I am writing in regard to a letter to the editor by Laura H. Sanchez, “Experiencing the many cultures of life” (Voice of the people, May 31). I certainly agree with Sanchez that our teaching of foreign languages is far behind other nations.
I would like to take you back to the ’20s, when I was about 8 years old.
We lived in a suburb of Chicago. One of our neighbors was a woman of Swiss ancestry. Every year during summer vacation, when her children were in the upper grades at grammar school, she would take her children to Germany to learn different languages.
In those days if you entered a school and wanted to learn French, German, Spanish or Russian, you would enter that school in Germany and the moment you entered the doors, all that was spoken was the language you wanted to learn. Those children of our neighbor, after three years of going abroad to Switzerland and Germany, were fluent in German, French and Spanish.
I have for a great many years mentioned this to teachers of various schools but to no avail.
We are now in a world where we should know fluently several languages and it has been noted the time is when the children are young to learn the languages, as young children can absorb the knowledge faster than older people.
With faster and safer modes of transportation, our world is getting smaller, and as it does, it brings us closer to other countries. Our knowledge of their languages is almost a necessity if we want their business and they ours.
In the ’30s I was in high school and I took German as a foreign language.
I am of German-Swedish descent. As a class project, I began corresponding with a German girl in Germany, and we did keep in touch until Adolf Hitler took power.
I always wrote to her in English, as I did not have the knowledge to write regarding everyday living, but she wrote back to me in perfect English, and only once in a while would she write in German.
I sincerely hope that someday we will learn the necessity of knowing several languages.
