Do you AGREE with "4 reasons to learn a new language" ?

I found this very interesting. I want to share this with you all. As I'm a native Korean speaker, English was always my second language. However, I started thinking like why did I need to learn another language? As I look back on my life history, English was the most important part of my life. My job was related to both Korean and English. In order to communicate with others, I needed to speak English. Here is the video. Please watch it and share your opinions or thoughts :)

Lol, I love to critique these videos. Here are his reasons to learn a language:

1) I helps assimilate with a given culture

2) It increases resistance to dementia

3) It's fun

4) It’s easier to teach yourself one nowadays

1 and 2 are true beyond a doubt and also logical reasons to learn a language imo. 4 is true, but not a reason to do it; it's still very hard after all. 3 isn't true imo, or at the very least is a matter of personal opinion. I've heard people redefine "fun" to mean something more like engaging, or requires concentration or something like that, but that isn't really fun to me and it's also not a reason to learn a language. 

In addition, I found his arguments to support these reasons to sometimes be untrue and usually very strange. The way a language uses it's consonants is obviously fun? Increasing the number of vowels increases the pleasure? Not in my mind. I also found this statement which is clearly false: By the end of the century there will only be “some hundreds” of languages left. – False 

In conclusion, I'm disappointed that out of the many very solid reasons to learn a language he only chose two.

I definitely agree with you!

There are so many ways to learn other languages.

However, as you mentioned before, he only chose two of them.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!

There are no right or wrong answers regarding people's opinions and thoughts!

"Almost all of the language that exist now which is 6000 will no longer be spoken, there will only be hundreds left." This is weird. Now that culture's are at the brink of their extinction, government agencies and historians are being more active now in saving those cultures, which also includes their language. It's because now people are aware of the importance of every culture's language and practices which is a part of their identity.

Just like the indigenous tribe in Mexico where the language they spoke is spoken in the form of whistling. I believe they're called Sylbo. Most of their tribesmen are now moving to the cities and now they're losing children in the tribe. What they did was continue teaching this language to all of their tribe members, non members and have it recorded with other researchers and continue practicing them so as to preserve it in case their tribe does becomes extinct. Point is that people seem to love their culture now more than ever and will do anything to preserve them at specially their language. This is just one example. There are many more specially in South East Asia region. That's why I can't seem to understand why only hundreds will be left in the next century. Besides, the language is an identity of a certain group of people. I don't think anyone will surrender even if there's one language dominant than theirs.

He said it's also fun. I think they only fun part is where you're only about to start and all the adrenaline and excitement of you doing a new thing is there. When you're grinding to put a sentence or two correctly in the foreign language you're learning, that's where it ends. Or maybe just me, just my 2 cents anyway LOL. Still, like you, I do find that there's a need for me to learn a new language since foreign language is what's being used at work now and that's beneficial to anyone looking for one.

Really interesting video. Thanks for the share. I always though TED talks are based only on technological talks. Good to know they're also involved in language.

This was an interesting listen, for sure. It really never was easier to teach yourself a new language, and it's so much easier than it was even just 30 years ago that it's actually amazing. It's more of a "why not" than an actual reason to learn a language, though. Something being easier than before obviously isn't gonna be someone's motivation if they weren't motivated before. Immersing in a new culture also can't be completely done without learning the language, as learning the language gets you much closer to how people think and function.

In general though, I think he at least should've mentioned how there's an abundance of incredibly high-quality literature in different languages that you would never be able to read without learning a new language (and translations are rarely the same experience as reading the original script, at least in my experience), being able to talk to people who don't share a common language with you (there's bound to be a few billion of those guys) and opening a ton of new professional opportunities for yourself, from the practical viewpoint.

jpormento wrote:

Just like the indigenous tribe in Mexico where the language they spoke is spoken in the form of whistling. I believe they're called Sylbo. Most of their tribesmen are now moving to the cities and now they're losing children in the tribe.

Quick correction. Sylbo is spoke in the Canaries which are owned by Spain and no where near Mexico. Also, Sylbo is a whistled register of Spanish meaning that it is Spanish just made to fit the format of whistling.