Originally Posted by
Wade Lippman
I would be shocked if 5% of Americans agreed with that.
As a practical matter, unless you spend an awful lot of time in a particular foreign country, there is little point to knowing a foreign language.
Not everything is about practical matters. The world is becoming extremely small, wouldn't you like to be able to converse with others that come from other parts of the world, or at least try. I've spent most of my life now in other places than where I was born. Without exception the memories I retain the most have to do with the people I have met. If you get around enough geography tends to blur and look the same everywhere, one of the more common statements either my wife or myself make when we end up somewhere is "it looks like (insert some place you've been before here) but people are all different and all have a different story… Some are absolutely gripping, others maybe not so, but still interesting because they all different… And to at least be able to attempt to converse with someone in their tongue, to me, always puts a smile on their face and gives me an ever lasting memory. One of the first encounters I had was with a couple from Fiji, Setay and Lysa, some 30 years ago. I don't have any recollection of their house or the town, Lautoka in Fiji, but I can remember implicitly sitting in their living room, wearing a sulu for the first time, and laughing and talking the night away. Or standing at the side of the house while Setay prepared the bbq and we talked, or at least we tried to… Or more recently sitting and trying to converse with Luza and Dannie, she being Hungarian and he Serbian/Hungarian in their apartment in Budapest last week. Hungarian is no easy feat but we all enjoyed the fun of it. The Budapest, more specifically the castle hill sky line, will fade in my memory but just hanging out with them will not, and maybe the friendship will continue...
And if that weren't enough, learning a language will, in your later years help to keep your mind sharp...
Sent from the bathtub on my Samsung Galaxy(C)S5 with waterproof Lifeproof Case(C), and spell check turned off!