James Lileks makes an excellent point about Barack Obama’s comments yesterday regarding Americans’ inability to speak other languages:
Apparently it is right to expect people who visit Paris to speak French the day they get there, but it is cultural chauvinism to expect people who want to live and work in America to understand English well enough to navigate a ballot.
Amen.
MORE: From Investor’s Business Daily.
But no matter how humiliating Obama finds our monolingual ways, there’s good reason why Americans don’t have to speak foreign languages while others must speak English: The U.S. has unprecedented influence in international affairs, an indispensable role in global markets and economic superiority. Simply put, we are the world’s dominant nation.
