even if we had a dedicated program in school for everyone to learn mandarin, we still wouldn't remember a meaningful amount of it afterwards. because outside of going to china or maybe one encounter a week (with a chinese person who speaks english anyway), we wouldn't have any opportunities to use it. same with spanish. it's a nice thing to talk about, americans learning other languages and i agree it would be nice, but not only is it impractical, it's unfeasible, and it has nothing to do with our educational system.
Depending on what part of the country you live in, you could have the opportunity to speak Spanish hourly. In Chicago I would have used it most days of the week had I known it. Montana, not so much.
I'm incredible at two languages and thus I'm pretty much a cultural genius/entrepreneur/provocateur/connoiseur
Everyone in China speaks at least some English. Lots of people, especially young people, speak decent English. Dealing with the Chinese is unavoidable, so now the question becomes is it really good idea for only one side to be the bilingual one?
i hear other languages every day, too. but i've never spoken with anybody who didn't speak english. i am curious as to how/why the chinese are becoming fluent in english.
Because they all learn it for the entirety of their schooling, and have to pass an English proficiency tests at various points in their education. Plus, it's trendy. English media is very popular in China, to say the least.
"Everyone" is a huge number there. Even if all of urban china spoke english, that still leaves hundreds and hundreds of millions that i'm almost sure, don't speak english at all.
If both the US and UK cease to be superpowers and another country rise to take their place, this new power could try to make their own language the world standard, which is something a wise tyrant would probably do. It won't be easy though, given the massive amount of media that is in english today. Fair? Nope. But i have already accepted that the world is not fair.
