Reasons why we should not learn foreign languages. Finally and at long last I have come to my senses. After years expounding and arguing about the benefits of learning foreign languages I have come to realize the truth and seen the light: Learning languages is unproductive and a veritable waste of time. I intone the mea culpa and offer my apologies. And now I will write the rationale behind my about-face on the matter. Probably 95 percent of the world’s 7500 million people speak only one language. They seem to get by being mono-linguists and are happy as larks speaking only Swahili, Bambara, Tagalog, Italian, Bubi and other languages. Many of these one-language humans are successful at their callings, lead happy lives, have families, travel, eat at their hearts’ content, all oblivious to the fact that others speak differently.
So what? Why we should not learn foreign languages. Those who claim that language-learning is important and beneficial never agree on which tongue should be studied. Politicians without foreign languages. Why You Shouldn’t Learn a Language the Way Children Do. Now entering the fourth week of my year without English, I’ve seen a lot of different advice for learning languages.
Some people believe in huge amounts of listening and reading. Others say take classes or dive into conversations immediately. I won’t comment on those strategies (yet), but I will point out one common suggestion: you should learn a second language the way you learned your first language as a child. On the surface this seems plausible. After all, you learned to speak without needing to rehearse grammatical rules or drill vocabulary flashcards. You can also speak without an accent—an extremely difficult goal for most adult language learners. It would seem like modelling the language learning habits of children isn’t a bad idea. The answer lies with how the brain changes as we get older and why learning languages as an adult is very different than as a child. Accent and Arrival Date Living in Canada, I’ve had the opportunity to make friends from all over the world. 6 Reasons why you Shouldn't Learn a New Language. 5. You now have to remember two, if not more ways to say the same thing.
Probably the most frusterating moment in language learning, is when you're talking in your new language, then you don't know how to say something, but what's worse is you turn to your personal translator and you can't tell them what you want to say in English. How can you ask someone to help you remember how to say something if you CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO SAY?
This is especially annoying when you have a captive audience. I remember trying to explain to a few Spanish Speakers how welfare works, when it became obvious to me that I could no longer remember how it worked myself. Worse than that, there's a difference between every day conversation and specific vocabulary. 4. This is something akin to burnout after studying for a test. You will notice this if you ever go to any event where you will hear lectures or discourses in your new language. 3.
I think that TV and Radio personalities do this too. Sdarticle. Vickpitor3. Culture and Language. Culture and Language The power of language to reflect culture and influence thinking was first proposed by an American linguist and anthropologist, Edward Sapir (1884–1939), and his student, Benjamin Whorf (1897–1941). The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis stated that the way we think and view the world is determined by our language (Anderson & Lightfoot, 2002; Crystal, 1987; Hayes, Ornstein, & Gage, 1987).
Instances of cultural language differences are evidenced in that some languages have specific words for concepts whereas other languages use several words to represent a specific concept. For example, the Arabic language includes many specific words for designating a certain type of horse or camel (Crystal, 1987). To make such distinctions in English, where specific words do not exist, adjectives would be used preceding the concept label, such as quarter horse or dray horse. Cultural differences have also been noted in the ways in which language is used pragmatically. Defense Language Institute.
Why school should speak your language. People whose mother tongue is different from their country’s official language can find this a barrier to thriving in society. But does that mean children should be educated only in the official language? It’s a complex question. As we found in the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report: Reaching the Marginalized, educating children in their mother tongues can be a powerful way to prevent them from becoming marginalized. International Mother Language Day on February 21 is a good opportunity to reflect on the connections between education and the world’s linguistic richness. Nearly 7,000 languages are spoken around the world, but many education systems do not reflect this diversity.
About 221 million school-age children speak languages at home that are not recognized in schools. Children who study in their mother tongue usually learn better and faster than children who study in second languages. Language, culture and ethnicity are inherently interlinked. Foreignlangfrmwrk. Anaarmas.