But living in a largely monolingual culture isnвЂ™t a problem in and of itself - Unless you are a Silicon Valley tech company like Facebook, Twitter, or Google, and you are making choices that affect users globally, many of whom are bilingual or multilingual. ItвЂ™s enriching to speak more than one language, itвЂ™s fun to have different languages and cultures around you, and studies seem to show that itвЂ™s good for peopleвЂ™s brains. There is nothing wrong, per se, with being largely monolingual. Undoubtedly, TwitterвЂ™s leadership and product teams have a higher proportion of people who speak a second language than the US population, but they still have work to do with when it comes to diversity, and I doubt that TwitterвЂ™s product teams are as multilingual as, say, people in Sweden or Germany.Дoes the American tech industry have a problem with monolingual culture, then? The takeaway here is that the cultural gulf is just massive: coastal American cities are vibrant and diverse, but in terms of languages spoken, these places will not rival average European cities or villages anytime soon. Note too that not not all blacks, Latinos, or Asian-Americans speak second languages, either.

Though, one does wonder if they made these white people pass a proficiency test - my high school Spanish teacher spent 6 months in Mexico back in the 70s and I donвЂ™t think he spoke Spanish at all. This strikes me as about right, and is probably a lot more than what youвЂ™d find in South Dakota, where I grew up. Obviously, their rate is higher because many have arrived in recent decades from Asia.ДЄnd among Latinos the bilingual rate is 55.8 percent, while 44.1 percent can speak only English.Дў% of white people speak a second language. The rest, 92.6 percent, speak only English.ДЇor Asian-Americans, the bilingual rate is 71.7 percent and 28.3 percent speak only English. When you do the math, it shakes down to this: About 2 percent of the native Caucasian population in Colorado speaks more than one language fluently.ДЄmong blacks, the bilingual rate is 7.4 percent. LetвЂ™s take a look at the numbers from the 2000 Census, for Colorado, quoted in the Denver Post.

Americans monolingual