“Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going”
Rita Mae Brown
This is one of the most beautiful descriptions of language for me. There is nothing more impressive about other cultures than language. How many times have we heard expressions like – I love France/Italian/Spanish – I have to visit these countries, or – I moved France because I adore there language and wanted to learn more about culture. Sometimes it can be also negative, for instance – I don’t like French people they have really complicated language, and so on. These opinions are evidence of the fact that we really connect the language with culture and we define people somehow according to their native language.
Armenians also used to say that “people live as many lives as many languages they know”. Of course learning different languages is very useful but sometimes it can be very complicated when you start to compare similarities. My native language is Armenian which is totally different from the rest of the languages that I know, starting from alphabet till the way of pronouncing words and letters. Our second language is Russian which has its unique alphabet and accent as well. So when we start to learn English or German as third language we need to be totally ready to go through difficulties of switching from one alphabet to another and don’t mix the words and grammar when you translate a sentence in your mind. Usually it’s very hard but I have to say that when you manage to solve these issues and deal with it naturally, you can easily learn new languages because you are trained in all ways.
Nowadays it is very trendy to know more than two languages but we have to accept that there is one language that connects us together and that is English. I think it is very important to have one common language for all nations and I wish we had an official rule for everyone to learn English as a second language at school and know that this gone lead us wherever we go and whatever we do. After that of course you can learn as many languages as you want.
English played a big role in my life. Thanks to this language that I have survived out of Armenia and never had big issues connected with language. I have experienced a lots of funny situations in Germany and Poland when I tried to explain or ask something in their languages but never felt isolated or stranger as in the end we found a way to understand each other.
I know that lots of people afraid to go out of their native countries because they find it really hard to live somewhere without knowing the language but there is a good news that even if you learn basic level of English you can live almost everywhere, unless you profession doesn’t require special language skills. Most of the things that are important part of our daily life are automatized and we have less human interactions so it is mostly about getting familiar to new technologies and adapt to the place where we live.
To conclude my article I would say – never afraid to go out and discover the world because of languages. This language differences that sometimes seem scary from outside can be most funny and memorable part of your life and when you make mistakes remember how “cute” can these mistakes sound for us when someone tries to learn or speak in our native language. Have fun learning new language, culture and people.