The United States has a treasured history of welcoming in people from countless foreign countries and nourishing ethnic enclaves where new immigrants and their children sustain many elements of their home-country culture, including the language. Yet the U.S. also has a time-honored tradition of providing economic and social opportunities outside the boundaries of the ethnic neighborhood and penetrating that enclave with English-language mass media. These forces, working in combination, acculturate young people to the English-language mainstream, with the result that in only a generation or two, the old-country tongue typically becomes a second language or a tattered collection of words and stock phrases.
Some of the most firmly rooted ethnic enclaves in the United States are not of immigrant stock but rather communities that were absorbed as part of historic American expansion. The oldest of these are the speakers of Native American languages, who may be found in all the states. Later, the United States absorbed French-speakers with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and Spanish-speakers with the expansion into territory formerly belonging to Mexico. This patchwork background partly explains why there has never been an official national language in the United States as there is in some other countries.
Nevertheless, English is the de facto language of the United States, and Americans are notorious for a lack of knowledge of languages other than English. Findings from the 2019 U.S. Census Bureau showed that 78 percent of the U.S. population speaks only English. About 1 in 5 Americans report being able to speak a foreign language, while about 59 percent of Europeans have this ability. Probably only half of those Americans claiming knowledge of a foreign language can speak it well. Considering that America is a world power, with business dealings, diplomatic initiatives, and military footprints in numerous countries where English is the foreign language, our tradition of being tongue-tied has negative consequences for our balance of trade and for our national security.
At a Senate hearing in 2012, witnesses noted that only 74 percent of language-designated positions at the State Department were filled with fully qualified personnel. The department was particularly in need of speakers of Near East, South Asian, and East Asian languages. The Defense Department was in a similar bind, with more than 80 percent of its language positions filled but only 28 percent with speakers at the necessary level of proficiency.
The root of the problem is the failure of our schools to teach languages. A 2016 report (the most recent data available on this subject) by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences showed a decline throughout the previous years in foreign language classes being offered in elementary and middle schools. One example, in 1997, 31 percent of elementary schools and 75 percent of middle schools offered foreign language instruction, By 2008, these numbers had dropped: only 25 percent of elementary schools and 58 percent of middle schools offered foreign language instruction. In addition, more than one-quarter of those teaching foreign language in elementary schools were not appropriately certified. High schools fared better, from 1997 to 2008, about 91 percent offered foreign language classes. According to a National Foreign Language Enrollment Survey, while more than 21 percent of U.S. household speak a language other than English at home, only 20 percent of the K–12 population is enrolled in foreign language classes. One advantage of the large immigrant population—and the native-born generation that they raise—is that it can serve as a reservoir of people who speak a foreign language.