I'd been in France for about a week when I heard the joke the first time: "If someone speaks three languages, he's trilingual. If someone speaks two languages, he's bilingual. If someone speaks one language, what is he?" Get ready for it: "American." (Ba-dum-ching!)
My trilingual Swiss friend and soi-disant comic followed up with the somehow even more obnoxious commentary, "It's just hilarious because it's so true!"
During my semester abroad, people from all over the world told me the same joke. With each repetition, I grew more embarrassed. Whatever other messages we're sending to the rest of the world, we're certainly making one thing clear: We don't want to learn its languages.
At universities throughout the U.S., enrollment in foreign language classes is falling. In 1960, 16 percent of students studied foreign languages at the university level; by 2000, only 8 percent of students were enrolled in foreign language courses. U.S. universities are graduating huge numbers of monolingual students.
There's no doubt that we recognize the international connections that globalization has forged and necessitated. As a nation, our paltry attempts at foreign language education issue from a root problem: We seem to think that this connectivity will always be on our terms, and in our tongue.
This is pretty much the definition of myopic. It's easy for Americans to get by only speaking English right now, while it seems the rest of the world does. However, only an intense lack of foresight could lead us to believe this will always remain the case. The time to start doing something about it is today. Well, actually, yesterday.
Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, recently worried that in the coming years, the U.S. will be less competitive in the global marketplace because we're losing our educational focus on math and sciences, and so are regressing in our capacity for "innovation and economic development."
As I, too, am (ahem) a columnist for a highly respected newspaper, I would like to amend his criticisms. For Americans to continue to play the role they have in the in the global economy of the recent past, we must focus not only on training students to excel in the sciences, but also to converse with the rest of the world.
This skill set gets left in the dust as foreign languages are relegated to "elective" status, away from the foundation that other equally necessary subjects are considered to be.
As the forces of globalization develop, so too will our need for fluency in foreign languages. However, the benefits of speaking multiple languages are not just economic.
A recent study at University College in London suggested that the process of learning a new language affects gray matter in the brain in the same way that exercise affects muscles.
Learning a language may also "offset age-related losses in certain mental processes," according to another recently published study.
So, aside from being the globally responsible thing to do, studying languages keeps brains in top form, is a tremendous business asset and can even improve a love life. If a fad diet promised similar results, we'd be all over it.
But a commitment to multilingualism is hard work. By requiring only two years of foreign language studies for admission and allowing students in certain majors to graduate with as little as two semesters of foreign language instruction, the UA certainly isn't nurturing the idea that communicating in other languages is vitally important.
This isn't just the UA's problem. It's a systemic one, evident throughout our country's education system. Little is asked of students or educational institutions in the way of learning or teaching foreign languages. And when more is demanded of students, appropriate funding is rarely provided, so we see few results.
We can play a role in bringing about a change here. It's time we prove that Americans can interact in ways other than military force or attempts at commercial dominance. To do it, we've got to learn to communicate.
So, register for a foreign language class next semester. And perhaps someday, we'll be made fun of internationally for something more obviously embarrassing, like Paris Hilton.
Lori Foley is a senior majoring in French and English.
She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.