David Wippman, President, Hamilton College and Glenn C. Altschuler write: In a multilingual world, the United States remains a mostly monolingual country. Even though roughly 70 million Americans speak a language other than English at home, almost 80 percent speak English only. In Europe, almost two thirds of working age adults report knowing at least one foreign language. While over 300 million Chinese students are studying English, only 200,000 or so American students are studying Chinese.