Second Language

The U. S. people are a one-language people. Unlike Europeans, many of whom are bilingual by second nature, most good Americans speak nothing but bad English. In school, they study foreign languages for "mental discipline," usually finish their course better able to decline a French verb than to use it. But lately many signs have appeared that World War II may modify U. S. language habits.

Most sensitive U. S. linguistic barometer is the Berlitz School of Languages, which runs schools in nine big cities. It is patronized mostly by tourists, businessmen with foreign connections, U. S. military and diplomatic attaches, claims that it can teach a student to speak a foreign language passably in about 100 lessons, in as few as ten weeks. Last week Berlitz reported that since war's outbreak last fall, business has boomed. Berlitz schools today have a record enrollment of 11,251, next fortnight will open new branches in three more cities.

Significant were the Berlitz figures on specific languages people wanted to study. Biggest decline was in the demand for German: only one-fourth as many students as before the war. Enrollments in French and Italian were down to one-half. But students of Spanish had multiplied twelve-fold, today number 7,000 of the 11,251 total enrollment. Among them: Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, last week appointed coordinator of U. S. commercial and cultural relations with South America.

Wrote Mrs. Roosevelt last week in her column, My Day: "I hope that in every school in this country we will teach the children to consider Spanish their second most important language. . . . This will encourage our Latin-American neighbors to make English their second language."

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