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Why
so many languages?
LEX
Language Project is known for its slogan, "Anyone can speak 7 languages."
The seven languages
in our basic CD set are:
English, French,
German,
Japanese,
Korean, Mandarin
Chinese, and
Spanish.
Since 1992, we have
added the following twelve, for a total of 19 languages:
Arabic,
Cantonese,
Hindi,
Indonesian,
Italian,
Malaysian, Portuguese, Russian,
Swedish, Taiwanese,
Thai and Turkish.
At first, people
think that it is daunting to expose oneself to so many languages. But
in examining the rest of the world, there are more multilingual nations
like Kenya, than monlingual countries like Japan. For example, in Luxembourg
everyone speaks Luxembourgish, German, French and English. In India, there
are between 100 and 200 languages in use. Many Indians hear five to ten
languages and can speak and understand them all.
Anyone who lives in a multilingual environment, regardless of intelligence,
will naturally learn to understand and speak languages that are consistently
spoken around them. So, if you were born in Luxembourg you would be speaking
four languages.
In this context, "multilingual country" means a country where
three or more languages are spoken. In contrast, in bilingual countries,
where only two languages are spoken, an entirely different phenomena can
be noted. In Belgium, two languages are spoken (Flemish
and Walloon), making it a bilingual nation. However, few individuals
speak both languages and language wars occur frequently. The same situation
exists in Canada. English and French are both official languages, but
the two are used in separate areas which are at odds as well. In Vancouver,
on the west coast, no one uses French. In Quebec, on the east coast, the
use of English is shunned.
Does
that mean that when three or more languages exist in the same environment
everyone can speak them? While two languages cause trouble and people
only learn one?
It would seem that when there are two languages, people are made aware
of the opposing entities "self" and "different self."
Once the person has decided which group of the two he belongs to, the
other language fades away.
The more languages a person knows, the easier it is for that person to
learn a new one when faced with a new language environment.
If human beings had a "container" for language, you would think
that in the case of a person who spoke 10 languages, the container would
be too full to hold any more. And the empty "container" of those
who spoke only one language, able to hold more. The opposite seems to
be true. Those who speak many languages have an easier time gaining others.
Whereas those who speak only one have a difficult time. The Japanese fit
this case in their quest to master English.
This
goes to prove that the more languages there are in the environment, the
more flexible people are in taking in new ones.
When discussing language acquistion, the first thing that comes to mind
is school and "study." But LEX is not a place to study languages.
We create an environment where many languages can be heard and immerse
ourselves in it. The more languages we know, the more chances we have
to meet new people.
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