h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Q: What do you call a person who speaks three or more languages?
A: A polyglot.
Q: What do you call a person who speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual.
Q: What do you call a person who speaks one language?
A: An American.

Okay, the joke's on me, I'm an American. My parents were born here, but not my grandparents, and I can speak none of the many languages they brought with them. Oh, sure, a few words here and there, but not what you could call speaking a language.

Language is something that I either use or lose. The little Spanish I learned in school was book-learned, which is to say we learned from books. When the Spanish teach spoke, we listened and repeated. So I could read my lessons, and parrot the teacher, but I could scarcely speak the language because I had no practice. When I worked around Spanish speakers, however, I started speaking Spanish (badly), because for the first time I could get some practice. Nonetheless, many 6-year-olds speak Spanish better than I.

Why did Esperanto fail to catch on? There are probably more speakers of Klingon than Esperanto. Why go through the effort of learning Esperanto as a new language before traveling abroad when it is unlikely that any of the people you meet on your journey can speak Esperanto? For the same effort you can learn enough to get by and interact with many of the people you meet.

When I was in school, we were told that since Spanish is the second most common language in this part of the country, we should learn Spanish. Later we were told that Japanese would be the new international business language and we should learn to speak Japanese. Recent media stories have informed us that Chinese will be the new international business language and we should learn to speak Chinese. I'm still working on Spanish.