TED TALK: John McWhorter: 4 reasons to learn a new language
John presents to us English as the language that is “on its way to becoming the world's universal language, for better or for worse.” English is the language of the Internet, of finance, of air traffic control, of popular music, of diplomacy… It is everywhere! But, do we really know what does it means? Is the English language more important than the rest? Do we need a global language?
Look at this: Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people than English, but there are more Chinese people learning English than English speakers learning Chinese. Does that make sense? Why English and not another? Why not Chinese Mandarin?
Look to another thing: it's been predicted that at the end of the century almost all of the languages that exist now (about 6,000) will no longer be spoken. There will only be some hundreds left. Why are we doing that?
So here is were John asked for himself: Why should we learn foreign languages, other than if English happens to be foreign to one? Why bother to learn another one when it's getting to the point where almost everybody in the world will be able to communicate in one? And I add another question: Why will our students worry about learning different languages if they see that there is only the global concern for the English language? We’re killing languages!
Because of that, John explains and names to us four reasons for which he believes we must learn new languages:
A language channels your thoughts. The vocabulary and the grammar of different languages give everybody a different kind of acid trip. That is a marvellously enticing idea, but it's kind of fraught.
If you want to become part of a culture, you have to control to some degree the language that the culture happens to be conducted in. Each culture uses and has a different code.
If you speak two languages, dementia is less likely to set in, and you will be probably a better multi-tasker. Bilingualism is healthy. (This reason is really attractive for an educational context).
Languages can provide us with fun. For example, John gives us the example of the different word order that languages have. “Learning how to speak with different word order is like driving on the different side of a street if you go to certain country.”
We don’t have to forget that nowadays, learning a new language is easier than in the past. Internet can help us; social networks are a good example of it. We can watch series and films in other languages sitting in our sofa. Is there anything more comfortable than that?
John finishes his speech with a really good advice: “So I highly recommend that you teach yourself languages other than the one that I'm speaking (English), because there's never been a better time to do it. It's an awful lot of fun. It won't change your mind, but it will most certainly blow your mind.”
Remember this! Let’s learn new languages! Let’s have fun!
