Learning a new language is challenging. However, it's just as rewarding. I mean, having the ability to interact with someone who grew up in a a completely different environment? Juk tai nuostabu. And the lessons aren't just a painstaking grind. They're full of fun things as well. One of them is literal translations, the "word-for-word" translations that tend to drift away from the sense of the original word on sentence. One of the members of the Facebook group Monolinguals are the worst has urged others to share the funniest literal translations they know, and, believe me, they delivered. Scroll down to check out these linguistic gems and upvote your favorites!
Interestingly, the United States is largely monolingual. In fact, only about 15-20 percent of Americans call themselves bilingual, compared to 56 percent of Europeans surveyed in 2006 by the European Commission.
According to Arabic professor Mahmoud Al-Batal, the inability to speak a foreign language makes it difficult for Americans to compete globally on a linguistic and cultural level. Others who criticized the United States’ monolingual nature have highlighted problems in university-level language courses that result in students failing to reach higher levels of proficiency in a foreign language.
