With living in a society where English is the primary language, all other languages become instantly devalued and underappreciated. Knowing another language is like sharing a secret: it’s exhilarating. I've grown up hearing and speaking Bosnian and Russian at home, but 18 years later, it still is awe-striking that I'm able to comprehend these languages that sound like gibberish. While traveling, it's kind of like that cool trick you can keep in your back pocket.
I remember once when I was in Bosnia, I passed another group of kids my age whose interest was immediately piqued. My family in Bosnia lives in a small village, so when someone new shows up, it's easily picked up on. They began talking about me, believing I was just another English-speaking American. It's been upward of six years since that moment, but I still treasure the looks of absolute surprise when I walked up to them and answered their questions and comments in Bosnian before continuing on to wherever I was headed with my cousin.
However, knowing another language is also mundane and ignominious at times. Of course, I value knowing languages immensely—knowing Bosnian, English, French and bits of Russian is a gift from my parents that they perhaps don’t realize how much I appreciate. But speaking another language is paradoxical: extremely intimate between the participating parties, but also extremely isolating. It cuts out a large chunk of people who could've interacted with you, not to mention garners strange looks from the people around.
Speaking a foreign language always feels familiar, congenial, and safe—it’s something about how the fast pace of words has the power to bring together a select few. And in my life, that select few is usually limited to my family. Growing up, my English struggled and my Bosnian soared. However, as my vocabulary increased, my English set me apart from my parents, who are still learning to speak English. It's not that we became distant, but when our strongest languages to speak are each a different one, we are forced to have fragmented conversations and expect that we understand each other.
When I was little, our languages set my family apart from everyone else, bringing us five closer together. But now we each excel at a different language, making it more difficult to interact. That right there is a small-scale example of the ever-globalizing society that we live in. Although English is a language many societies make mandatory for their students to learn, the death of other languages is far from near. In order to bring together as many people as possible, to interact with as many people as possible, it is integral to value other languages and take the time to learn even just a few phrases: it's a key to another world.
