ONE LANGUAGE OR SEVERAL LANGUAGES?

Our training project involves approaching several languages. But why not limit yourself to English?

English is today’s lingua franca: the language internationally used to communicate between people of different nationalities. Knowing English today is therefore necessary if not indispensable, for study, for work, for tourism. In all likelihood, it will remain the lingua franca of our times for a long time to come, even if other languages are becoming established in some parts of the world, each however limited to a certain geographical or cultural area.

But is knowing English enough?

Let us leave aside the benefits for the brain: for thinking and for memory that comes from knowing several languages. Let us focus instead on the more practical and immediately spendable aspects of everyday life: the ability to live and enjoy to the full, the “not missing out” on every experience we will have, thanks to knowing more languages.

Learning or even just approaching new languages gives you a stimulus, leads you to be curious, leads you to be more willing to learn, leads you to be autonomous.

And wouldn’t we all like our children to become autonomous?

We often talk about open-mindedness, which is the desire to know and which differentiates human beings from animals. It is an approach that allows you to understand more quickly what is going on around you, to realise that it is not just you and your way of seeing things; a ‘fresher’ approach that leads you to be less afraid of things you do not know.

Knowing how to read, for example, in 5 languages, allows you to access much more information, in much less time and with much more autonomy, allows you to compare the same news in the media of different countries, allows you to move around the world with confidence.

But wouldn’t it be quicker to use an app that acts as a translator? Well, to be true our technology is far from the universal translator seen in Star Trek, at least the consumer technology that we can all use. But, in any case, immediacy and spontaneity always make and will always make the difference, both in the business world, where a slight change of meaning due to the translating software can ruin the best business deal, and in interpersonal relationships, where it is wonderful to be able to converse without mediation, least of all technological mediation, and where even a few mistakes in pronunciation or in the use of some idiomatic expression can certainly bring a smile together.