I think every country needs to have a mandatory bilingual policy
In short:
By the time a person is 18, they must effectively be able to communicate and understand conversationally in 2 languages and casually use them in daily life..., if not become completely fluent...
Other than that, any language goes (whether it is a locally-known one, or a popular one worldwide),
The only thing I hope to gain from this, is to rid the world of /Monolingual Betas/
Seriously though, has this been a policy before? Because I haven't heard of such one...
I think this can especially be used for citizenship...
Edit: I don't necessarily have any other presupposed requirements besides bilingualism, though we may have certain notions of such in this main goal
Edit II:
In furthering this venture, I have realized that my liberalism may slightly poisoned my lens....
And for clarification...
Minimum dual language system:
Main national language + other language (likely another related language, but foreign ones are fine)
Counterpoint: Like 80% of bilinguals in Latin America (myself included) have American culture brainrot as a result of being able to go on anglo internet.
Synthesis: Mandatory bilingual policy, the English language is officially forbidden.
they should learn their respective countries. I assume dialects like Black American Sign Language would be preserved through social learning. although a universal sign language could be cool. i think we should learn sign language because deaf people cant learn how to hear.
In the post-atomic horror of the near future you will need sign language to signal your comrades while you engage in urban stealth combat against the techno-barbarians of the rad wastes
To communicate with deaf or hard of hearing people, to communicate with someone when you both can't hear eachother, to commicate with infants, to committed with non verbal people, etc but just communicating with disabled people should be a good enough reason
Canada already has the results of your thought experiment though, outside of people who work in Quebec tourist towns the only ones who can communicate well in both languages either went to private school or an immersion program. The latter are very much similar to gifted programs in that they are very much designed as a way to get additional public funds to affluent people who can't quite afford private school tuition.
I wish, I feel so inadequate being an American who only knows one language comparing myself to...Almost every other country in the world lol. If I ever have a kid I would insist that they start school taking language immersion classes if it were available
Something something, I remembered a Latino joke how if a "Multilingual" refers to someone who speaks 3 or more languages, then "American" refers to someone who can only speak one...
Man, us Americans get owned so hard by people in other countries when it comes to roasting. I've heard that in Europe people will threaten to sue eachother as a joke on Americans lol.
I think a large part of why people in the anglo sphere only speak one language is that the school system doesn't do a great job of teaching it
I remember my french teacher would call us ignorant bigots for not speaking french - it's like you literally only taught us the word for pen
saying people must be bilingual is like saying people must be literate. Everyone agrees it would be a good thing to be bilingual but not everyone is educated in speaking multiple languages. I also think there is an element of classism in looking down on the monolingual as unless they come from a bilingual household the only bilingual people I've known had recieved private education for it
I personally would love to speak a second language but it wasn't something I was given the opportunity for as a child and learning one as an adult is hard work
Oh ... I haven't exactly considered it, ok... I stand by my point, but yeah, I think people have to grasp the language through natural exposure rather than rely necessarily on the school system... besides, I believe bilingualism, with enough state support, can help open economic and social opportunities and cultural bonds as well.
Key word though: 'enough state support' (Austerity would have a word with that)...
but yeah, I think people have to grasp the language through natural exposure rather than rely necessarily on the school system
well that's nice but it's also not cheap. Going to live in another country to pick up the language is not something that a lot of people can just do
it very much does seem here that you are looking down on people for not knowing what they were never educated to know. You can live a full life only exposed to English there just isn't any real exposure to other languages. Hell even when you speak to foreigners they all want to practice their English
I agree, the fact that Spanish isn't mandatory from pre-school in the states is a fucking crime. Bilingualism is only a good thing, and there is so much cultural experience you miss out on by not speaking Spanish while living the Americas.
Maybe it's not learned great by everyone, but only by learning a bit will people start to learn how many more opportunities there are when you know two languages, and the drive to know more and more will come.
I'd wager a big part of it is due to the legacy of colonialism, where in the Anglosphere there are so many people in every direction that speak the same language that there isn't the same incentive to learn another. Whereas, for most of human history, people have needed to learn additional languages, and often stay accustomed to learning new ones.
A conjecture you could make is that for any country where over 90% of people speak the primary language, then the more populous the country, the less likely people are to be bilingual. This explains Japan, and perhaps also Russia and large parts of Latin America.
National languages in a lot of parts of Europe are like a 19th century fiction anyway. Wouldn't be surprised if a fair chunk of Europeans speak the lingua franca of their country and a regional dialect that may as well be its own language.
not everyone has bilingual parents or parents who are interested in their education for that matter. In short, without some societal pressure (aside from an arbitrary law) people arent going to learn a second language at a rate high enough to support a law like this.
An example on how some people didn't necessarily were forced arbitrarily, is when many people in Europe go on Erasmus (a government sponsored exchange program) and spend a year in another European country where they spend 90% of their time communicating in the local language
Even taking your logic, I'm pretty sure in this world, you are more likely to have 2 parents that each speak a different language than 2 parents who can't...
Plus, you don't need interested parents to realize that you'll eventually have to deal with a more multipolar world, most of whoms' people won't speak the same language fluently as you, so it's good, not only for practical but social needs, to probably do this...
Finally, a little bit of societal pressure and a loose law (read again my post) didn't stop the Anglophonie from having children, not only including their own but other migrants, from learning English to integrate...
For me, it should be easier than a minimum wage increase, if it's to be implemented overtime....
I would count them, foreign language classes (so basically English) are mandatory in Japanese schools, but I doubt many Japanese people speak other languages well.
I'd love to have some actual data for this, but searching mostly just brings up results for the Japanese language test for foreigners.
I think everyone should learn esperanto or some made up languange as a second language so that you can communicate with anyone in the world no matter what country they come from.
Maybe 100 years from now we'll have the global coordination needed to make stuff like that a reality.
Until then, I think it's a lot more useful to have "regional languages". Between Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Mandarin, Hindi, and Malay, over 3/4 of Asia speaks one of these, and roughly half of Asia speaks one of them natively. Add Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai, and you reach perhaps 90% L1 or L2. Interestingly enough, only 2 of these 9 languages share a language family.
4 languages make up >95% of the L1s in the Western Hemisphere, and these carry over to Africa to make up probably at least 60% of people at L2.
Perhaps a controversial position would be that groups of endangered or smaller languages could maintain a better guaranteed existence by coalescing around one of them as a lingua franca, and possibly having better prospects of outsiders learning that language too.
I can't interpret what you're saying without a translator except for 4-6 words, but I recognize enough to conclude that it is very normal for someone saying that to have the idea/worldview/assumptions/values expressed in the OP.
Ok but if we're using the US system to teach languages then no one is actually going to learn a language. People take "four years of Spanish" in high school and even claim that they "know Spanish' yet they probably couldn't even understand simple conversations or watch some super slow kid's show like Dora the Explorer. I mean think about it, they engage with the language like at most 5 hours a week during class and maybe 5 hours more for homework (which I highly doubt). That's nothing in the grand scheme of things when learning another lanuguage. You need hundreds, if not thousands of hours engaging with the language to become fluent.
The problem with high school language classes is that the only thing they actually teach is memorization. They know how to read “the apple is red” but switch the words around and they’re totally lost.
Whole classes are basically just the teacher writing “gusta = like” on the board. You didn’t learn Spanish, you learned a less efficient version of machine translation.
In high school all our language classes were basically electives, something I was able to get out of for some reason I don't remember anymore, but I had come from a different district where second languages didn't start until high school so in 8th grade being shoved into a 2nd year Spanish class was a joke. Got placed in remedial Spanish and booted from the advanced classes as a result, absolutely failed learning Spanish. Hated the Spanish language as a result because I just couldn't learn it. In like 10th grade I started teaching myself Japanese and combined it with just memorizing a bunch of vocabulary, learning the rules of the language, and a shitload of exposure to listening. Intentionally found kids shows in Japanese to watch just so I'd have more exposure to easier parts. Did pretty well and was at conversational level in 2 years. Now as an adult I don't have the time to keep trying to learn and the time I can dedicate to exposure is a lot lower, but a single year in Japan probably tripled my proficiency from conversational in my last year of high school. Accent was comparatively milder compared to my peers too. I also feel like I don't have to take the step of translating it in my head to understand and when I do put time in I just use Japanese tools rather than English tools.
Spanish was a mandatory class for two years in my USA highschool back in the 90's.
At best, for a little while, I could barely read it. Never was able to speak it.
Would have been cooler (and probably more effective) to have it be K-12. My spouse is kinda trying to learn Potawatomi in her spare time and this prompts us to occassionally wonder, "Just how did we learn to speak english, anyways?"
(I partially copied and pasted this response, when it comes to your experience)
I didn't mean for mandatory bilingualism to be necessarily related to education, but more or less natural exposure, if not language tutoring by its native speakers...
Having it at K-12 is a good start though ... and how's your spouse doing anyways with it...
I know a smattering of Spanish and German and both languages have come in clutch at random moments. Seriously, you'd never expect in the middle of a rush for a German tourist group to just shuffle up to your counter.
they try to teach te reo maori in new zealand primary schools but its half assed as fuck and it basically doesn't actually teach the language to the point where most people suggest the issue is trying to teach a 'dead' language rather than the fact that it's not given the resources it needs. at least schoolkids maybe learn some catchy songs? idk, that's just my observation from my daughter's education, i didn't experience it myself.
I did in high school and your assessment is correct. You learn some words but not even to the level of conversational stuff. It does have the problem of languages like Gaelic that were suppressed though industrialisation where modern terminology is hard to create, but like Gaelic it was never dead.
Wow their accents aren't even very heavy, impressive. Shanghai has a lot of English speakers in general, so I assume there's lots of opportunities to practice
I could get behind mandatory instruction in a second language in schools but any sort of knowledge requirements for citizenship really rub me the wrong way
Oh ... ogey ... just to clarify, I didn't mean for mandatory bilingualism to be necessarily related to education, but more or less natural exposure, if not language tutoring by its native speakers...
As for citizenship, I should've retracted it, but I was supposing that this requirement only applies if you reach the age of 18 in the post...
So if someone doesn't know two languages by the time they turn 18 they would get their citizenship taken away? Anyway what I was getting at is that citizenship is basically a person's personhood under the current state system, so there should really be as few things tied to that as possible (birthright and/or residency only imo)