Languages in America

[L. Schulte]

The discussion on languages has been interesting: right now the statistics 
in America are awful: 80-85% of students under 18 learn NO foreign 
languages.  For the percentage in a foreign language class, most are in 
Spanish and stay for one year, 2 at the most.  The students who take 
a  language for 4 years number less than one percent of the student 
population.  And America has many universities where languages are not 
required for any Masters (M.A.) or Doctoral degree (Ph.D.)
Concerning the French and foreign languages: I teach German and Ancient 
Greek in a Catholic high school in Ohio, and we have an exchange program 
with a school in Germany.  Every year a French exchange group is also 
present at this school while we are there.  Over the years I have witnessed 
the French students refuse to say anything to my students in either English 
or German when we are together, and in theory the French kids have been 
studying both languages longer than my students.  The Germans shrug their 
shoulders at this, saying that relations are still suffering from World War 
II, but that is why they think the student exchanges are so important.
Anyway, I have used German translations of  Barks' Uncle Scrooge stories in 
my classes: before Christmas we read "Weihnachten für Kummersdorf" 
(Christmas for Shacktown) in my advanced classes, and noticed that the 
German was much more literary than the Barks original.  My students enjoyed 
the story immensely.
And hooray for Rob Klein for keeping the faith on "different from": I 
suspect the error has crept in from German-Americans, since in German 
"anders als" (different than) is the only way to say it.
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