If you’re curious about the underlying numbers for my last post, here they are.  The table shows every logically possible combination of (a) how well people speak a foreign language and (b) where they learned the foreign language.  Percentages should and do sum to 100%.

Table: The Degree and Origin of Foreign Language Competence

 

 

Where You Learned It

 

 

Home

School

Other

Didn’t

 

How Well You Speak It

Very well

8.6%

0.7%

0.5%

0%

Well

2.3%

1.7%

1.0%

0%

Not Well

1.2%

4.0%

1.7%

0%

Poorly/

Hardly At
All

0.4%

1.7%

0.6%

0%

Don’t

0%

0%

0%

75.6%

Source: GSS, 2000 and 2006

[Note: “Didn’t” doesn’t mean that the respondent never studied a foreign language in school.  “Didn’t” is what I assign to all respondents who say they don’t speak a foreign language.]

Fun fact: While the most common status by far is “don’t speak a foreign language/ didn’t learn it anywhere,” the second most common status by far is “speak a foreign language very well/ learned it in the childhood home.”

While I was reviewing these numbers, I recalled last year’s debate with Tyler about the effect of upbringing on language.  I suspect he’ll treat my table as vindication.  I disagree.  The data is more consistent with my original position that “You can make your kid semi-fluent in another language with a lot of effort.”

Few Americans are fluent in all of the languages their great-grandparents spoke.  The reason is clear: The fraction of people who learn a foreign language in the home is considerably smaller than the fraction of people raised by one or more parents who knew a foreign language.  Why do parents allow their ancestral tongues to fade from memory?  Because linguistic atrophy is the path of least resistance.  To get your kids in the “speak a foreign language very well/ learned it in the childhood home” box, you typically need to speak to them in that foreign language almost exclusively.  Unless you strongly prefer to speak that foreign language, that’s a heavy burden.