It is not supposed to be easy. It was not easy in Kindergarten and it will not be any easier in high school, but learning a second language is almost as essential as one's native language. My experience with learning German through high school and now into college has taught me that it essential to understanding how other people communicate and where their culture differs from mine. As we move toward an ever-connected world, becoming proficient in another language will create more international cooperation through three ways. Multi-lingual employees help promote positive international business relations, a second language allows people to understand a culture different than their own, and a second language allows people to connect with others they may have nothing in common with.
Workers who are bilingual are valuable to companies that are looking to expand abroad. While much conversation today in the media is about keeping American companies in America, I think it should be about attracting other companies to bring their business and jobs to America. Regardless of political affiliation, bringing in more jobs sounds better than having to fight tooth and nail to save the jobs we have. If the next generation of American workers has multiple languages, then I see no reason why our international friends would not want to bring their business to a nation of culturally aware workers.
Through my experience learning German, I understand what stigmas people may have about American culture and what stereotypes I had about German culture before learning about it. There are obviously far more than two cultures in the world and I have only scratched the surface of my second one, but now if I see a custom I am not familiar with, I am not taken back by it. A bilingual society would eliminate many of the stereotypes that plague our world today. I am definitely not fluent in German, so I can not say I am able to walk in the shoes of a German and see life from their perspective and understand how their culture functions. However, I do have a taste of it, and I know it is different than my own. One case against learning a second language is that one can just plug a phrase into a generic internet translator and see what it spits out, but what are we missing here? Yes, people speak with their words, but they also speak with their body language and their eyes. The meaning of a statement can be much more complex and individual than google translate has to offer. With two languages, people would feel much more safe because others do not seem so different after all. We all share family stories, grieve, and yearn to be connected to one another.
A second language has allowed me to meet people and go places I could not imagine with just English. This is not a knock on English, and I am sure students abroad who learn English have the same experiences with their second language. My second language allowed me to travel to Germany for two weeks in the summer of 2014. Those two weeks changed my perspective on what I wanted to with my career, but it opened my eyes to another culture. My German vocabulary was not sizeable at the time and could still use work, but people communicate with body language and looking each other in the eye. The language is important, but in the end, it is just a tool to become connected. That is what we need today. Face-to-face communication over a language both parties will solve more disputes than any treaty or sanctions imposed on a nation.
