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I think that if you learn a foreign language, you’ll not only improve your financial bottom line, but it can also enrich your personal life. Here’s a couple of reasons to think about foreign languages.
1. Improve your employment income potential
2. Understand international arts, music, and culture
3. Enjoy traveling
4. Become a true global citizen
5. Meet new people
Here’s a wonderful video from Steve Kaufman aka. The Linguist. I enjoy his posts and presentations.
<[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZNYyR7-jUM]
Amazing things can be found at YouTube. He also has a program to help you learn languages.
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I agree! Also, knowing another language makes you so much more employable. If your company has offices around the world, and you are fluent in another language, you could open the door to a whole new world of opportunities that aren’t available to just anyone.
lol, I should learn to edit my posts before I push submit.
It was supposed to read:
I agree with it improving your employment income potential - it also makes you so much more employable. blah blah blah…
Depending on which of those reasons is most important, consider learning Esperanto.
Esperanto is so much easier to learn than any national language, you’re more likely to succeed, and you’re much more likely to succeed fully. Esperanto puts you on an equal footing–neither of you is speaking your first language. That can make also international contacts more comfortable.
If reasons 3, 4, and 5 are the big ones, then Esperanto is a great choice. Instead of just putting you in touch with people in one or a few foreign countries, it puts you in touch with (a few) people in many different countries. Most important, they’re people who are self-selected as being interested in connecting with foreigners.
Esperanto doesn’t get much respect from potential employers, so it probably doesn’t help much as far as reason 1 goes. It’s something of a toss-up as far as reason 2 goes. There is a lively international culture in Esperanto–literature, music of all kinds, books, magazines, theater–but it’s small. If your goal was to gain access to some particular body of foreign literature Esperanto probably doesn’t give you much benefit over English–you have to access it in translation anyway.