Bilingual America

I loved Spanish class in high school (shout out to Senora Fitch).  I felt like in learning a foreign language, I was also learning more about my native tongue, the origins of words, etc.  Not to mention the headstart being bilingual, trilingual or better gives you in traveling and communicating with people from all walks of life.

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I have the extreme pleasure of talking with a lot of people from different countries in my line of work, all of whom have a firm grasp of English (better than most citizens here in America), which I appreciate so much.  Because if they couldn't speak English, I wouldn't be able to communicate with them.  Yes, Senora Fitch taught me a million things and she taught them amazingly well, but as it turns out there's very little importance placed on being bilingual in my society at large, and I would like to say that it's just plain silly.

How many thousands upon thousands of languages are there in the world?  I've heard there's an estimated 6,500.  I really wish my school system, going all the way back to pre-school, had put more of an emphasis on teaching about them, or making sure I learned a few.  There are 6,500 languages in the world, every one with its own culture and history, and I only know one.  That seems very inadequate.

I'm going to pick up Spanish again, since it's also widely spoken in my country.  And I want to thank Senora Fitch and all the other foreign language teachers in the world for their efforts.  Perhaps I'll never be fluent or even very good at speaking Spanish, but I would like to be able to have a stilted conversation with someone in their native tongue, just to show how much I appreciate that so many of you have bothered to learn mine.

I'm doing the wave for a bilingual America.

Hearts to all you awesome people for reading my rant!

Cayla