Learning a Foreign Language

The importance of learning a second or more languages is not merely limited to increase your employment potential; this is probably what drives most to learn a foreign language. It is not only about the ability to communicate in different languages. It is about gaining global intercultural understanding. To be multilingual is to be multicultural. Language and culture are directly linked. I believe not enough time is spent understanding the culture of the target language, and it is this that will help you to understand the many whys. Why they speak the way they do, why the say xxxxx as opposed to xxxxx . It is through cultural understanding how you will learn to efficiently communicate with native speakers and learn to understand and speak the ‘local’ way and avoid being lost in translation.

Learning to master another language aside your mother tongue, improves you overall linguistic and cognitive capacity. You will also develop greater analytical and comparative conceptualization of language in general and gain a deeper understanding of your own language.

My intention is not to promote the advantages of learning a foreign language. It is to help and motivate those who are already learning, or considering taking up a new language.

English has become a global language. This is the reason I choose to write in English. Nevertheless, it is for this reason a lot native English speakers do not feel the need to learn another language. For example:

The United States is the only industrialized country that routinely graduates students from high school who lack knowledge of a foreign language. Whereas 52.7% of Europeans are fluent in both their native tongue and at least one other language, only 9.3% of Americans are fluent in both their native tongue and another language.

*Statistics from vistawide.com

What will follow is a series of notes and ‘tips’, based on my own learning experience and research. The aim is to help you save time and frustration. Is about the things I wish I knew before I started learning other languages.

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