On this trip I have taken two language courses at the Goethe Institut in Munich where most people in my class spoke multiple languages fluently, where as I am only fluent in English. This was a topic of conversation by comparing how different countries view knowing multiple languages. The most surprising part to me was how English is viewed as a language everyone should know and that becoming fluent in English is not viewed as an accomplishment. For example, I was talking to someone who moved to Germany from Belarus and I asked how many languages they speak or are learning. They proceeded to try to tell me only one language, German, as they did not include their two native languages and English. My immediate reaction was to say that they know four languages and it is a huge accomplishment to learn to additional languages on top of the two they grew up speaking.
This idea of English not being an accomplishment was a recurrent topic discussed, which to me being from the US where most people only speak English it was surprising. I appreciate how hard English can be for example “through” and “though” are pronounced differently and English has many odd words like that, that native speakers occasionally struggle with. So, to me the idea of knowing multiple languages being the expectation is interesting as I have the privilege of not needing to learn another language as their is less incentive.
Another topic that I discussed with my peers in my class was how I noticed people with different native languages struggled with specific pronunciations. For example, there were some people in my class who grew up in Japan and Taiwan and they would often pronounce words correctly that the other Americans and I struggled with and vice versa. It was interesting to observe this as different languages have different sounds that exist in some languages and not others. During our conversation about languages and learning English I mentioned that I can understand everyone well; however, some accents are harder for me to understand as I do not hear them as often in the US. It made me reflect on accents in general and realize that I struggle understanding certain accents but not others and it most likely is because of the media I hear and the people I was around when I was younger. I do also want to add that it is not just foreign accents there are also some American accents that are basically impossible for me to understand and we both grew up speaking English but I cannot understand them.
Overall, the way language is viewed in Europe is different than my experience of language growing up in the US and I can’t say which is better. Because on the one hand many countries in Europe most people know multiple languages; however, when people learn certain languages they are not given the recognition they deserve for becoming fluent. On the other hand many people in the US seem to be impressed by people who know multiple languages; however, it is not ingrained in our society that it is important to know multiple languages.
