As a Professor of English, I Have to Say...

[ProudLib72]

53. If you think about European countries smaller size

and the ease with which one can travel from, say, Germany to France to Spain, then it's obvious that Europeans need to be multilingual. In this country, however, there is no such need. Therefore, it is easy to deem English only as a part of our culture. Some might even say it is what unites us. It's backwards thinking for sure.

One time we were on a family vacation somewhere in Utah. My dad stopped at a gas station to ask directions to the next town that was fifty or sixty miles away. The person he asked told him he had never been that far out of his own town so he didn't know. Can you imagine living in the same small town your entire life and never going further than a few miles outside of its boundaries? I think it would be interesting to do a survey of small towns in America to find out how many people spend their existence isolated like that.