Hablas English?

An old joke:

Q. What do you call someone who speaks three languages? A. Trilingual

Q. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? A. Bilingual

Q. What do you call someone who speaks one language?

A. American

It's only funny because it's (sadly) true. Around 60% of people in the world speak more than one language, while only 20% of U.S. citizens are bi- or multilingual. Frankly, the main reason for this lack of linguistic ability is that Americans don't need to speak another language. We are a geographically isolated country with oceans to the east and west, one English-speaking country to the north, and one Spanish-speaking country to the south. It's not like Europe where multiple languages are spoken in a relatively small area.

And of course, English is the modern lingua franca. I witnessed this in China when I performed a skilled English-to-English interpretation between a couple from Russia and the Shanghainese barista at a Starbucks. They couldn't understand each other's English, but I was able to intervene. Luckily, my daughter worked at Starbucks at the time, so I am also fluent in Starbuckese, which is an interesting language in its own right. (For example, grande means large in Spanish, but means medium at Starbucks. Venti means 20 in Italian but means large at Starbucks - 20 ounces for hot drinks, but 24 ounces for cold drinks.)

Unfortunately, a cause and/or effect of our monolingualism is cultural arrogance. We expect everyone to speak English, even when we're in non English speaking countries. Many Americans don't bother to learn a single word of the language of the country they're visiting. I remember some of my students complaining about how no one spoke English at a McDonald's in Avignon, France. Duh, mes chers étudiants. Why would they?

Lost in Translation

When I was an exchange student in Colombia in 1985, I went to see the movie Romancing the Stone starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. These days we would call it meta - an American in Colombia watching a film about Americans in Colombia. Like most films, it was screened in English with Spanish subtitles. At one point in the movie, Danny DeVito is sick of Colombia and suggests "Let's kiss off this third world toilet!" I shriek with laughter when the sub-title appears on the screen: "No me gustan estos países subdesarrollados." I don't like these underdeveloped countries.

Another film playing in Colombia at the time was Martes el 13 or Tuesday the 13th. This was a good translation of the English title Friday the 13th. In Hispanic culture, Tuesday the 13 is the bad luck day, not Friday. Viernes el 13 wouldn't make any sense to Colombians. If you want to make things even more confusing, Friday the 17th is the bad luck day for Italians. Translation is never a simple word for word substitution, and language and cultural are always intertwined.

There have been well-known marketing gaffes created by mistranslations, including the ones listed in this article in the Marketing Gazette. However, it turns out that one of the most famous marketing gaffes - the failure of the Chevy Nova to sell in Mexico - isn't true. The car apparently sold well and no one mistook 'Nova' for 'no va,' which means 'it doesn't go.'

We've all read translated instructions which make no sense. Other things, like puns, don't translate at all since they're based on multiple meanings of a word in one language, but not the other. It's impossible to translate poetry with the same rhyme scheme, meter, alliteration, meaning, etc. Idiomatic expressions rarely have the same literal translation. In English, you might not want to be in someone else's shoes, but in Spanish you don't want to be in their pants, which has a whole different meaning in English. We pull someone's leg; they pull someone's hair. Here it rains cats and dogs; there it rains pitchers or jugs.

The more disparate the languages, the more likely you are to find inaccurate or even incomprehensible translations. Chinese - English translation is difficult for numerous reasons, starting with the fact that Chinese doesn't have an alphabet and uses symbols instead of words as the base of the language. There are multiple regional versions of Chinese, but it is by far the most commonly spoken language in the world, followed by Spanish, then English. I saw many interesting translations when I was in China, two of which are pictured below.

The Benefits of Bilingualism

Computers are never going to be able to accurately translate 100% of the time, even though machine translation has greatly improved over the past decades. In the early 90s, I worked as a technical translator for AT&T and we translated 20,000 pages of manuals to Spanish to accompany the 5ESS switching system. We used machine translation, and I built dictionaries and rules to improve the output before it was 'post-edited' by humans. The translations were so terrible it often seemed it might be easier to just start from scratch. While AI has improved greatly, I discourage you from relying on its accuracy in important situations.

Even if you have no desire to become a translator, learning another language has multiple benefits aside from the practical linguistic skills: it literally makes your brain bigger. According to the University of the Potomac, language learning improves memory, delays the onset of dementia, improves attention span, increases creativity, and helps you multitask, among other benefits. This Hidden Brain podcast discusses how the language(s) we speak actually shape the way we think. Language learning teaches you to think in whole new ways.

In what I consider a major modern tragedy, many universities are cutting their language programs. Most notably, last September West Virginia University eliminated all of its foreign language degrees. Enrollments are down and costs have to be cut, but getting rid of ALL of your language majors seems a bit drastic and very tragic. At the University of North Carolina - Greensboro, they cut Korean classes even though the instructor was popular and his classes always had a waiting list.

In addition to majoring in Spanish in college, I took French, Italian, and Portuguese classes. Over the years I've taken Arabic, German, and Irish classes through continuing education. Whenever I go to any country, I learn the basic words and phrases. It's not all that hard. Unfortunately, while we expect everyone else to learn English, we believe we're incapable of learning another language. We're not. You can.

Speak Friend and Enter

Speaking even a few words of a language makes an immeasurable difference. Trying counts for a lot. It proves right off the bat that you have some degree of cultural humility. Many years ago when my husband and I were at Versailles, we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. As we entered, the staff was speaking Chinese. The waiter approached our table and asked for our order in French. I responded in my tolerable French and the waiter immediately switched to English. I've encountered waiters, taxi/Uber drivers, and other service workers across the world who are fluent in multiple languages. I don't recall a single time when someone was rude to me when I attempted to speak their language.

Last summer in Bordeaux, my colleagues and I had dinner at the home of our French friend and colleague Thierry. After a wonderful evening of amazing food, wonderful conversation, and many, many glasses of wine, my colleagues and I called an Uber to go back to our hotel. I started chatting to our Uber driver in my intermediate French and found out he was from Morocco, so I threw out my beginner sentences of Arabic. I then discovered he spoke Spanish, so we conversed the rest of the way en español. It creates an immediate connection when you speak (or try to speak) someone's 'heart language.'

Wizards are well-known for their linguistic skills, but sometimes even they make mistakes. When Gandalf the Gray translates the Elvish inscription on the west gate of the mines of Moria as "Speak, friend, and enter," he struggles to remember the secret password. It's only when the hobbits point out that a better translation would be "Say 'friend' and enter" that the doors swing open when Gandalf mutters the Elvish word for friend: mellon. Knowing a word or two of another language can be the key to new friendships.

You'll make mistakes if you try and learn another language. That's part of the process. And don't tell me you can't, even if you're no spring chicken. All of the evidence says you can, if you put your mind to it. Even if you don't achieve fluency in Hungarian or Finnish or Urdu, you'll be exercising your brain, improving your memory, and practicing cultural humility. So download Duolingo, watch videos on YouTube, or take a class at your local community college. You've got nothing to lose and a lot to gain!