Americans Learning Languages: Spanish and Chinese

A few weeks ago Nicholas Kristof wrote an opinion piece about Americans learning foreign languages. First, I want to say that I am immensely pleased that I can understand what this article’s title means without the use of anykind of a translation program or intermediary to change it into English. This makes me feel very cool. I am always thrilled when multiple languages that I can understand are present in a single environment.

I agree with Kristof on a lot of points, such as the overblown importance in the U.S. of having children learn Chinese. I also agree that more languages should be learned, period. The U.S. has done plenty over the last few decades to prove that it's education system is not globally focused enough. With the way the world is changing, if Americans want to prepare their children to be leaders they had better make sure that their kids know about the world outside of the Unites States.

As someone who has studied Chinese up to a level where I can use the language to live, as well as as someone who lives in China, I have a couple of things to add to this. One big benefit of Americans learning Chinese is the ease of working in China. Like myself, other fresh college grads with no special skills or qualifications can easily spend a few years teaching English in China. If you don't believe me just look at the classified adds on Craigslist for Beijing or TheBeijinger to take a look at the demand: (As of February 3rd, 2011, a category labeled "English Teaching" has over 800 adds, whereas the number two is "Acting, Modeling & Voiceovers" at just under 120 adds)

A VERY strong point why one should first study the Spanish are the "meta-skills" one gains about language learning, as well as the confidence gained from having sucessfully learned a foreign language. For instance, after a year of studying Chinese in Beijing, I knew that I could learn vocabulary from other languages, I just had to spend a certain amount of time in front of some flashcards, and then use the words in conversation to reinforce them. Both of this are (for a native English speaker) much easier  to get from Spanish than from Chinese. From the personal experience of studying both, I can honestly state that I could speak more Spanish from less then one year of study than I could speak Chinese after two years. Kristof lays it out nicely when he says

Spanish is easy enough that kids really can emerge from high school with a very useful command of the language that they will retain for life, while Mandarin takes about four times as long to make the same progress. Chinese has negligible grammar — no singular or plural, no verb conjugations, no pesky masculine and feminine nouns — but there are thousands of characters to memorize as well as the landmines of any tonal language. 

Benny the Irish polyglot writes at some length about the benefits of confidence (from the vantage point of learning Esperanto as an easy way to gain said language learning confidence), and from my own experience of studying foreign languages I can confidently say that I now view it as a much easier task than I did four years ago, precisely due to the fact that I have some under my belt already. Indeed, a good part of my desire to learn more languages is due to knowledge of how easy it is. If I devote two years a language, that gives me plenty of time to reach at least a conversational level.

So for students in the U.S.? I would recommend starting to learn Spanish as early as the Germans start to learn English. Public schooling can always be supplemented with trips to Spanish speaking locales, special summer camps, or local cultural/language events. Once Spanish is at a good level, then I would suggest providing the child with a second foreign language, which could vary depending the priorities and interests of the parents and the child, although I would certainly recommend Chinese or Arabic.