Trilingual.
What do you call a person that speaks two languages?
Bilingual.
What do you call a person that speaks one language?
American.
You know the joke: "bilingual" is someone who speaks two languages, "trilingual" is someone who speaks three languages. What do you call someone who can only speak one language? An American. Alas, it seems to be increasingly true. I am astonished at how few of my students have studied any foreign language
Yes, I can blame this imbalance on the fact that I didn’t grow up surrounded by several small countries that all speak different languages, but that doesn’t make any difference. I’m still at most bilingual, and that’s only if you include my conversational Chinese. When I get down in the dumps about my language deficiency (yes, I know this is very nerdy of me), I like to read my favorite book- How To Learn Any Language by Barry Farber. After reading this, you will be motivated to jump off the couch and start learning a language right away.
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