Lingual Opportunity

[valancy_jane]

Why is it that people say, how wonderful, the Swiss speak 3 languagues!, yet so many people react badly to the concept of having to learn a second language in the United States, or the increasingly prevalence of Spanish in the southwestern U.S.?

(I think this is obvious why; perhaps mostly rhetorical. Alas.)

Comments

[rinue]

Probably the same reason it's adorable to use an English pronunciation like "aluminium" (or even an English lower-class pronunciation like "wiv" for "with"), but disgusting to use a traditinally black pronunciation like "axe" for "ask."

You could replace this whole thing with "the Swiss are even more white than we are! Triple white! Jealous!"

Also Switzerland has four official languages. And I don't think most people speak all of them. There's a school requirement that you learn a second one, but I'm not entirely sure how fluent that has to be. (I had a foreign language requirement in school but certainly don't speak a second language.)