Article in the local paper this morning about the increase in non-English speaking population of our town. The police chief was quoted as saying “We don’t need the census to tell us that the monolingual population is increasing.” Well, honey, while you are undoubtedly right, I don’t think that’s what you meant. Any population increase in America is going to be an increase in the monolingual population, thanks to the sad state of foreign language teaching in this country. What you probably meant by monolingual is non-English speaking, but for all you know, some of those non- English speakers may be bilingual! See how much fun language can be?
