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Learning languages is of special importance today. Some people learn languages because they need them in their work, others in order to travel abroad for the third studying languages is a hobby.
Every year thousands of people go to different countries as tourists or to work. They can not go without knowing the language of the country they are going to. Besides scientists, diplomats are, as a rule, polyglots, because they know even several languages. The more languages you know the bigger amount of information you can obtain, the more educated and intelligent you are.
I would like to say that individual bilingualism is universal. But social multilingualism is a very wide- spread phenomenon indeed. Multilingual nations exist in all parts of the world. For example, in Belgium- Dutch and French, in Switzeland- German, French, Italian.
There are several kinds of second languages. One kind is the language of the other speaker. But sometimes speakers of different languages do not use the language of the other speaker. They use the other language which is called lingua franca.
Like it or not, English is the lingua franca of Europe. No language- neither French in the Middle Ages, nor Latin before it- has ever been taught so widely in Europe. In Shakespeare s time it was a province language of a secondary importance with only 5 millions native speakers. Today it is the most important language in politics, science, trade and culture. It is the world language, the most popular second language in China and Japan and spoken by 760 - 800 million people around the world. Some 1.2 billion people live in countries where English is the official language.
This international language cannot accurately be called "English" at all. It ought, rather, to be called world English, international English or Anglo American. The language is no longer the intellectual property of Britain.
One of its great advantages as a world language is that there is no academy to decide what is and what is not "good English". English, like, the Common Law, is what it has become a less formal and a more flexible instrument then either French or German. And it seen in reach The language has become a sign of a cosmopolitan, outward-looking attitude to life, not of the insularity with which Britain is all too often associated.
To my mind, knowing one or more foreign languages makes it possible to understand other people. It also gives you a chance to become acquainted with new literature and culture. And it is not enough just to learn the language. One has to learn the culture underlying the language as a language is a manifestation of the culture. And of course, we must not forget that language is an important key for understanding other cultures.
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