Our friend and InsideWork’s South American correspondent, Glenn McMahan, provides some insight into the importance of language in today’s global economy.

There’s an old joke that asks:
“What do you call a person who speaks three languages?” Trilingual.
“What do you call someone who speaks two languages?” Bilingual.
“What do you call someone who speaks one language?” American.

Americans have long enjoyed the benefits of a mother tongue that is also the international language of commerce. But with a global economy that takes millions of U.S. workers to live in foreign outposts and increases multinational trade for American companies, the days when we can afford to be monolingual are over.

I was a typical American who never gave a second thought to learning a second language. Then I moved to Brazil where I spent two years learning to speak Portuguese. It was one of the hardest phases of my life. Day after day, I drowned in a sea of irregular verbs and obscure grammar. Lacking even conversational vocabulary, I was relationally isolated and unable to accomplish even simple tasks without help. So believe me when I say I understand why Americans prefer the comfort zone of English.

Failure to take language acquisition seriously will hinder our ability to participate in the global economy

And believe me when I say our failure to take language acquisition seriously will hinder our ability to participate in the global economy. You can’t be the smartest guy in the room if you don’t understand what is going on. Thankfully, many educators, parents, politicians, and business leaders in the U.S. are waking up to this reality and calling for change.

“Arming our students these days with a tremendous amount of improved math and science is not necessarily going to be all that it takes in order for them to deal with what we’re calling the global economy and maintain America’s position in that economy,” says Steve Ackley, spokesman for the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

So far, however, change has been slow. A recent study sponsored by the Modern Language Association shows that only eight in a hundred American university students enroll in a college-level foreign language course. Of that small number, even fewer take the advanced courses required to achieve high levels of fluency. Does anyone actually think that that’s good enough?

What should we do to better prepare Americans for a multi-lingual economy?

One of the best models for action is Brazil’s bilingual school movement, which in the past decade has grown from 8 schools to 110.

This movement is based on two simple ideas:

1. People should start learning two languages as children — when our brains are still sponges. For kids, language acquisition is far more efficient and simple than for adults.
2. Learning a second language (as a child or an adult) requires immersion in the second language every day; not just once or twice a week. We all learn our native tongue by being exposed to it constantly, day after day, so why not learn two languages this way?

A good example of a bilingual school is the St. James International School in the city of Londrina. Founded by Marcia Kobayashi, this private school enables students to spend 10 hours a week learning to speak, read, and write English. Some children start learning English as early as age two, in the St. James preschool. Along with Portuguese and English, older students add one class a week in Spanish. And as of last year, Kobayashi launched a mandatory course in Mandarin Chinese, starting in the fifth-grade. All this happens without compromising the other areas of a rigorous Brazilian academic curriculum.

For Kobayashi, who speaks fluent Portuguese, English and Japanese, the motivation for building her school is simple: She’s preparing children for today’s world. “The more languages you know, the more opportunities you’ll have in the world today,” she said.

Kobayashi and many like her are not waiting for the world to learn their first language. They’re seizing the initiative, in the clear knowledge that a great many deals are being done and will increasingly be done, without reference to English. So, even if that ship seems to have sailed for you, what do you think can be done to help your children and grandchildren do business in a world of polyglots?

Glenn McMahan is a frequent contributor to InsideWork from his home Brazil. Glenn is the author, with David Russ and Jim Petersen, of More Than Me: The 4 Essentials of Relational Wholeness.