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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP. Can all the foreign language snobs stop making this specious analogy that calculators are to math as translation apps are to FL?

Look, folks, no one acquires math skills simply by growing up in math-land or something. Everyone - everywhere - has to exercise critical thinking and actually develop skills to do math and especially high-level math. The playing field is level. Math skills demonstrate real intelligence.

By contrast (excepting dead languages like Latin), putting in thousands of hours to learn a FL is not really something that reliably gives you a competitive advantage because MILLIONS OF PEOPLE speak that language by virtue of their family or country. It’s a VERY DUBIOUS investment of time in the modern era. No one needs your mediocre foreign language skills when plenty of bilingual and multilingual folks came by their skills naturally.

When I look around at my (very successful) peers, literally no one has foreign language skills to thank for anything.

I say this all as someone who learned not one but two difficult FLs (deemed critical for US national security), worked as a linguist for years in one of those language, and now not infrequently uses the other language in a different job. But I’m not so self-centered that I think my own enjoyment of languages means it’s actually a good idea to force high schoolers and college students to waste time on them. It’s NOT a good idea. I have totally deprioritized FLs for my kids.

I also call BS on everyone equating FL with knowledge or respect for other cultures. Absolutely not true. Plenty of monolingual Americans are interested in foreign countries and learn plenty about them in English. Plenty of English-only friends know as much or more facts than me about the countries where the FLs I know are spoken. I’m not morally superior to them because I know the languages. [/quote]

To equate commanding "facts" about a country with understanding its culture is tourism, not knowledge. The American educational system has decided not to really foster language learning. In making that choice it passes up some impressive opportunities for brain stimulation (learning languages young can do some pretty amazing things) and tends to limit Americans in comparison with folks from many, if not most, other parts of the world.

Just because you might not be perfect or even among the best at something isn't a good reason not to study it if it has some value to add to who you are as a learner or as a person.  It's like saying only genuine future stars should ever play a sport.

Learning languages isn't about getting ahead, anyway.  It's about taking on something really challenging that requires patience, humility, and courage, because it comes with a lot more mistakes than just about anything else.  And yes, at its best it is about trying to understand how others express themselves and perhaps even how they think.  But even at its most mediocre it is about showing regard, rather than expecting everyone to speak English all the time.  (It is also about learning that not speaking English doesn't mean there is something lacking in someone else.) And studying another language can improve someone's command of their own, native one, too.[/quote]

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