Raisha Nur Anggraini

The Advantages of Speaking More Than One Language

Language is very important in our life. Usually, we speak with one language and use it everyday to let people know what we think and feel. It will be easier for us to communicate to each other who speak the same language with us. However, if we talk to a person who does not speak our language, it will be hard for us to communicate with that person and we will not understand him/her at all. That is why our ability in language becomes very important nowadays. It is better for us if we have ability to speak more than on language. It will be useful in many occasions and our knowledge will increase also. Here I will mention three advantages of speaking more than one language.

The first advantage is that we will have a great opportunity for college and career. For students who want to study abroad or enroll for a scholarship, they will be asked for their language ability. Mostly, they will be asked not only English ability but also ability in other foreign languages. When we fill in the registration form, there is always an option whether we are able to speak second language beside our own language and English. It will become a consideration for the students to be accepted in the university or obtain the scholarship. Our skill in language will also be needed when we want to apply for a job. As we know that some jobs demand the applicants to have an ability to speak more than one language; for example, a tour guide and a news reader. A tour guide will always meet different tourists from different country everyday. Although the tour guide mostly communicate to the tourists using English, but I’m sure that the tourists will not understand the tour guide at all. Another example is a news reader, especially who read the news with foreign language. As we can see in Indonesia, there is a new channel which usually brings the news in Chinese language. It is impossible if the news reader cannot speak nor has ability in Chinese but he/she read the news in Chinese. That is why both tour guide and news reader must have ability to speak certain foreign language, but there are still many jobs which need a person who has ability more than one language.

Another advantage is it will be useful if we want to travel abroad. You will be easily spoken to the people if you go to some public places such as airport, hotel, restaurant, or post office. There are also some rules and procedures which should be obeyed in those places mentioned above. Although some places already written the signs and rules in English for tourist to understand, sometimes there are some mistakes when the rules and signs written in English. That is why we need language understanding so that we can follow the rules and procedures. We will not find a serious problem also if we want to ask for help because the society or the people will be very glad to help us. We will get not only an ease of communication but also a great experience. It will be much interesting and the society will be more respect to us if we able to speak to them with their language. As we know that not all of them could understand English very well, so it is better for them if we could talk with the same language.

The last is we will also get more knowledge about cultural. Culture will give an influence to the way people speak their language; for example, Germany and Austrian have a different dialect although both of those countries speak German. I have an experience with the people from those countries; the Germany said that Austrian has an old style of German. Austrian gives some emphasizing when they pronounce some words which is differently pronounced by the Germany. Another cultural knowledge that we will get is about cultural understanding. It will help us to understand our language by making comparison between our language with other languages; for instance, Indonesian and Dutch. If we compare those languages, we will know that some words in Indonesia are adapted from Dutch. As an example, the word “sepur” in Indonesia came from the word “spoor” in Dutch. Both of those words has the same meaning which means “train” in English, but Indonesian people have their own way to pronounce the word although it has same sound. That differentiation could possibly happen because the Netherlanders ever colonized Indonesia so that it gave an influence to Indonesian language. It is just a simple example; you still can find many other languages which have the same case between Indonesian and Dutch.

From the examples which I already mentioned above, we can conclude that speaking more than language not only gives some benefits but it also makes us feel challenged and interested to learn some languages. It will be very helpful for us, too. Indeed, our ability in speaking more than one language will be needed for the present and the future.

Raisha Nur Anggraini

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