Reply #51: I hate laws that mandate stuff like this, but in this case, they should [View All]

[DFW]

I realize that it will affect people who don't need it. Knowledge of
another language is more important in Boston than in Helena, but even
so, we must realize that there is a big world out there, and the more
we can communicate with people from cultures other than our own, the
more they will communicate with us, and that is always the basis for
understanding and a barrier to irrational hate. It may not always lead
to peace on earth, but it's a start. Besides, nothing says that someone
who grows up in Helena can't become a scholar in Russian literature.

I don't advocate mandatory bi-lingual education or bi-lingualism, but
job prospects do open up to those fortunate enough to have it. My younger
daughter, who is bi-lingual in German and English, got a job translating
German legal documents into English while she was in undergrad school in
Washington, DC. The head of the law firm was so impressed with her ease and
speed, he gave her $25 an hour to stay on with him. She only did it part-time,
as she was, after all, going to school, and had a grade average to keep up,
but to a 20 year old kid who works part-time maybe ten hours a week, that
was real money. The guy would have paid her that for a 40 hour a week
full-time job if she had been willing to drop her other plans for her life,
and a $50,000 a year job for a 20 year old isn't bad. For someone fluent
in Chinese (written as well as oral, which is a bigger hurdle in Chinese),
I'd bet the pay would triple, and coupled with other skills, progress
upward geometrically from there.

I got my job as station chief for my outfit here because I speak German,
Spanish, French, Russian and a few other languages. Not that it's necessary
to become a walking UN to have a fulfilled life, but having the attitude that
the world should learn our language and we shouldn't have to learn anyone else's
is not the way to promoting understanding and friendship.

Besides all that, if I hadn't learned German, I wouldn't have been able to
strike up a conversation with this lovely woman back in 1974:

and we are still together today (and we still speak German at home).