There are very few things more frustrating than being unable to understand and make yourself understood.

That's been a constant theme since I arrived in Mexico. By now, the language barrier is all but broken down, but I still slip up sometimes, frequently in embarrassing and exasperating ways.

For example, take the time I mispronounced the Spanish word for "waterfall" and wound up telling my friends that my home in Buffalo, New York is very near the great Niagara Eggshells.

Or there was the time we were discussing Italian food, and I said I hadn't had a good calzone in months. Problem was, I said it in my American English accent, so my friends heard that I was craving a good pair of underwear.

I blushed even harder at that one.

I hate having to ask people to repeat themselves. Picking up the telephone is always an adventure, as I can't rely on visual cues to help me get the message.

And I can just forget about singing along to most of the popular songs that everyone else knows, because the lyrics are quite frequently a mystery.

All of these are tiny, inconsequential nuisances, but in some situations, language differences can have much more important consequences.

That point was made crystal-clear last week in an ACLU lawsuit against Georgia prosecutors that stemmed from a series of raids on convenience stores selling items that could be used to make methamphetamine.

Local law enforcement sent informants into the stores to buy the common items (matches, tinfoil, charcoal), according to a story in The New York Times, and to tell clerks they were planning to "finish up a cook," slang for meth production.

The problem is, the ACLU alleges, informants were told to primarily target stores owned by South Asians and to ignore stores staffed by white, English-speaking clerks.

Many of those caught up in the sting operation don't speak English well, and they told ACLU lawyers they didn't understand what the supplies were for. Some said they thought customers were referring to barbecue, the Times reported.

The ACLU says the prosecutors took advantage of the language barrier to score headline-friendly -- but hollow -- "tough-on-drugs" points.

The thought of those convenience-store workers sitting in jail and facing criminal charges for a simple misunderstanding gives me the chills. But as awful as it is, it's just the latest and most blatant example of America's backwards attitude toward languages other than English.

That issue is becoming increasingly important with the growth of the Spanish-speaking community in the United States.

Even now, there are areas of the country in which Spanish is more widely used than English; I would almost consider it our unofficial second language.

But the mainstream (read: English-speaking) community has been reluctant to accept that, with many pushing for English-only instruction in schools in heavily Hispanic areas and speaking disparagingly of immigrants who "just won't learn English."

But I see great hypocrisy in the fact that the same Americans who are eager to criticize and marginalize immigrants struggling to master English are themselves overwhelmingly unenthusiastic about learning second languages.

I know very few people here in Mexico who speak only Spanish; at home, I know very few who speak anything other than English. We just don't put the kind of importance on language education that other countries do.

It's true that English is currently the dominant language in global business and politics. In many places around the world, you can pretty much get by on our language. But that doesn't mean we should rely on the rest of the world to accommodate us.

Instead, we need to strengthen language education in America, and that doesn't just mean making college students take three semesters of introductory language instead of two.

We need to start from day one, with consistent, mandatory second language instruction beginning in primary school. School districts should offer more support for language departments and make more options available.

Maybe if we start opening our minds to other ways of communicating, we'll come to a better understanding of those who don't speak our native tongue.

Even if we miss some of the details or confuse some of the nuances, we'll get the main idea: an open, respectful exchange of ideas as the basis for solid international relationships.

-- Sarah Waldrop is a journalism junior. She can be reached at opinion@oudaily.com.
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