May 28, 2014
San Francisco
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed is King! - Erasmus
Americans are notorious the world over for not speaking foreign languages. Personally I feel we are getting a bad rap!
I have been on quite a number of ships from Korea and Finland in which most of the crew only spoke their own language. Although all Japanese students study basic English, it is difficult to find an English speaker in Japan if one goes off the beaten path.
Having travelled extensively, I have found monolingual people everywhere I go in the world. The USA has no monopoly in this. In Houston, there are many people from Latin America who only speak SPANISH, and they are not native to the United States!
I have studied many languages myself, and have always been a proponent of learning them, and heartily encouraging anyone who expresses the slightest bit of interest to begin to study in earnest. Among the modern languages I show no partiality, and feel it is never a waste of time acquiring or improving linguistic skills.
Even if you possess a very rudimentary knowledge of a given tongue, in the proper circumstance it could come in quite handy.
I was called out one day to drive a small bus to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A Chinese delegation was going to purchase an entire small oil refinery, disassemble it, and ship it back to China. Talk about outsourcing!
The U. S.-based company selling the plant sent two representatives plus a Chinese Interpreter. The Chinese Delegation likewise had theirs.
On the way to Mississippi, an older Chinese man sitting behind me asked me a few questions. He was an oil company president, and was head of the delegation. He spoke no English, so I was happy to be able to speak with him in his own language, even if my Chinese left much to be desired.
He then told me that I was the first American he ever spoke with. I replied that I could not understand how that could be so; he must meet Americans at least occasionally, and he agreed.
"They speak to my interpreter, and I speak to theirs. You are the first American I've ever spoken to directly!" he explained.
Talk about a great feeling!! All the hours listening to recordings of Chinese language lessons, all that hard work I put into learning it just paid off with that one conversation!
Languages can be walls that separate and divide us; they can also be bridges that can unite us.
I learned that in Pascagoula, Mississippi with the Chinese Delegation.
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