Still, I think the British linguistic abilities are heads and shoulders above most Americans. I think the British and American failure to understand the need to be at least bi-lingual has much to do not only with a common history but also with relative geographic isolation. Continental Europeans have much more of a need to speak more than one language and their education starts early. Bravo for them.
When most people immigrated to the United States during the 19th & 20th centuries, they were forced to speak English (or at least their children were). I know that my grandparents isolated themselves in an Italian immigrant neighborhood and as a result my father and his siblings grew up in an Italian speaking world until they went to school (and it was a sink or swim situation) and then served as my grandparents' translators. My grandparents spoke limited English -- most of which they learned from their children, radio, and later television. My generation wasn't raised to be bi-lingual because there was a sense of shame that was attached to speaking Italian: it marked you as not "American." And all they wanted to be was "American." I feel like I missed out on something special -- a way of preserving my heritage.
Of course, I learned Italian in school by choice but I learned Florentinian Italian in high school & college (along with French, and a couple of semesters of German) which really doesn't resemble the Naples dialect my grandparents spoke. My grandmother used to tell me I spoke like a princess when I called her; she could understand me but often I couldn't understand her. Now it's chic to be a hypenated-American... How things change.
