Does it Pay to Learn a Foreign Language?
10 September 2006One of the constant refrains about education that has existed for decades is the idea that you are much better off if you become fluent in a foreign language. This is given as advice both to college students and to people in the workplace, on several theories: that you’ll be able to communicate with businesspeople in countries your competitors won’t be. You’ll be more valuable to your employer. You’ll be able to get jobs other people won’t. I think, however, that learning a new language to try to gain economic benefit from it is probably a sucker’s bet. Here’s why:
1) You likely get to pick one language - and you’re probably going to guess wrong about which one to learn. My biggest objection to the idea that learning another language is a boost to your career is that most languages being promoted as economically valuable turn out to be fads that are pointless a decade or so later. Right now those “fad languages” are Chinese (on the theory that China will be a new economic powerhouse and you’ll have to negotiate with them in business), Spanish (on the theory that more and more people in the U.S. will be Spanish-speakers and potential customers), and Arabic (because of the foreign policy importance of those countries). The problem is that the languages people rushed to learn only 10 or 15 years ago for the same reasons turned out to be relatively useless. What were they?
Japanese was a big one in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s - to the point that many books and movies envisioned a future dominated by Japanese corporations. Japan, Inc. was supposedly so much better at business that America would be a second-rate power in a decade or so (i.e., now) - and we’d better get used to learning the language of our new corporate masters. It didn’t turn out that way, however - both the U.S. and Japan hit an economic rough patch in the early 1990’s, and those loyal, lifetime employees turned out to be a big burden in rough economic times because you couldn’t fire them. U.S. companies laid off people, got back on track, and we headed into an economic boom. Japan’s economy is just now starting to grow again - after fifteen years of problems. So anyone who tried to learn Japanese to boost their career ended up knowing a fancy way to order sushi.
Russian was another big one - mainly in the 1970’s when it seemed like the Soviets would be the new dominant superpower. They were going to bury us, taking over the world one country at a time. Any American who wanted to participate in this new world ought to know the language of the Soviet Empire - after all, half the world was going to be under the Soviet boot, we were losing in Vietnam, and it was only a matter of time. Of course, it didn’t turn out that way - the Soviet economy turned out to be a sham, they couldn’t keep up militarily, and by the 1980’s anyone who learned Russian now had the inside track to the shattered economies of what were now Third World countries.
So what about today’s new languages of the future?
There’s Chinese - that economy that keeps growing so fast it’s going to dwarf us all. It’s gotten to the point that in New York, it’s trendy for the wealthy to find Chinese nannies to teach their children Mandarin. My guess, however, is that they’re wasting a bunch of money. Part of this is that the economic model China is using to fuel growth CAN’T surpass the U.S. - it’s based on the plan of making cheap junk in factories that we can’t make as cheaply, and then selling it to Americans. That puts an upper limit on how much they can grow - if we can’t buy more stuff, they can’t sell it. That’s the same problem the Japanese had - their model worked for awhile, but it wasn’t time tested like the American one. A few problems hit and it couldn’t survive - and I suspect the Chinese one will prove no better. There is a big jump to be made between making plastic Happy Meal Toys and building the Internet or jet fighters or making successful movies or other things the American economy does well. But that’s not the only problem - and it’s not even the most significant one. The bigger problem is that the Chinese are communists - and communists have this tendency to lie about everything. Sorry to any communists reading, but those Soviet production numbers turned out to be largely fake. And I’ve got a feeling the double digit Chinese growth of the past decade is a similar house of cards. There are lots of inconsistencies in the Chinese economic numbers. And there is intense political pressure for leaders of local provinces to meet economic goals of ten percent growth or so - meaning that many people think the numbers are just products of political games. It’s also worth pointing out that the idea that China was about to be the world’s new superpower is nothing new - you can find quotes going back to Napoleon to that effect.
Well, what about those billion people that speak Mandarin? It’s the world’s most spoken language! We’ve got to get in on that, right? That’s great and all - but 70% of those people are poor, rural farmers. Even with predictions that they’ll all become rich and important in a few decades, I wouldn’t bank on it. Unless you’re marketing seeds, don’t expect to get a lot more customers by learning Chinese.
What about Arabic? That’s got to be a good idea to learn then? After all, we’re fighting wars in countries that speak it, the war on terror seems to have no end in sight, and it will probably be pretty important to know. That’s an interesting analysis - except for all the times it’s been wrong in the past. Trying to predict what countries will be important in the future is basically impossible - but what we do know is that there is a lot of churn. Other than English, there’s no single language over the last century that’s been consistently dominant. In the early part of the century, Germany looked like it would be the next superpower - the Kaiser was on the rise, and it even looked like they might succeed for awhile. Then France and England looked like the important powers after the Germans lost - and learning German seemed to be pointless. Of course, that was until Hitler came around, and it looked like everyone would be speaking it anyway. Japanese seemed pretty important, too - until they both lost, and English was back on top again. Until the Russians were about to be in control - that is, until they weren’t. At which point German and Japanese looked pretty good again, as those economies were growing - until they collapsed.
My guess is that if you learn Arabic, you’ll be similarly disappointed. Times will change. We’ll have new methods to stop terrorism. Oil might be replaced with renewable energy - in which case Arabic will be about as important a language as Gaelic. The reality is that while the war on terror looks endless now, what is most likely is that we’ll figure out effective ways to stop terror and the Middle East will become gradually more democratic - ironically making those countries less important foreign policy-wise. We’re talking about ten or fifteen years from now, remember - times change, and some other region will probably be more important then. If you specialize in Arabic, you’ll likely end up like those Sovietologists did - in a position that used to be important, but is now pointless.
Surely Spanish holds out some hope! After all, we’ve already got a big chunk of people in the U.S. that speak only Spanish. They’re your potential customers - and they’re growing faster than anyone else. More and more illegals come in every year, and they are having more children. Soon they’ll become the biggest population group in the United States! Again, you’re probably going to have wasted your time - a little less so than with the other two, admittedly, but Spanish is not likely to displace English as America’s dominant language. Why? Part of this is that trends do not continue on their own with no response. It’s all well and good to say that if we keep having immigration at the same rates, we’ll all speak Spanish in 40 years anyway. But it also assumes that there will be no response. And personally, my guess is that whatever you think about the merits of these proposals, it’s likely that there will be stricter immigration measures, probably more fencing, and there will be less and less illegal immigration as time goes on. When a “disaster” is looming, people try to stop it. It’s also unclear that Hispanic populations in the U.S. will keep speaking primarily or only Spanish. Every other immigrant group in U.S. history has assimilated - and with time, they’ll probably be speaking English as well. Finally, other events can always intervene and cause us to change course. Think there will be unlimited immigration from Mexico forever? Well, what if the Mexican economy gets better? Think that Spanish speaking people will outbreed the current population of the U.S. and overwhelm it? Possible - but it’s also possible that technology extends the human lifespan - and if the past is any guide, this extension will probably be restricted to the wealthy for at least awhile. Longer lives can raise population as well if people stop dying off. There are lots of ways that Spanish could become an unimportant language to know.
I will grant, however, that with Spanish there are places and industries where it can be very helpful to speak it - in South Texas, you might be alot better off knowing it. In some positions, many of your employees may speak only Spanish - and it might even be necessary already to speak Spanish. But my advice is to go based on the present, not some projection of the future. If it’s clear that you would benefit from knowing Spanish right now, then learn it. If you think you’re targeting some customer market that will exist in ten years, think again - because those kinds of guesses are probably going to lead you to waste time, whatever language you pick.
2) Most educated people in other countries speak English. This is kind of chauvinistic, but who cares? It’s true. Other people will learn English if they want to do business abroad - in many countries like Japan, everyone is required to. You may not like the idea that we shouldn’t learn Japanese because they’ll just speak our language. But as long as the U.S. is the dominant economy, English will be the world’s language of commerce. Other countries will come to us, and they already do. The competitive advantage you gain over other people will be minor, in the form of gaining rapport by showing that you are interested in the other person’s culture. This isn’t a bad thing, and it can be helpful - but my guess is it’s not worth the effort of learning another language.
3) You could be learning something else. Remember, we’re analyzing learning a language for ECONOMIC benefit, not for the benefit it gives you as a person or whether it makes you smarter or whether you just like doing it. If any of those are true, go ahead. There’s nothing wrong with learning ancient Greek because you’re interested in it - but it probably won’t make you any money. If you’re deciding to learn another language solely because you think it will help your career, you ought to think long and hard about whether there’s something else you could be better spending your time on. Either learning something else, networking and making connections, or working more on the stuff you already know how to do will probably make you more money.
4) Learning a language doesn’t mean you know the culture or have any “ins.” This may seem minor - but it’s actually a big deal. Remember, the U.S. is a country made up of immigrants from all over. So pick any language, and there are native speakers who also know about the culture and whose fluency will dwarf anything you can ever accomplish. If a company wants someone to be their point person for negotiating with the Chinese, they’ll pick someone whose parents taught them or who are immigrants to the U.S. who are native speakers.
One final thing I will say is that if you are learning another language primarily to be a linguist or translator, then this analysis doesn’t much apply to you. In that case, other languages ARE your main job skills. But I would learn multiple languages, and not just the “fad languages” that crop up every decade or so. The key point is that while languages can be a great thing to learn, people who promote them as the key to functioning in some future economy are probably wrong. It’s on par with learning to play the piano or acting in a play - they can be fun to learn and can improve you as a person. But in most cases, it won’t be of much economic benefit.
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