America isn’t isolated anymore and its influence is declining. With the world becoming more interconnected, it’s going to be important for Americans to understand that the luxury and privilege of knowing one language is going out the window. It’s going to be important for Americans to take multilingualism seriously, even as English is becoming a universal language.  

I once had a French teacher who expressed this simply during anti-immigration sentiment in America. Americans had a habit of complaining about people coming to America and not knowing the language. She said that they were ahead of the curve because they spoke their native language and were now in a new country working on their second or third language. 

Being well-versed in many languages is usually considered a sign of intellectualism and that is true. However, many times, when someone knows more than one language, it’s a matter of necessity and survival. They needed to learn that extra language to communicate with those in community with them or they learned a more “well-known” language like English because knowing that language brings economic opportunity. The more languages a person knows usually means the larger the cage is/was that they are/were trapped in.  

That’s what is going to be necessary in the future for Americans to also be able to lock into a world that is strongly starting to influence each other globally. Reaching opportunities is going to require diversity in languages. It’s going to require American students to take language learning seriously and perhaps not wait until they get to high school or college to begin learning, but perhaps have languages be implemented in elementary school, where kids brains are a lot more malleable and they are better able to pick up on languages more quickly, and then have continued learning all the way through adulthood.  

Although learning languages is hierarchal now, it may not be in the future, and all languages will be necessary to learn or know as we transverse cultures and have worlds that encounter one another more frequently. It won’t be enough for the child of the immigrant or the person that has parents from different lands to know how to speak another language. It’s going to be necessary for every American to take language learning seriously, especially with a growing number of people looking outside of America for quality life and comfort.  

This is such a beautiful phenomenon that we’re witnessing with the decline of America’s influence. It means that more people are coming together, more people across nations are working together, and people across borders are recognizing each other’s humanity and working to make each other’s lives better which is God’s purpose for all of us walking the planet. Learning another language is key in being able to do so.