CHILDREN growing up in a multi-culture are lucky. They grow up in an environment where other persons tend not to look like them and speak like them and they have learned to accept it. But it is so awkward if for instance a New Yorker couple with their 14-year-old daughter has left the Big Apple behind and settled in Nagono. It will surely be awkward for the poor girl who has to endure wearing those strange slut-looking short skirts to school and conversing with peers who speak halting English. But with proper orientation, one can eventually embrace the language in the new environment.

There are countless other examples that need to be told. And admiring a foreign language is not just for a child. It is also for people who are forever curious of other humans around him. This is where the science of sociology comes in. Even in this highly technological world of Internet and iPhones that we live in, sociology has never been an obscure field of study because human interaction keeps evolving. And on that parallel level is the acquisition of other languages too. For centuries, man has never appreciated communicating with other animals on the level of communicating with fellow humans. But the hang of it is that there are different languages spoken by man. Forget about the Babel explanation because there is no such thing. Human tongue has been divided not because of some divine strike but because we are born in different continents.

There are contiguous continents like Europe where even neighboring countries speak different languages. This is the result of lots of factors – the shifting of movement of nomadic civilizations of old, the conquest of far superior tribes (think of the Romans) who may have influenced or forced their language into their colonies (think of Spain or France). That is why, the Europe of today is composed of such contiguous countries as Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal who may have one thing in common – the Alps mountain range – but peopled with a diverse population as far as language is concerned.

Even in Spain, there are numerous dialects spoken – there’s Castilian, Basque, Catalan, etc. Spain’s peculiar character doesn’t end there. Even in its colonies like the Philippines, there are lots of vernaculars. There’s Chavacano, Tagalog, Cebuano and Maranao. It is within this reason that the European Union has created a mandate some decades ago mandating that each European sophomore high school student learn another continental language in one academic semester which is equivalent to six calendar months of course. That may be taxing but Western Europe is a progressive continent. And in a developed country, one needs to be competitive. One needs to know another European language so the country’s economy would not be left behind.

If Japan can do it, so can the Europeans. The Japanese have known to be nationalistic and are even harsh enemies of the West during World War II. But after the war, they have adopted the English language and have even invaded American business so to speak. That is the advantage of learning a second language. It spawns prosperity.