The P-Word Again

Of the eleven students in my German class, five of us are students: me, another girl from Central College Abroad, a 20-year-old Turkish guy who wants to become a translator, and two 24-year-old engineering students, one from India and one from Israel. The others are older adults, many with families, who are here in Germany for work and need to learn German. In fact, we have four doctors in the class (three of whom are Romanian)! I feel so privileged compared to them. Here I am, studying abroad just because I think it would be fun, and because I want the personal satisfaction of being bilingual. I guess what I didn't realize before is that in most of the world, being bilingual (or even tri- or quatralingual) isn't some membership badge to the cosmopolitan elite. It's the best way to survive and provide for your family. My introduction interview partner, for example, is an engineer from Libya with a 10-month-old son. He's been learning German from the ground up for seven months now, and next month he's going to bring his family to Germany because he finally has the language skills to get a job.

I know that (white) Americans get derided all the time for only speaking English. (In fact, that was my original reason for wanting to continue studying German, even though it no longer fits neatly into my academic or career interests.) And maybe the world would be a better place if everyone could speak multiple languages. But I think I would rather work for a world in which learning other languages isn't so painfully necessary, a world in which opportunities for high-paying jobs exist in every language. And then we can worry about all becoming polyglots who get to learn about other cultures.

One other thing: I realize how horrible it is that I needed to go to Germany to interact with recent labor migrants on a personal level when the United States is one of the biggest sites of immigration in the world. I don't have a good explanation for it, except that, for all the I'm-just-here-for-academic-enrichment privilege I bring to the table, I am going through a somewhat similar process to the immigrant students in my class.