How much do you really hold it against Americans that only speak English?

[kuroishi]

I agree that learning a foreign language can help induce people to travel, but it is hardly necessary. Three to four years of language in high school or even an additional two years at university do not prepare you to have full conversations with native speakers. You can throw together some simple sentences for sure, but speaking a different language (for English speakers) is really not necessary for travelling abroad.

Yeah, that's why I told "from an early age" in my previous message. Most of the European school systems offer the opportunity to learn at least one or two languages from the age of 10, or even earlier in some cases.

And I don't even really agree with your statement that learning a language in high school is not necessary for travelling abroad.

Sorry but I'll have to speak of my particular case : I learnt Japanese for three years in high school, a country for which I had close to zero interest before starting its study and first going there in a school exchange in my 2nd year of high school. And I soon discovered that my one year and a half of Japanese study were far more useful than my then seven years of English, as nobody in my host family understood English and I spoke a better English than the (old Japanese) English teacher of the high school there.

I went back to Japan many times afterwards, and my three-years study of Japanese (2 to 3 hours a week), completed over the years by some study in university, have always been way more useful to me than my English. I wouldn't have been able to experience half the things I experienced in Japan without having studied the language.

That's became a drawback, as now I have trouble travelling to a country of which I don't understand the native language, as I know my experience of the country would be totally different. I don't speak of knowing perfectly the language of course, but being able to at least have a polite conversation, joke with the people around, and not feel totally out of what is happening around you.

Of course, you can't learn every language, but being able to travel to even one other country in the world (with a culture totally different from your own) and feel like you know it, much better than you would ever had by just visiting it and speak English to people who don't understand half of what you're telling them, is a very gratifying feeling.

Sure, you can go to any country in the world, speak English to whoever understands you and stay in the boundaries of the common tourist, and your life won't be affected by it. But you will be missing a lot, in my opinion.

[williamjm]

I also find it a bit strange that knowing no foreign languages poses no problem when, say, looking for a job. Around here, one foreign language (usually English) is a must, but more and more employers demand that you know at least one other foreign language (and 'exotic' ones don't count, exotic being any other than French, German, Italian, Croatian and maybe Spanish).

This seems a slightly different question to whether learning a foreign language is useful for foreign travel or having a well-rounded education. There are certainly jobs where knowing a foreign language could be helpful or even mandatory, but for most jobs in Britain or America I wouldn't think being multilingual would significantly increase someone's ability to do their job. I work as a computer programmer, and knowing French, say, wouldn't help me at all doing my job so why would my employer care if I could speak French? Of course, some people in the company I work for would need to be multilingual to translate the documentation and text in the user interface into French or do technical support for French users, but for most of us it's not beneficial.

[Humble Asskicker]

That's became a drawback, as now I have trouble travelling to a country of which I don't understand the native language, as I know my experience of the country would be totally different. I don't speak of knowing perfectly the language of course, but being able to at least have a polite conversation, joke with the people around, and not feel totally out of what is happening around you.

How well have you retained the language though? I studied Spanish and Japanese. I studied Spanish intensively for four months (and spent one month in Costa Rica), and got to the point where I was only speaking with my professors in Spanish, and was reading Spanish books (with a dictionary, of course). I stopped studying that well over a year ago and now my Spanish sucks. I can barely say anything, much less understand all but the most basic conversations. I'm pretty sure if I went back to studying it, it would all return quickly to me, because Spanish is an incredibly easy language, but if you don't work at it, you lose it rapidly. Even a simple language like Spanish.

With Japanese, I studied three years formally, one of which was spent in Japan. I've kept at the reading, and generally don't have trouble reading a newspaper or novel, but since I never speak it, I suck on that end. All the Japanese movies I watch or games I play, I must turn on the Japanese subtitles, otherwise I would not understand most of the content. Sometimes I can just take breaks from Japanese, and go a couple of months without reading a single word. When I resume my reading, it becomes an arduous process. In that brief timespan I forget a significant amount. It's really alarming.

Learning a language takes a lot of time and dedication. Maintaining a language is even more difficult if you never use it. In fact, unless you have a wonderful memory, it's impossible.

Getting in tune with the language can offer insights into a culture and its people. But the amount of effort it requires sometimes is far more than the returns. And you can get a similar or deeper insight into that culture just by studying that culture.

For me, language is a vanity right now. I hope to go back to traveling, but it's just something I fancy. I don't see any obligation, or view people as particularly lazy, just because they don't share the same fancies as me.