If you are able to read this book you are already a lucky person. Why? Because you are able to speak and read English—the one language that is known and spoken by more people internationally than any other in the world. That means that just by growing up in an English-speaking country you are part of a huge group of people who can already communicate with one another. If you had grown up, say, in Finland or Mongolia or Fiji, you would be speaking a language that hardly anyone else in the world knows, or ever studies. People who live in countries like that absolutely have to study a foreign language—probably English—if they are ever going to travel or do anything outside their own small country. But you don't have to do that. You already have learned fluently what millions and millions of other people in the world have to spend hundreds—probably thousands—of hours learning. In fact, a pretty good case can be made that if you already speak English you don't need to learn a foreign language at all to function quite well in this world. But then, there are some good reasons why you don't need more than a high school education to get along in this world, either. We don't go to college just because it is essential to getting along in life. We go because there is also tremendous value in learning something more, training our minds and broadening our exposure to new things in the world. This may sound vague—and perhaps it is. But it just isn't always possible to put a clear dollar sign on everything we do. But for those of you who want some concrete reasons for going through the effort to learn a foreign language, here are some of them:
—A foreign language is a credential just as a degree in chemistry is—it's worth something on your resumé.
—Knowing another language allows you to operate in a bigger world than the one defined by your native language.
—Your foreign contacts will be favorably impressed by your seriousness of purpose in understanding their country and dealing with them.
—A foreign language opens the door to a foreign culture. It will open your eyes to the outside world.
—When you learn a foreign language, you learn a lot more about your own language.
—You'll have a lot of fun along the way. Really, you will.
In America we live in a huge country—a continent really—where we share a common language and a common culture. But we also have to live and function in a world where a lot of people do things very differently than we do. Whether or not we like all of the ways they do things, we still have to live in the same world and deal with them. That's what questions of foreign policy, for example, are all about: figuring out what people in other countries are likely to do, why, and how best to deal with them.
What does this have to do with language? Two things: If you can learn a foreign language well, you gain a great deal of access to that country. You can read its newspapers and magazines, listen to its television programs, talk to a greater variety of its people, and really understand them first hand. But more important, even if you never learn the foreign language really well, you can still learn an amazing amount just from having worked at it for a limited period. Learning a language is like getting inside somebody's mind. You start to learn a little more about how they think and express themselves.
The Japanese have made interesting comments about foreigners learning their language. Japanese are likely to be very complimentary to a foreigner who has learned some Japanese and is willing to try it out. But Japanese also say that they get a little nervous on those more unusual occasions when they meet a foreigner who speaks Japanese fluently, like a native. Why? They say they feel that the foreigner has learned too much about them, that he has gotten inside their culture and life too deeply. It's an invasion of their privacy.
Being able to understand someone who is speaking in his native language gives us the “flavor” of that person. Have you ever watched a comedian or an actor who uses some kind of regional accent to portray a personality? Like a hillbilly, or a cowboy, or a black musician, or a New England fisherman? By hearing the accent and the words and expressions that he uses, you get a strong feeling for his personality. We laugh or enjoy his performance because we feel we understand the personality or the type by hearing him speak in his “native language.”
If you can learn something about how a foreigner expresses his thoughts, you are a great deal closer to getting into that culture than you ever were before. It's almost like learning a “secret code” into another culture. After all, one's native language is one of the closest and dearest things to a person. Not for nothing do we call it “the mother tongue.”
A person's mother tongue, by the way, has a hold that is almost impossible to shake off. For instance, no matter how fluent we become in another language, we will nearly always continue to use our native language for the rest of our life in counting and doing math calculations in our head. During World War II anti-Nazi resistance forces in Europe believed the enemy was sending in spies to report on resistance activities; individuals would show up claiming to be Norwegian or Dutch when in fact they were Germans well-trained in one of those languages. The real test was to ask them to solve a math problem in long division—out loud. If a person was not a native speaker he usually had extreme difficulty in doing math out loud in a language other than his own native one. That kind of math error would often cost someone his head.
By learning a foreign language, you are in a way getting into the mind of that Frenchman, that Russian, or that Chinese. You are starting to share with him the way he “dresses” his own thoughts and expressions—in linguistic clothes very different than your own. You suddenly realize that we English-speakers have our own odd ways of saying and expressing things too. You start to learn that there is no “normal” or “right” way to say things, and that our way is no more “natural” than any other way.
This idea seems hard to accept. On our own continent we are surrounded by American English, so much so that some people even have a hard time accepting that the British speak the way they do. Mark Twain once remarked that he was sure that if you were to suddenly shake an Englishman awake at night he would forget—and talk like an ordinary American.
Knowing something about foreign languages is also an important experience in preparing you for your first trip abroad, whether you are just travelling or intend to set up a household. If you've struggled a little bit with a foreign language, you're going to be a lot more sensitive to the problems that foreigners have in speaking English to you.
Moreover, many foreigners will be grateful for any effort you make to learn their language. They know it represents hard work on your part and see it as a compliment to themselves. Even if you learn just enough of a language for basic social purposes, it will be time well invested. For a business executive it can be especially important, suggesting a more serious business interest and longer-term approach than somebody casually drifting through.
Even small gestures can have their rewards. I remember when my wife was approached by a shoe-shine boy in Istanbul the first day after we had moved to Turkey. At that stage my wife had learned enough Turkish to say “No thank you, I don't need it.” The boy was so astonished that a foreigner could respond in his own language that he reached over and kissed my wife's hand. In later years her ability to pass the time of day in Turkish earned her a warm and regular welcome and a good number of friends among the merchants in Istanbul's Covered Bazaar.
Language study also helps you learn things about your own language that you never knew before, simply because you start to make comparisons between your language and the new one. I think I learned more about English grammar from studying foreign languages than I ever did from years of English in school. I never saw the point of learning what a “direct object” or a “prepositional phrase” was, until I suddenly had to learn how to express one in a foreign language. And only then did I really start to understand what it was in English.
A last good reason to study a foreign language is that the whole process can be fun. I'm not saying that it won't be hard work and, yes, a good bit of drudgery too. But you can also have a lot of laughs along the way.
Some of the fun comes from laughing at yourself. Trying to wrap your mouth around some foreign sound or phrase is funny, although it can be humbling too. You have to shed some of your own self-importance and your worries about dignity if you really want to make progress. And in some ways you make progress without really realizing it. You begin to learn how to think in an entirely new way—and to learn that there are many different ways to think in this world other than “our way.”
Now a new dimension has been added to your life. You start being conscious of another culture which in turn enriches your own life. You start getting more and more interested in that country and its people, its food, its music and its novels and short stories. You find that a trip there takes on a whole new meaning. Every facet of life there becomes interesting to you—not just the monuments and the museums. Like that first trip to Paris after you have started to learn French:
-The cab driver takes you into town and unloads his view of life on you, suddenly emerging as a rich personality, reflecting all sorts of pithy views on life in France; things they don't tell you about in the history books.
-The ice-cream woman on the street sells you a cone of French vanilla, but in the process also corrects your French grammar, as only a Parisian would.
-You suddenly find yourself reading a political slogan scrawled on a wall. Moreover, you discover that it's a great thrill; you feel you have broken through to the new culture—if only in a small way.
After a while the language you are studying will itself take on a new personality. You will come to associate it with the whole range of experiences you have had. The mere sound of the language will bring back a series of memories and feelings. You are getting hooked by the language, and it has already become a new part of you. In short, you have discovered a new world.