Break Through Your Personal Spot
When a child comes to life he has chances to master a universe
of cultures and languages. However, it's not up to the kid. It
will be bound with the place it was born. One place to live -
one language to speak. That's not a rule, of course, but that's
usual.
'Well, I'm fine with my native language. What are those others
for?' That's quite common point of view nowadays. It's pity but
there are millions of people who know just one language, their
native one.
It's like a spot you are stuck to. Imagine yourself standing on
a spot on an e.g. strawberries field. Your legs are tied with a
chain, so you can't move. You have eaten all strawberries around
you. Thus, you need to move to another spot. But you can't
because you are bounded. That's a model of a life of a person
who is stuck to his native language only. There are lots of
opportunities and information in the world. But as soon as his
legs are bound, he can't reach it.
What he should do is to brake the chain so that he moves to
another spot. And that spot opens new opportunities to move to
other directions that were closed earlier.
A real life example of such spot is Internet. I bet you know
that there are parts of World Wide Web hat use languages other
than English. Russian, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German and
other local zones contain enormous amount of info that you can't
find in English zone (at least for free). You think you can use
online translators? Don't rely on them because there is no
translator that can translate languages of different language
families with at least affordable quality. It's possible to
English-German translation, but English-Russian results are
useless junk. A bottom line is the more languages you know, the
deeper you can surf the Internet, the more useful info you can
get.
Another spot is a brain spot. It's obvious that the more
languages you speak, the more effective your intelligence is. So
why shouldn't one learn at least one additional language to
train the brain? The more easily you can switch between
different languages, the more speedy your mind is. Isn't it
worth studying?
Cultural spot. Do you think Germany is just sausages and
cabbage, Russia is just vodka and polar bears walking around the
Moscow, and China is just small people that break bricks with
their heads, so you are definitely under the rule of
stereotypes. Learning foreign culture and foreign language you
can break through these prejudices and open new perfect worlds
for yourself. A good reason to know at least several foreign
phrases, isn't it?
So opportunity of getting recently unavailable information,
training the intelligence, learning foreign culture isn't even
the half list of opportunities foreign languages can give you.
You just start learning and you'll feel the changes that will
change your life forever.