30 March 2013

love the foreign language: part 1, the foundation



There is something so mysterious and interesting about learning a foreign language. And keep in mind it’s only foreign to me because I don’t know it, but to the native speaker it’s perfectly natural, normal and possibly mundane. It is their form of communication.

Early in my life I was interested in learning another language. Many of my friend’s parents spoke Spanish. They listened to music and there was some Spanish-language TV but very little. I wanted to know what was going on so I could have fun and talk about it too.

I also watched a lot of PBS, which showed many BBC programs. I noticed that Europeans seemed to speak more than one language. When I saw how close all the countries were on the map, I realized why. So here I am from the US where we think everyone should speak English, but I want to communicate. So I decided to learn more languages.

Communication is a beautiful dance of ideas, sounds, tones and passions that help us convey everything from simple instructions to complex themes. I’ve only recently realized my obsession with communication and how to most effectively use it. But it was a recent conversation took me back to why the ability to communicate in more than one language so fascinates me.

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