languages

This morning in the car I was listening to the Cantares Latino-Americanos program on WTCC and repeating words and phrases I liked, which were mainly ones I understood... and it struck me that while I don't speak Spanish or claim to know it, a fair number of words and phrases are actually in my vocabulary, and I bet this is true of a lot of Americans.

In the United States, lots of people for whom English is a first language feel very uncomfortable about learning a foreign language. They set it...