HotShot said:
YOu will be surprised. More and more people from countries where english is not a main language are learning it. If you go to Russia, India, KAzakhstan, LAos, Mali, Kenya - there are people who know english - at least a little bit. Obviously you didnt get my point, take those countries which I mentioned before - there would be hardly anyone speaking Japanese in those countries.
So we can live and make a living in these countries on the basis of that little bit? Also, this little bit is often restrained to the tourist districts in many countries since
this generation are learning english but the previous generation has not had that benefit.
Dont know what you are talking about here -language quite simply is a communications tool - you dont need to write essay or a thesis in a different language.
You're right, you don't know what I'm talking about at all. You can't completely experience the essence of another culture without engaging in its language as many concepts are destroyed in the process of translation.
LOL, Firstly its is very very very difficult to be proficient in more than one language. If your native language is say Japanese and you live/studied in Japan and you moved to Australia for work - you may still know english, but you would be much better at speaking Japanese than english. There are very few people, very few - that are actually really fluent in multiple language - and these guys for the UN as translators.
Of course you'll be more proficient in something you have more experience in, it'd be foolish to even contend that point. However fluency in other languages is not as difficult as you make out - there are plenty of lecturers at university from say russia or germany who are completely fluent in english. Don't forget the many children of asiatic and middle eastern immigrants who are completely bilingual. There are also plenty of people from my classes doing International Studies who manage to be sufficiently proficient in their second language so as to study diverse things such as literature or physics overseas. None of these work for the UN.
You will be surprised how much is communicated just by the movement of lips, facial expressions and hand gestures. As they say about 60% of communication has to do with body.
So I can tell that Mary had an abortion in 1993 and there is now scarring along the ovaries and it is my job to fix that? Or that Josh divorced Amy and now she wants child support, his children are 3, 12 and 22 and he committed adultery? All by looking at the lips and the face and hand gestures? I suppose you could get the adultery one if you tried ...
Would you work as an accountant or whatever if you knew you couldnt do your job properly? If you knew you are up to it then why not? Over time your communication skills improve.
You wouldn't. That is the entire point. Your qualifications and skills mean nothing if you cannot communicate. i.e You can't do your job. And over time they would improve, they'd improve far more quickly if you had previous experience.
Wrong, as babies we observed things, we observed changes, we observed what your parents - WE OBSERVED noises, actions. This is how we learnt through observation - nobody taught us anything as such. Our basic communication came through observation and using this form of communication we were able to be taught.
That isn't the point I made at all.
As babies we had to yell and scream at our parents so that they knew we wanted
something. They then had to guess what we wanted by where we were looking, where we were waving your hands or how we smelled. They then used their skills to obtain things
for us like asking the cashier for food, toiletries, medications and so on. We won't have the benefit of someone acting as a constant interface with the outside world if we go to work somewhere else.