AllCreatures -

My point about detailing my grandparents' experiences was to indirectly point out how difficult and unrealistic it is to expect adult immigrants to learn the language, it was not to enforce your view that bilingualism is an impossibility.

If we made it a priority to educate our children so that they were bilingual at an early age (not highschool or junior high) as other countries do, we would easily see a change.

It doesn't matter what language is selected, it matters that people just get out there and do it. I think that Spanish is probably the MOST relevant to the average American.

However, my family never expected people in America to speak their language. That is not the case at all. They simply operated in circles which guaranteed them the most efficiency, which were Spanish-speaking ones. They knew that they should learn English, and they did learn basics, but they simply did not have the money to hire a tutor nor the time it takes to speak a second language fluently.