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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/superbowl-ads/">Super Bowl</a>
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/language-learning/">Language Learning</a>
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/superbowl-commercials/">Super Bowl</a>
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/foreign-languages/">Foreign Languages</a>
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/speakamerican/">Speakamerican</a>
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/Media/">Media News</a>
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<p>Last Sunday night, millions of American crowded televisions
sets to watch the Super Bowl, an annual sporting event so synonymous
with American culture that <i>Le Monde</i>, a French newspaper, dubbed it "<a href="http://sportsus.blog.lemonde.fr/2014/02/02/super-bowl-day-lautre-4-juillet/">the other 4<sup>th</sup> of July</a>." During the game, Coca Cola ran <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=443Vy3I0gJs&list=PLCIVZWq1FAwcWJmgdF5o3-QTZZ-OnBUgA]" target="_hplink">this minute-long spot</a> featuring a variety of people singing "America the Beautiful" in a variety of languages.</p>
<p>Within
minutes, a veritable firestorm erupted on Twitter. The hashtags
#SpeakAmerican and #FuckCoke began trending, with users saying things
like, "This is America. We speak English." Conservative political icon
former-Congressman Allen West had <a href="http://allenbwest.com/2014/02/coca-cola-ad-super-bowl-americans-brand-hm/">a post up</a>
on his website before the game was even over quoting American president
Teddy Roosevelt, saying, "We have room for but one language here, and
that is the English language for we intend to see that the crucible
turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, and not as
dwellers in a polyglot boarding house..."</p><p>The controversy
highlights some uncomfortable truths about America's complicated
relationship with bilingualism and foreign language learning. For a
country that considers itself the world's superpower, its citizens are
shockingly deficient when it comes to having a knowledge of foreign
languages. As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/collegeprose/2012/08/27/americas-foreign-language-deficit/">has noted</a>,
"Only 18 percent of Americans report speaking a language other than
English, while 53 percent of Europeans (and increasing numbers in other
parts of the world) can converse in a second language." Put in a global
perspective, the U.S.'s overwhelming monolingualism is an aberration:
according to the <a href="http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/digestglobal.html">Center for Applied Linguistics</a>,
"Available data indicate that there are many more bilingual or
multilingual individuals in the world than there are monolingual."</p><p>It
didn't always used to be this way. Many of the United States' founding
fathers spoke French, Italian, or Spanish, or could read a classical
language like Latin or ancient Greek. Martin Van Buren, the 8<sup>th</sup>
president of the United States, learned English as his second language
-- his first being Dutch. Legend has it that James Garfield, the 20<sup>th</sup> president, could write simultaneously and ambidextrously in Latin and Greek.</p><p>Fast-forward
to today, when bilingualism has, at times, been a political landmine.
In 2008, Barack Obama, who is monolingual, was <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-i-dont-speak-a-foreign-language-its-embarrassing/">roundly criticized</a> by conservative groups for supporting early-age foreign language education in American schools. <a href="http://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/the-monolingual-presidency/">What did Obama say exactly?</a>
"Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English --
they'll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can speak
Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become
bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language."</p><p>Other aspirants to the presidency who <i>have</i>
been able to speak foreign languages have been mocked for their
linguistic prowess, including Mitt Romney and John Kerry, who both speak
French, and Jon Huntsman, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate
who speaks Mandarin Chinese. But men like these are the exception in the
U.S. and will remain so, especially as schools have cut funding for
foreign language programs. As an article published in Forbes entitled <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/collegeprose/2012/08/27/americas-foreign-language-deficit/">"America's Foreign Language Deficit"</a> points out, the state of foreign language instruction in the U.S. is, well, not great:</p>
<blockquote><i>-
The percentage of public and private elementary schools offering
foreign language instruction decreased from 31 to 25 percent from 1997
to 2008. Instruction in public elementary schools dropped from 24
percent to 15 percent, with rural districts hit the hardest.</i><p><i>- The percentage of all middle schools offering foreign language instruction decreased from 75 to 58 percent.</i></p><p><i>- The percentage of high schools offering some foreign language courses remained about the same, at 91 percent.</i></p>
<p><i>-
About 25 percent of elementary schools and 30 percent of middle schools
report a shortage of qualified foreign language teachers.</i></p><p><i>-
In 2009-2010, only 50.7 percent of higher education institutions
required foreign language study for a baccalaureate, down from 67.5
percent in 1994-1995. And many colleges and universities, including
Cornell, have reduced or eliminated instructional offerings in "less
popular" languages.</i></p></blockquote><p>This
leads us to the greatest irony of the entire controversy: Coca Cola is a
global brand that hails from a country that's becoming less and less
adept at producing global leaders. Only a quarter of the world's
population speaks English. (I say "only a quarter" because citizens of
Anglophone countries often act as if this percentage is much higher.)
That means that Barack Obama, who was hailed as a transformational
leader who would repair America's global image, can only communicate
with a quarter of the world's population -- except though translators.</p><p>But
speaking a second language is about much, much more than simply knowing
vocabulary and grammatical structures; it can actually change the way
you view the world. For that, translators simply won't do the trick. For
instance, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7wLCbZ84M">recent research</a>
has shown that speakers of "non-futured" languages, like Finnish or
German, are more likely to save more money for retirement and are less
likely to smoke or be obese than speakers of "futured" languages like
French or English. See <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7wLCbZ84M" target="_hplink">this video</a> for more on those findings -- it is <i>fascinating</i>.</p><p><span style="line-height:1.5em">It
appears, perversely, that the ineptitude of the world's richest country
and largest economy when it comes to learning foreign languages could
hamper its ability to remain globally competitive. According to the </span><a style="line-height:1.5em" href="http://blogs.cfr.org/renewing-america/2012/06/26/foreign-languages-and-u-s-economic-competitiveness/">council on foreign relations</a><span style="line-height:1.5em">,
"Nearly 30 percent of the U.S. economy is now wrapped up in
international trade, and half of U.S. growth since the official end of
the recession in 2009 has come from exports." Domestically, the Bureau
of Labor Statistics estimates that market for interpreters and
translators </span><a style="line-height:1.5em" href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/30/news/economy/job-skills-foreign-language/">will grow by 42 percent between 2010 and 2020</a><span style="line-height:1.5em">.
For a country that's been mired in an employment crisis for the better
part of five years, encouraging more people to pick up a phrasebook
doesn't seem like such a foolish idea.</span></p>All of the talk
about employment statistics aside, it appears that that America's
bilinguals, like the ones featured in the Coca Cola ad last night, will
have the last laugh in this debate. From a greater resistance to the
deleterious effects of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, to enhanced
cognitive flexibility -- that's a fancy name for what a layman would
call creativity -- and decision-making abilities, the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-roitman/why-it-makes-more-sense-t_b_3435076.html">advantages of being bilingual</a>
are numerous and well-documented. It seems, then, that those who now
plan to boycott Coca Cola have a lot more to learn from those featured
in the commercial than the other way around.<br><br></div>Whether you do it to better your mind or whatever, try learning a language this year.<br clear="all"><div><br><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-simon/what-a-coca-cola-ad-taugh_b_4734009.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-simon/what-a-coca-cola-ad-taugh_b_4734009.html</a><br>
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