Are There Any Advantages In Knowing Another Language?

If you live in the UK then part of the curriculum is learning a foreign language. In actual fact when I was at school then I had to learn two different languages at the same time (French and Spanish) for 2 whole years. Yet within a year of stopping the lessons then I could barely remember a word of them, and I have never had to use them either. So is there any point to learning a language?

I don’t think you can jump into learning a language half heartedly, like just buying a learn French DVD and spending an hour going over some basic phrases, you just won’t get chance to use them, even on holiday. Or you could end up in a pickle even if you do manage to find a useful phrase you can learn like ‘Which way is the beach?’ as they will assume as you are speaking their language you can understand them, and then start speaking to you in their own language.

If you really want to be able to speak and understand the language, either because you want to buy a holiday home there or you just visit there a lot, then what you really need to do is pay for some lessons for a year or so to really give you a good grasp of it. That should help you to master a lot of the basic phrases you might need, and words, plus you should be able to hold a basic conversation with someone, it will take a lot of work to become fluent though. If you don’t need to know that much of the language then a phrasebook is the best investment you can make. Then you don’t have to worry about forgetting phrases, and you can even show the book to people who you ask for things.