> Most people brought up in Europe learn several languages, while those
> in the US learn usually only English (and a smattering of another)
> when young.
Sure, US monolingualism is awful, a product of underfunded schools and Imperial xenophobia, though demand for Italian and Spanish courses continues to grow in the universities. But on the other hand, US kids do grow up in one of the most feature-rich and cosmopolitan media cultures around - media spaces which are just as complex as literary languages. The Kaiser foundation did a fascinating study on this:
http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia030905pkg.cfm
-- DRR