I Speak Six Languages

Actually I don't speak six languages, but that's beside the point.

I have been talking about languages and whether or not Americans should learn Spanish due to the U.S. having a lot of Spanish-speaking peoples.  

My opinion was that we shouldn't have to learn Spanish, but it would only be beneficial to us to learn it. Or to at least learn something to the point where we can either understand what is being said, and to communicate back to them in some way.  Besides, by not learning another language (it doesn't necessarily have to be Spanish), we are just leaving up that barrier between ourselves and other people.  

I don't understand why we try so hard to understand people in the sociological or psychological sense, but why we are so lazy when it comes to learning another language.  Compared to the human brain, that is a simple barrier which can easily be overcome.  But yet we continue to just sit on our butt and let other people learn English because everyone is already learning English already right?  Hah!  

One idea I always think of is if you only have knowledge of one language, you cannot possibly know or understand any other. 

This can be applied to many other things.  One example would be color.  You can say you know the color red, but you would only know it as a single, individual color.  What happens when you put it adjacent to orange or violet?  In both cases, the red would look like a different color than the red you once knew.  The same goes for languages.  If you know more than one, you start seeing the first language you knew in a different way.  English and Italian, French, or Spanish are all similar in some ways.  But when you compare one of those to Chinese, German, or Afrikaans, it is not the same at all. 

On an entirely different note, here's another link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp1BYzIVi0U  

I couldn't decide which one I wanted in the title, so you get both!!