a person who speaks two languages? A bilingual. What do you call a person who speaks one language? An American." Costs Snow and Hakuta write that in a cost-benefit analysis, the choosing of English as the official and national language often comes with additional costs on the society, as the alternative choice of multilingualism has its own benefits. Education Some of the education budget is allocated for foreign-language training, but fluency of foreign-language students is lower than those who learned it at home. Economic International business may be impeded by a lack of people competent in other languages. National security Money has to be spent to train foreign-service personnel in foreign languages. Time and effort Compared to the maintenance of a language that is learned at home, more time, effort and hard work are required to learn it in school. Job opportunities Kirkpatrick asserts that monolinguals are at a disadvantage to bilinguals in the international job market. In the media Lawrence Summers, in an article published in The New York Times, discusses how to prepare for the future advancement of America. He also questioned the importance and necessity of learning foreign languages by remarking that "English's emergence as the global language, along with the rapid progress in machine translation and the fragmentation of languages spoken around the world, makes it less clear that the substantial investment necessary to speak a foreign tongue is universally worthwhile." Others have disagreed with Summers' view. A week later, The New York Times hosted a discussion among six panelists, all of whom were for learning foreign languages and cited the benefits and advantages and the changing global landscape. See also Multilingualism Languages of the United Kingdom Languages of the United States Linguistic imperialism List of multilingual countries and regions References External links Monolingualism and Judaism by Jose Faur, contrasting the Greek monolingualism with the polyglot culture of the Hebrews