¡Es pura vida saber otro idioma, mae!

This morning I came across this article about American monolingualism in the Boston Globe.

Getting more Americans to speak more languages is the goal of a yearlong initiative promoting such learning in government, business, and higher education. The Senate endorsed the effort Feb. 17 with a resolution noting that only 9.3 percent of Americans speak both their native language and another language fluently, according to the Census Bureau, compared with 52.7 percent of Europeans.

''We really need an action plan here," said Marty Abbott, who is coordinating the program, known as ''Year of Languages," for the Virginia-based American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, a national advocacy group for language teachers on all levels. ''The world has fundamentally changed. And with that fundamental change, we've got to change our attitudes about the learning of other languages. . . ."

Americans' historic reluctance to learn foreign languages is baffling to Harvard University professor Doris Sommer, a specialist in the social and intellectual benefits of bilingualism.

''It's as if all the cartographers told us the world was round, and we continued to plan trips as if the world was flat," said Sommer, who speaks Spanish and Hebrew. ''We're living in a world where no one, or at least hardly anyone, lives in a situation of monolingualism. Either he or she speaks more than one language or they have neighbors who do."

People should embrace the difficulty of language learning, she said, because thinking in two or more ''codes" improves your mind and prevents an unhealthy intolerance that comes from ''fighting off" other languages and different cultures. . . .

Boston College associate professor Harry Rosser, who teaches Spanish language and literature, said the benefits of knowing a foreign language go way beyond career objectives.

''Spanish is not some difficult way to speak English," Rosser said. ''It's a whole different system and conveyor of culture that . . . immediately opens up all kinds of windows of opportunities."

Harvard sophomore Kavita Shah, who is learning Spanish, saw her studies much the same way.

''With every language you learn, you are opened to a whole new population that speaks that language and a whole array of cultures, and that gives you that much more agency," said Shah, 20, of New York. ''It gives you a key to all those places."

Call me a pessimist, but I just don't see Americans changing their ways anytime soon. Unfortunately many people seem to like to "fight off other cultures" and see no reason to learn another language, and they'll miss out on the benefits of being bilingual. At least somebody is trying to change this. But I don't think we'll change until we are forced to.