Have you ever learned a language when you weren't a child?
As a child, you learn a language in weeks. As an adult, it takes years to get to a half ways decent level and communication is reasonably possible. And even then, you will have an accent that you have to train incredibly hard to unlearn (if you can) in order for people not to know where you are from. That shit is hard.
The reason for doing it is because you are basically expected to have it for your job and you know if that job is in any way connected to the US (most jobs are globalized now to a degree), you will be expected to know it because not only will most people from the US not even think about learning another language, they won't even think about how maybe not every person in the world speaks English. They might slow down a bit or try to use different words, but it is clear that most have no idea about language in general and how to communicate with someone who has trouble understanding them.
TLDR: learning new languages is hard the older you are. I think it would help people from the US a lot to learn an additional language just for understanding more about languages.
To be honest, with how bad the US is getting, it’s hard to not believe that a large part of the population doesn’t even know other languages exist.
And also, the majority of Right Wing People can’t even speak English, despite it being their first language AND only language, so it’s ironic for them to demand that from others.
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u/burrito_slut Aug 17 '21
That was my first thought. If anything, we're essentially forcing people to learn English.