学习外语的价值何在？
绝世美人儿
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2020年07月29日 17:10
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学习外语的价值何在？
JOHNSON is a fan of the Freakonomics books and columns. But this week’s podcast makes me wonder if the team of Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt aren’t overstretching themselves a bit. “Is learning a foreign language really worth it?”, asks the headline. A reader writes:
约翰逊是《魔鬼经济学》这本书和专栏的粉丝。但这周的播客让我好奇斯蒂芬·都伯纳（Stephen Dubner）和斯蒂芬·列维特（Steven Levitt）的组合是不是有点儿太紧张了，大标题问道：“学门外语真的值得么？”一位读者写到：
My oldest daughter is a college freshman, and not only have I paid for her to study Spanish for the last four or more years — they even do it in grade school now! — but her college is requiring her to study EVEN MORE! What on earth is going on? How did it ever get this far? … Or to put it in economics terms, where is the ROI?
“我的大女儿是名大一学生，我花钱供她在过去四年多的时间里学习西班牙语，大学居然还要求她继续深入学习！现在甚至从小学就开始了！这究竟是怎么了？怎么会像现在这么糟？……或者用经济学术语，它的投资回报率在哪儿？”
To sum up the podcast’s answers, there are pros and cons to language-learning. The pros are that working in a foreign language can make people make better decisions (research Johnson covered here) and that bilingualism helps with executive function in children and dementia in older people (covered here). The cons: one study finds that the earnings bonus for an American who learns a foreign language is just 2%. If you make $$30,000 a year, sniffs Mr Dubner, that’s just $$600.
总结了播客的回复，支持和反对外语学习的都有。支持的观点称用外语工作可以让人们更好地决策（约翰逊的研究有所提及），并且双语有助于提高儿童的执行力和减轻老年人的痴呆（有提及）。反对的观点：一项研究表明，学习了一门外语的美国人只会多赚2%。都伯纳先生对此嗤之以鼻，假如每年挣3万美元，也就600美元。
But for the sake of provocation, Mr Dubner seems to have low-balled this. He should know the power of lifetime earnings and compound interest. First, instead of $$30,000, assume a university graduate, who in America is likelier to use a foreign language than someone without university. The average starting salary is almost $$45,000. Imagine that our graduate saves her “language bonus”. Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe (a statement dubiously attributed to Einstein, but nonetheless worth committing to memory). Assuming just a 1% real salary increase per year and a 2% average real return over 40 years, a 2% language bonus turns into an extra $$67,000 (at 2014 value) in your retirement account. Not bad for a few years of “où est la plume de ma tante?
”
但是由于要挑衅，都伯纳先生似乎低估了这笔收益。他应该考虑到终身所得和复利的力量。首先，用一个大学毕业生替代30000美元的假设，她比没有上过大学的人更可能使用外语。大学毕业生的平均起始工资将近4.5万美元。想象这个毕业生将“语言红利”储存起来。复利是世界最强大的力量。（可能出自爱因斯坦，但仍然值得记住）。假设40年中实际工资每年增长1%，平均2%的实际回报，一个2%的语言红利就会变成67000美元（按2014年的币值）的额外收入，存在退休金账户里。学几年“où est la plume de ma tante?”（西班牙语“我姨妈的钢笔在哪？”）也不赖。
Second, Albert Saiz, the MIT economist who calculated the 2% premium, found quite different premiums for different languages: just 1.5% for Spanish, 2.3% for French and 3.8% for German. This translates into big differences in the language account: your Spanish is worth $$51,000, but French, $$77,000, and German, $$128,000. Humans are famously bad at weighting the future against the present, but if you dangled even a post-dated $$128,000 cheque in front of the average 14-year-old, Goethe and Schiller would be hotter than Facebook.
第二，麻省理工的经济学家阿尔伯特·塞兹（Albert Saiz），就是计算出2%的额外收益的人，也发现不同的语言额外收益是不同的：西班牙语仅1.5%，法语2.3%，德语3.8%。这到了语言账单上就会产生很大差异：西班牙语值5.1万美元，但法语值7.7万美元，德语12.8万美元。人类极不擅于权衡未来与现在是出了名的，但如果把一张12.8万美元的远期支票吊在一般的14岁小孩面前，歌德和席勒将会比脸谱网更受欢迎。
Why do the languages offer such different returns? It has nothing to do with the inherent qualities of Spanish, of course. The obvious answer is the interplay of supply and demand. This chart reckons that Spanish-speakers account for a bit more of world GDP than German-speakers do. But an important factor is economic openness. Germany is a trade powerhouse, so its language will be more economically valuable for an outsider than the language of a relatively more closed economy.
为什么不同语言会带来不同回报呢？这与西班牙语本身的质量没有关系。很明显这是因为供需关系的相互作用。这张图表计算出说西班牙语的人对世界GDP的贡献比说德语的人多一点。但一个重要的因素是经济的开放度。德国是贸易发达，所以对外国人而言德语的经济价值高于经济相对封闭的国家的语言。
But in American context (the one Mr Saiz studied), the more important factor is probably supply, not demand, of speakers of a given language. Non-Latino Americans might study Spanish because they hear and see so much of it spoken in their country. But that might be the best reason not to study the langua
ge, from a purely economic point of view. A non-native learner of Spanish will have a hard time competing with a fluent native bilingual for a job requiring both languages. Indeed, Mr Saiz found worse returns for Spanish study in states with a larger share of Hispanics. Better to learn a language in high demand, but short supply—one reason, no doubt, ambitious American parents are steering their children towards Mandarin. The drop-off in recent years in the American study of German might be another reason for young people to hit the Bücher.
但在美国（塞兹先生的研究对象），对于说某种语言的人，更重要的因素大概是供应而非需求。非拉丁裔的美国人可能会学西班牙语，因为他们在自己的国家听到看到太多西班牙语的使用。但纯粹从经济学角度看，那也许会成为不学习这种语言的最好理由。一个非西班牙语母语的学习者，要与流利使用双语的西班牙母语者竞争需要双语的工作，是十分困难的。的确，塞兹先生发现所在的州西班牙裔越多，西班牙语学习者的收益越低。最好学一门高需求低供应的语言，无疑，有野心的美国父母开始让孩子学习中文。近年来美国学习德语的人数减少，可能这是年轻人用功学德语的另一个原因。
And studies like Mr Saiz’s can only work with the economy the researchers have at hand to study. But of course changes in educational structures can have dynamic effects on entire economies. A list of the richest countries in the world is dominated by open, trade-driven economies. Oil economies aside, the top 10 includes countries where trilingualism is typical, like Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore, and small countries like the Scandinavian ones, where English knowledge is excellent.
塞兹先生这样的研究只适用于研究者近在手边的经济状况。但当然教育结构的变化对整个经济体系有着动态的影响。世界上最富有的国家都是开放、贸易驱动型的经济体。除了石油经济体，排名前十的包括一些国家，人们普遍说三种语言，像卢森堡、瑞士、新加坡，还有些小国家像斯堪的纳维亚国家，那里人们的英语水平非常出色。
There are of course many reasons that such countries are rich. But a willingness to learn about export markets, and their languages, is a plausible candidate. One study, led by James Foreman-Peck of Cardiff Business School, has estimated that lack of foreign-language proficiency in Britain costs the economy £48 billion ($$80 billion), or 3.5% of GDP, each year. Even if that number is high, the cost of assuming that foreign customers will learn your language, and never bothering to learn theirs, is certainly a lot greater than zero. So if Mr Saiz had run his language-premium study against a parallel-universe America, in which the last half-century had been a golden age of language-learning, he might have found a
bigger foreign-language bonus (and a bigger GDP pie to divide) in that more open and export-oriented fantasy America. And of course greater investment in foreign-language teaching would have other dynamic effects: more and better teachers and materials, plus a cultural premium on multilingualism, means more people will actually master a language, rather than wasting several years never getting past la plume de ma tante, as happens in Britain and America.
当然这些国家富有有很多原因。但是愿意学习出口市场和他们的语言，理应在此行列。加迪夫商业学院的詹姆斯·福尔曼·佩克领导了一项研究，估算出英国每年因缺少外语专业人才花费了480亿英镑，占GDP3.5%。虽然这个数字巨大，但假定外国消费者会学习你的语言，无需劳烦去学习他们的语言，这种想法付出的代价更大。所以如果塞兹先生在过去半个世纪语言学习的黄金时代做语言红利研究，并把他现在的研究与平行世界的美国对比，他可能会在那个更为开放、出口导向型的幻境美国发现一个更大外语红利（并且占GDP比重更大）。当然，更多的外语教学投资会带来其他的动态影响：更多更好的教师和材料以及多语言使用带来的文化红利，这意味着更多的人会精通一门语言，而不是浪费多年仍然学不会“我姨妈的钢笔在哪”，就像英国和美国一样。
To be sure, everything has an opportunity cost. An hour spent learning French is an hour spent not learning something else. But it isn’t hard to think of school subjects that provide less return—economically, anyway—than a foreign language. What is the return on investment for history, literature or art? Of course schools are intended to do more than create little GDP-producing machines. (And there are also great non-economic benefits to learning a foreign language.) But if it is GDP you’re after, the world isn’t learning English as fast as some people think. One optimistic estimate is that half the world’s people might speak English by 2050. That leaves billions who will not, and billions of others who remain happier (and more willing to spend money) in their own language.
诚然，所有事物都有机会成本。花一小时学法语也就是浪费一小时没有学其他技能。但不管怎样，很难想到学校里哪个学科比英语经济回报更低。历史、文学或艺术的投资回报是什么？当然学校不只是想创造GDP生产机。（学习外语有许多非经济方面的好处）但如果你追求的是GDP，全球人学英语的速度并不像一些人所想的那样快。乐观估计，到2050年世界上可能有一半的人会说英语。还剩下数十亿的人们不会说英语，以及数十亿更快乐地说着（也更愿意投资）自己语言的人。