Language Barriers

Languages

When I read the article about languages then it put me thinking. How many languages I can speak myself. And it hit me, not much. I can speak Estonian as my native language and English only as my foreign language. It is great that I have French in my university’s studying program because like Louise said in the text- lots of businesses say they want people who can speak European languages, but young people do not seem to realize that speaking another language can imrpove their job prospects. I totally agree with this statement.For example, in Estonia young educated Russian people who can speak English and Estonian and of course Russian as their mother language, are more likely to find a job in Estonia than Estonians themselves. It’s because they have a great advantage over young Estonian people-they can speak one language more. Speaking many languages is like an investment for your future’s career to become succesful individual in the world, were there are another languages than English.

When people are young then they are not usually interested in studying languages. It’s because the grammar is too hard and the school program itself is too capacious and there are many other subjects that we need to learn as well. I think when we get older and we know what we want from life and we know where we are in life makes us more aware of life itself. People want to get educated and be more intelligent and learning foreign languages makes us more cultivated. For example, in the article Paul is young and does not like studying foreign languages because of the hard grammar. Liz also did not like studyng them when she was younger, but when she got older she started studying French as a hobby and Hindi because her fiance is from India. A reason to study languages has to be made clear in the school early on so the students take it as an investment in their future lives not a duty to pass their lessons.

For people who are used to travel all the time around the globe is necessary to at least know some words like ’hello’ and ’goodbye’ in foreign language. It shows that the person is polite towards the native people living there. It does not matter how fluent you sound. The idea is to show more respect and not make you look rude when you only try to communicate natives in your native language. Like in the text, Martin describes British as rude people who do not bother even learn words like ’hello’, ’thank you’ or ’please’ in the native language. It is because English is the ’international language’ and the British people know that. It is convinient enough for them to assume everybody can speak English in the world.

Personally I believe that the more languages you can speak the more richer person you are. As I mentioned before I can speak only Estonian and English. Thanks to university I am able to learn French in my university’s program. So hopefully I adapt this language as well. On summer time I wanted even to start learing Spanish on my own put due the fact that I had really busy summer I found no time to learn it. Maybe next year I can make room for Spanish.

Language barriers

The article describes English speaking countrie’s citizens as really convenient people who do not bother learning any foreign languages, especially the youth, because the English language is known as the ’international communication language’. I believe that if Estonian language should be somehow the ’international communication language’ then our youth also would not be interested in learning foreign languages, because it would be convenient for us to speak our native language all over the globe if it would be possible. People are convenient and I think that this is the case for every nationality if their language would be the ’international communication language’.

The article also mentions that the British government has plans to make foreign language obligatory for all schoolchildren at the age of five. I belive that the five year olds are too young to start studying foreign language, even the basics. I can see why the British government wants to obligate it, because of the unpopularity of foreign languages chosen by the pupils of 14 to 16-year olds. But to obligate it for 5 year olds might even backfire, because to put them studying foreign language might be too hard for them, so they loose intrests about foreign languages even sooner. Especially when their governemnt makes them learn Mandarin which is way harder than any European language. The article says that the Mandarin language has become very popular among British pupils because of the sudden increase of China’s economy. So maybe in the bright future the British governemnt wants to ogligate Mandarin laguange for 5 year olds. Now that could be drastic.

I am with British governemnt to obligate foreign languages in young students program’s but not at the age of five.