The Mother Tongue

There is a joke that's often told around the table where travelers gather around the world: What do you call a person who speaks three languages?

Trilingual.

What do you call a person who speaks two languages?

Bilingual.

What do you call a person who speaks one language?

American.

Then the French, the Germans, the Hungarians, the Japanese, and others at the table enjoy a hearty laugh while the Americans try to figure out the punch line. Our big country's tendency toward isolationism seems to make us the butt of everyone else's joke.

In a world that is ever more connected and interdependent, shouldn't our children have the ability to communicate across cultural and political borders? Why is it that educating all our young people to speak two or more languages with fluency has never been attempted? Children have greatest proficiency for learning languages at very early ages, yet many school programs do not begin until the fourth grade.

In this country, bilingual education - teaching certain subjects to non-native English speakers in their native language until they gain proficiency in English - has come under increasing attack in recent years. Politicians, educators, and parents have long debated its advantages and disadvantages.

English is the commonly spoken and understood language in the United States. However, with more and more people in more and more places speaking Spanish, it certainly is becoming this country's second language.

Some rail against this inevitability, as if our hodgepodge nation of immigrants and immigrants' grandchildren is somehow defined by insisting on one and only one language. What about children raised in a strictly English-speaking home? Wouldn't they get an extra boost in the job market or in the college interview, for example, if they were bilingual or even trilingual? It's a new debate that's well worth waging.