April 29th: What makes the world go round?

Sorry guys, but for this one, you're going to have to dig out the inner language lover in you. Some of you might have to dig a little deeper than others, but trust me, you've all got one languishing somewhere.

Which is in no way like somebody telling me that I have a maths lover hovering in the deepest depths of my subconscious. Because I don't. Never have, never will. But there is no way that it's possible not to adore language, not when you think about it. There is no way you can't find it amazing. Go, now, stop reading this and go and stand in front of the mirror and fix your eyes upon your lips and say something. Watch your lips. Feel your tongue. See and hear and feel how you speak, how you make sounds, how you form language. This is how we, as human beings and as any other animal, communicate. This is what makes the world go round.

My mum always tells me that maths is what makes the world go round. Apparently maths is the most important thing in the world. But how can that be possible? Imagine a world without letters. A world without sound. Because English isn't just about comprehension and Shakespeare - oh hell no. For me, English is about language. Not just English, but any and all languages. I love the sound of it, the physical biology of it, the look of it; I love the art and the science of linguistics.

So imagine it: this hideous imaginary world. Imagine a silent life; no conversation, no music, no laughter. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Blogger. No Tumblr or Flickr or YouTube. No internet. No communication. No friendship, no family, no love.

And for those of you who are maths lovers: no numbers, because you can't have numbers without the words to describe them. The number 48, for example, is the number forty-eight. We have words for numbers but we don't have numbers for words. Money has words on it. 'Money' is a word. Money makes the world go round?

Think of it this way. When you go abroad to a foreign country, you find the currency hard to understand. Unless you're particularly familiar with it, you can't translate it into the amount an item would cost you back home. But you spend it anyway, and it's almost like it's not real money - you've got some fake cash burning a hole in your pocket and it doesn't matter what you spend it on because it's not going to make much of a difference to your funds. But when you get to the till with your carefully selected purchases and realize you can't so much as say hello or thank you to the person behind it... well, that's when it starts to get a little bit awkward. Even when you know what the correct word is, do you say it? Some of you will, I know, but most of you won't. I don't. It's hard to speak words of a foreign language to a native speaker, but when you do and they understand - that's one of the best feelings out there.

The phrase 'my favourite language is...' is not one you hear a lot. Does it sound nerdy? Probably. Oh well. I don't care. A lot of people don't often give this subject much thought, but those people who say 'Oh, everyone speaks English anyway, I don't need to learn another language' piss me off no end. For one thing, not everybody speaks English and secondly, why on Earth would you not want to acquire at least a slight interest in a second language? Let's face it: you do. You want to know more about the world and its languages. When they mention the odd 'bonjour' in TV shows, you know what it means. You've listened to the occasional song in a foreign language. You've done French or German or Spanish at school (and obviously other languages if you're not English, but I'm just writing about what I know here). We all have a basic understanding of the world's most well known languages (except Mandarin, because, well, it looks bloody difficult. Probably a brilliant language though) and because of that, we lose our spark at language learning.

Speaking from my own experience, I dropped German after two years and did five years of French instead, leaving school at the end of it with, yes, a GCSE in it, but also having lost all interest and charm in the language and now, less than two years later, I can barely string a sentence together. I gave up on German because the teacher and I had a hate-hate relationship, but I made the wrong decision. Now, when my brother asks me for help with his French homework, words come to me first in Danish, then in German and lastly in the language they were supposed to come in first. I've never formally studied Danish and I dropped German five years ago - surely there's something wrong with that?

I came out of French thinking I was crap at languages. Now I realize I was just crap at that one. What do you think would happen if we exposed children at a young age to more than just French or German or Spanish? What if we gave the underappreciated languages of the world their chance to shine? Danish, for example. Or Romanian. Greek. Icelandic. Dutch. Norwegian. Or... I don't know, the click languages of African tribes. Why do we have to stick to the ones that are widely spoken? What if we let children choose their own language, the one they find an affinity with - would we end up with a society of extremely linguistically adept children or simply a society of confused ones? Either way, it has to be better than forcing kids to attend lessons in languages they despise. That's not going to help anyone.

Not that I'm saying language lessons in schools are a bad idea - not by a long stretch. Some people are lucky enough to find an affinity with a language they can study alongside the maths and sciences of this world. All I'm saying is that we should take into account the languages we've been neglecting for so long. And who knows; maybe it would create a generation of children with better grammatical abilities... after all, having an interest in a foreign language greatly increases your interest in your own.

Molly x