¿Hablas inglés? By Finya Swai

Being a native speaker of a language consisting of over 1.5 billion speakers (360 million of them being native speakers), I have never felt the urgency to learn a second language. There is no expectation for Americans to master any language other than English, as it is considered to be a universal language and the most important language to know. An English speaker could point to nearly any place on Earth and he or she would most likely be able to find at least a few people there with at least a conversational knowledge of English. It is very rare to find anyone in the United States who has mastered a second language purely from studying the language in school. Most Americans who speak a second language fluently are simply taught at home by speaking regularly with family members.

When telling my friends and family that I would be studying abroad in Spain, most responded with excitement for my decision to explore a new country. Few jokingly asked if I could even speak Spanish (which I cannot), but no one had any genuine concern about my ability to live in a new place where I did not speak the language. This is because English speakers have the inherent expectation that anywhere we go, we could probably find an English speaker, so we’ll probably be alright. It was not until my arrival in Spain that I realized that there was a large amount of hypocrisy in that expectation—why was it that it was okay to assume that Spanish people could probably speak English, but it is not normal to assume that Americans can speak any language other than English? When speaking to my host parents on this topic (both of whom speak English), they told me that it is because English is considered an important language to learn, and that the Spanish school system prioritizes English language learning much more than, say, the American school system prioritizes Spanish language learning.

When asking someone on the streets of Seville for directions, or ordering from my waiter, when I don’t feel comfortable speaking Spanish I often ask “¿Hablas inglés?” to which most Spaniards respond, “a little.” However, if I were to ask Americans if they spoke Spanish (assuming they are not Hispanic), the answer would most likely be “uh… no?”