What countries have you been to?

See...this is the difference between Americans (:/) and Europeans .

Europeans

Few European countries are very large.

Europeans get the chance to see so much of the world. Even if it is just driving through another country.

Most people in Europe are multi-lingual. They HAVE to be, because...

...drive for an hour and a half, two, three, four hours, and you're in another country! (unless you live on the British Isles...then you'd hit the ocean eventually.)

Many foreign language courses are taught by language immersion. And they start when a student is very young in most countries.

Americans

...it's a pretty big country, and we have only Canada and Mexico bordering us. They're pretty big, too.

Americans really only have an easy chance to see Canada, as Mexico is now quite dangerous with the drug cartels.

Only about 9% of Americans are bilingual- much less trilingual or quadlingual. So that means out of about 312,488,000 people in the nation, about 2,812,392 of them speak another language as well as English...and most of them? Spanish or Chinese are first languages. English is second.

Drive for an hour and a half...yeah. You're either still in the same state, or one or two states over. Or you're in Canada. They speak English there, too. (Unless you end up driving to Mexico. In which case, you are either Hispanic and you speak Spanish fluently, OR, you speak Spanish for some reason.)

Foreign language education typical doesn't start until the final 2 years of high school. Typically, that means ages late 16-early 18.


And that! is why as of 2007, the USA was 20th on this list (according to Wikipedia.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

However. As it was declining then. and continues to today, I' msure that there is a more reliable source that proves we are lower on the list.