Selling Americans Short

Barack Obama at a campaign event in Powder Springs, Georgia on July 8:

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they'll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can you child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say, 'Merci beaucoup.' Right?

Time Magazine on July 4, 2008 in an article reporting on a "recent international survey:"

American tourists fared well in some surprising ways. Despite being notoriously language-limited, for example, they top the list of tourists credited with trying to speak local languages the most....

Perhaps we Americans say a lot more than "merci beaucoup" when in France- or "muchas gracias" when in Latin America or Spain.