It’s Kids Week on Jeopardy! and last night’s show featured some pretty smart kids who breezed through most of the questions (er, answers). (My favorite miss was the one about 1970s spiky hair and Sid Vicious – Alex was looking for punk rock – and the youngsters only managed "metallic" then "heavy metal" and then I believe "funk"!)
Yet did you notice that these precocious Americans really struggled to clear the foreign language category? The questions weren’t very difficult – at least three of the five involved basic Spanish. Surely a sign of the depressingly low status of foreign language study in our culture! Allow me some drama here because it’s an issue I take very much to heart. And lemme just say that Spanish is no longer a foreign language, folks – it’s here to stay.
I agree. Our country couldn’t be much lazier in the world language department. On an upbeat note however, I’ve actually had to wait in line to check out the Spanish course at the local library. So besides myself there is at least one other person in the community who would like to make an effort. Of course ‘would like’ and actually ‘doing’ are two different beasts. Hopefully when I get this in my hot little gringo hands I’ll be over exuberant and will dive right through the lessons emerging weeks later with just enough knowledge to thoroughly embarrass myself in front of native speakers!
Though not half as amusing as the kids featured in the documentary Spellbound, these Jeopardy kids were pretty funny. However, it makes me believe that had the answers in the foreign language catagory been about the oh-so-practical Latin (sorry Katie), these kids probably would have gotten them, because I am sure these 4th and 5th graders are all in SAT training courses where Latin is studied to remember the really difficult English words on the SAT that nobody ever uses. Studying the languages we hear in our neighborhood like Spanish, Thai, Armenian, Tagalog, Korean, etc. etc. (ok, maybe our neighborhood is a little different than living in the burbs), won’t help you score high on the SATs.
Not only is Spanish here to stay, but some have argued that it will actually prove some competition for English on the world stage in times to come. While I find that hard to believe since so much business is conducted in English, it could make an interesting counter culture. But that’s from a guy who lived in El Paso, where English IS the second language.
I’m so glad that much of the English Only crap has died down for the time being. It’s such absolute ethnocentric tripe! Personally, since studies show that we lose much of our capacity to learn other languages (and use them fluently, especially without an accent) early in life, I think every child should have regular second language instruction through 5th grade rather than picking it up all of a sudden in high school or college.
Thus, it seems logical to use the language that we are most likely to hear throughout the Republic — Spanish. Even in Portland, Oregon, I hear Spanish much more than any other language. And on my cable, the two languages that account for all regular programming are English and Spanish.
I’ve also taught EFL and know that it’s important to have actual exposure to the language to be able to get a good grasp of it. So again, it just makes sense to teach youngsters Spanish — that way they can watch it on TV. Hey, how about a Spanish medium cartoon network?!?
I’ve studied a number of languages in my time (German, Afrikaans, Spanish, and Japanese with some poking around at Portuguese, French, Italian, Russian, and Chinese) and still to this day I think that Spanish is the most beautiful. It’s a language that remains very dear to me, so forgive me if I’m a bit too quick to cheer it on.