For many, language learning (or the lack there of) is a subject spoken with great passion. Even for me, I have strong opinions on the subject. Some people claim that learning a foreign language in this world is a pointless waste of time, whilst other vehemently disagree stating that it is the most important time to learn a foreign language!
If you search into Google, "How to learn a foreign language" you will be bound by an endless supply of search returns. There are literally hundreds of thousands of dedicated language learning blogs out there to help you learn foreign languages based on different peoples way of learning a foreign language.
Naturally, all of them will argue (probably until they are blue in the face) that learning a foreign language is more important than ever! We live in an extremely globalised world, now more than ever, are we seeing more and more people who speak vastly different languages, all living in the same city, or even the same apartment building!
Just last week, I was at a friend's house. He lives in a relatively affluent area. On his street, we counted that there were fifteen different languages spoken, including: English, Spanish, French, Punjabi, Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Italian, Polish, Latvian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Greek and Navajo.
This was all on one street by the way.
Whilst most of them spoke English (either bilingually or as a second language), there were two people who didn't: the Russians and the Portuguese. Both of these people happened to live either side of my friend. He has lived next to both households for ten years, and has never spoken to them.
Within thirty seconds, I was stood having a conversation in both Russian and Portuguese with both groups of people!
But it isn't just looking supremely intelligent that is the main benefit, but the fact that soon, speaking a second language will be almost necessary! My son currently goes to school. His best friend is Muslim (from Morocco), his other good friend is Chinese and his girlfriend is Polish.
More and more people are moving countries than ever before- with some even moving entire continents or moving to the other side of the planet!
As Anglophones (English speakers) we cannot afford to not speak another language!
Anglophones in general have a bad rap- we are often the ones who pay thousands of dollars to fly to exotic places, with exotic languages. Instead of trying to take in 100% of the culture, by learning some of the local language, we walk into the local area and say something like "Speak English or don't speak at all!"
But soon, in most majority-English speaking nations, will have sizable populations of non-English speakers, whether they're from Asia, Europe, South America or North America (or even Oceania!)
This means that we will see foreign language TV shows, words and Ad campaigns done in order to appeal to those non-English speakers. In fact, we have already started to see this happen, with Californian democratic debates being done in Spanish, rather than in English!
Yet, people will turn this around, stating that as so many people are moving abroad, especially to those countries where English is the most commonly spoken language, that they will learn ENglish for day-to-day use. And whilst yes, this is the case in a lot of circumstances, what happens if your child wants to marry a foreigner?
You will have to meet their parents on at least one occasion (the physical wedding itself). How would you feel if you were in the middle of a conversation with your son's wife's father, and he turns to another relative of his and says something in their language?
You would have literally no idea what they were saying, they could be saying "I really like this person, they're great! We're going to get on really well!" or, they could be saying "This guy is a complete idiot, how did our dear (insert daughter's name) marry someone who's related to this buffoon?"
You'd want to have a good idea either way, wouldn't you?
But maybe, you are fine with foreigners calling you an idiot behind your back. But what about fun?
A lot of my friends are foreign, most of them speak English, plus their own language. I will admit, if I am stood talking to one of my friends, and someone who's not in our conversation is doing something stupid- we will talk about it. We will laugh and joke about it. Because literally no one can tell you off!
I remember when I was something like 14, and I was a corporal in the local civil air patrol unit. Our commanding officer told us to go to this thing called RIAT which was is an annually-held air show in England, often attended by royalty.
One of the airshow days, my friends and I were walking around a Ukranian Air Force Il-76, when some of the Ukranian crew came to talk to us. Now, some of my friends were Russian, and spoke it as a first language (with the rest of us non-Russians speaking it as a second language). Naturally, they were a little apprehensive, but did agree to talk to them.
Half way through the conversation (that took place in English, for my Russian friends' sake), another Ukrainian entered the conversation and said to his friend "Leave these American f***ers, they're not worth your time. Filthy Capitalist scum!"
Naturally, due to the high mutual intelligibility of Russian and Ukrainian, most of this was understood by us too. Instead of biting our tongues, and walking off, one of my friends, decided to turn around and reply to the nice Ukrainian officer "Thank you very much! Sadly, these American f***ers speak Russian, as most of us are Russian-Americans. Next time you want to insult someone attending this airshow, I suggest you make sure that they don't speak Russian or Ukrainian for that matter! You look rather stupid you commie slime!"
To this, the Ukrainian officer (and his friend who we'd been speaking to) just looked at us as if we were aliens! That joke was with us for weeks! We just couldn't stop reciting it. At the end of the airshow, an English RAF Officer walked up to us and said "Hello chaps, I don't suppose you know anything about the Ukrainian officer's 'sore throat', which is why he isn't talking to anyone?"
Obviously, he knew what had happened. We simply replied "No, sir", to which he said "Apparently he needs to watch who he insults- he comes every year, but we can never prove to the Ukrainians that he does it. Thanks for taking him down a peg or two!" And simply walks off into the sunset!
This is the sort of thing we are able to do every day. A kid is mucking about on the road, jumping on and off it, we can joke about how it'll only take one car for him to never do that again, and the kid is none the wiser!
(Obviously, we have told the kid that it is probably not the best idea to mess around near a road!)