Response to foreign language in States

[Maura Santangelo]

On Wednesday, July 23, 2003, at 03:09 PM, Caldwell, Emily wrote:

> 23% speak French.  And "Statistics Canada says that while most people
> in Canada speak English or French at home, one out of every six
> reported having a mother tongue other than English or French."

30% of people living in New York city were born elsewhere, I presume
that they also speak another language, it is this that makes learning
another language so difficult.  To communicate with my patients in
Broome County New York, I would need to know Laotian, Chinese,Cambodian,
Kurdish, Russian, Slovak, Polish, Spanish ( a very small number compared
to the others), Italian ( and several dialects of italian), Arabic,
Hindi/Urdu... which one would you suggest we teach in school in this
community of about 200,000 people???

Maura