When a child comes to life he has chances to master a universe of cultures and languages. However, it's not up to the kid. It will be bound with the place it was born. One place to live - one language to speak. That's not a rule, of course, but that's usual.

'Well, I'm fine with my native language. What are those others for?' That's quite common point of view nowadays. It's pity but there are millions of people who know just one language, their native one.

It's like a spot you are stuck to. Imagine yourself standing on a spot on an e.g. strawberries field. Your legs are tied with a chain, so you can't move. You have eaten all strawberries around you. Thus, you need to move to another spot. But you can't because you are bounded. That's a model of a life of a person who is stuck to his native language only. There are lots of opportunities and information in the world. But as soon as his legs are bound, he can't reach it.

What he should do is to brake the chain so that he moves to another spot. And that spot opens new opportunities to move to other directions that were closed earlier.

A real life example of such spot is Internet. I bet you know that there are parts of World Wide Web hat use languages other than English. Russian, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German and other local zones contain enormous amount of info that you can't find in English zone (at least for free). You think you can use online translators? Don't rely on them because there is no translator that can translate languages of different language families with at least affordable quality. It's possible to English-German translation, but English-Russian results are useless junk. A bottom line is the more languages you know, the deeper you can surf the Internet, the more useful info you can get.

Another spot is a brain spot. It's obvious that the more languages you speak, the more effective your intelligence is. So why shouldn't one learn at least one additional language to train the brain? The more easily you can switch between different languages, the more speedy your mind is. Isn't it worth studying?

Cultural spot. Do you think Germany is just sausages and cabbage, Russia is just vodka and polar bears walking around the Moscow, and China is just small people that break bricks with their heads, so you are definitely under the rule of stereotypes. Learning foreign culture and foreign language you can break through these prejudices and open new perfect worlds for yourself. A good reason to know at least several foreign phrases, isn't it?

So opportunity of getting recently unavailable information, training the intelligence, learning foreign culture isn't even the half list of opportunities foreign languages can give you. You just start learning and you'll feel the changes that will change your life forever.

Al Polonski is an administrator and chief-editor of a free online Russian language tutor, Learn Russian Easily, based on the method of extensive reading. He can be reached through the website http://learnrussian.hut1.ru.

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