If you’re curious about the underlying numbers for my last post, here they are. The table shows every logically possible combination of (a) how well people speak a foreign language and (b) where they learned the foreign language. Percentages should and do sum to 100%.
Table: The Degree and Origin of Foreign Language Competence
|
|
|
Where You Learned It
|
|
|
|
Home
|
School
|
Other
|
Didn’t
|
|
How Well You Speak It
|
Very well
|
8.6%
|
0.7%
|
0.5%
|
0%
|
|
Well
|
2.3%
|
1.7%
|
1.0%
|
0%
|
|
Not Well
|
1.2%
|
4.0%
|
1.7%
|
0%
|
|
Poorly/
Hardly At
All
|
0.4%
|
1.7%
|
0.6%
|
0%
|
|
Don’t
|
0%
|
0%
|
0%
|
75.6%
|
Source: GSS, 2000 and 2006
[Note: “Didn’t” doesn’t mean that the respondent never studied a foreign language in school. “Didn’t” is what I assign to all respondents who say they don’t speak a foreign language.]
Fun fact: While the most common status by far is “don’t speak a foreign language/ didn’t learn it anywhere,” the second most common status by far is “speak a foreign language very well/ learned it in the childhood home.”
While I was reviewing these numbers, I recalled last year’s debate with Tyler about the effect of upbringing on language. I suspect he’ll treat my table as vindication. I disagree. The data is more consistent with my original position that “You can make your kid semi-fluent in another language with a lot of effort.”
Few Americans are fluent in all of the languages their great-grandparents spoke. The reason is clear: The fraction of people who learn a foreign language in the home is considerably smaller than the fraction of people raised by one or more parents who knew a foreign language. Why do parents allow their ancestral tongues to fade from memory? Because linguistic atrophy is the path of least resistance. To get your kids in the “speak a foreign language very well/ learned it in the childhood home” box, you typically need to speak to them in that foreign language almost exclusively. Unless you strongly prefer to speak that foreign language, that’s a heavy burden.