Why are Americans afraid to learn another language?
xenoglossophobia noun A fear of foreign languages. http://www.allwords.com/word-xenoglossophobia.html Were we all so traumatized by our high school language requirement? “Americans are notorious for their negative or dismissive attitude toward foreign languages. Many think everyone in the whole wide world should speak English, and forget all that other mumbo jumbo. This cultural arrogance can be costly. After Sept. 11, 2001, I remember reading several newspaper stories about piles of Al Qaeda-related intelligence intercepts waiting to be translated, but the intelligence agencies did not have enough Arabic translators to handle the job. Six years later, and in the middle of two wars, the shortage of translators continues to be a deadly problem. Why are monolingual Americans so averse to embracing foreign languages? Some of the reasons, as you can see in the list of top 10 clues included here, may be amusing,
