or want their kids to do so. It's stupid and self defeating.

the significance of that research across several cultures.

Or, as I suspect, this has to do with Spanish American families in Southern California?

What are the actual peer-reviewed research articles?

I would love to see your links.

Remember, I am in FAVOR of children in Glendale or all of Southern California learning Spanish as well as English in school. I would love to see that, bilingual teachers, children speaking both languages no matter what their parents' background. I think that would be great.

But we need data, real tests, real critiques of test constrution, and repeats of the data in several areas before we know this is "fact".

professor, who is also a parent of her own bilingual student in my grandson's class. This woman is a Linguistics Professor at Cal Tech. Hopefully, she'll get back to me in time to post to this thread for folks here who might be interested.

To start, tho, here is an interesting story about this school: http://spanglishbaby.com/2009/03/foreign-language-academies-of-glendale-a-dual-immersion-case-study/

There may be some other information on one of the models of the Glendale project, a school in Milwaukee that existed back in the early days of the 20th century, which was basically an German Immersion program in a public school. German immigrants were responsible for starting this school, which no longer is in operation.

I was mistaken that the presenter, Dr. Simona Montanari, was presenting her own research. It was that of Kathryn Lindholm Leary. Her website here lists her academic and research credentials: http://www.lindholm-leary.com/

Also, Dr. Montanri's school is Cal State, not Cal Tech. Dr. Lindholm Leary is at St. Jose State.

It was Leary's data that Dr. Monanari showed in her powerpoint presentation, However. Dr. Montanri did speak to her own experience of a family where a language other than English (in this case Italian) is spoken at home.

I look forward to reading more in this area, as bilingualism is a fascinating topic in my life, and, although I do speak two languages (one "almost" fluently from study and residing in Europe for a while), I'm always amazed at folks that speak two languages natively, without any "accent" in one, since they learned both so early in life.

They spoke to me only in Estonian from the time I was born, knowing I would pick up English fast enough one I started school. They both spoke fluent English, but were aware of the benefits of knowing more than one language. They sent me to Estonian Saturday school every other week for many years. I used to think of it as torture, but now I'm grateful to them.

My mother learned to speak Estonian, Russian and German as a baby, and later picked up English as well as bits of other European languages. I'm not sure whether my father learned Russian and German with Estonian as a baby, or picked them up later. As an adult, he learned English and Esperanto, and bits of other languages as well.

In Europe it's necessary for people to know more than one language, and kids begin learning foreign languages before age 7.

adults to speak two or more languages.

Americans have a very provincial view of the value of bilingualism, many insisting they only need to know English. Very regressive thinking.

Seattle was responding to the big growth in the Hispanic population to offer public education in their native language and have English taught as a foreign language, but were completely surprised when more Anglo families wanted their children in those elementary school. Now they are opening a Chinese version.

There is also an unfortunate split between the Hispanics who live in the district and the kids who are there for the Spanish Immersion. Academic Spanish is taught in SI (by native speakers) and the Hispanic group feel their own spoken/written Spanish should be taught. They think the SI Academic program is "elitist."

It's a 50/50 immersion program, meaning that half the time the curriculum is taught in English and half in Spanish (all subjects are taught in both languages).

My kids have been in it since Kindergarten, and can both read and speak Spanish at or above grade level (3rd and 5th grades).

While I think it's awesome for my anglo kids to become bilingual, the biggest advantage is for the kids whose native language is Spanish - their performance in all subjects improves, since they get half the time in their native language - it helps them understand the concepts that they might otherwise struggle with in an English only classroom. Our school is 53% Latino, so this is great for our district.

Thanks for the thread, SamG.

They will only be able to speak one language: hate

i think it's great to have people speaking more than one language while coordinating an emergency

it just makes so much sense

imo multi-lingualism forces you to confront ideas that aren't as readily available in one language as another, making you sensitive to subtly -- a good thing for emergency responders to be when they have to assess crisis situations quickly.