Some off-the-beaten-track importances and benefits of learning that language you've always wanted.
You can find reasons all over the Internet and in libraries and schools, urging you to learn this or that second language... 'See Paris!' or 'Visit Exotic Beijing!' or 'Ride the Orient Express to Vladivostok'. Well, yes, that's ONE reason to learn some other languages, but for all the wonderful scenery, exciting journeys', rollicking raconteurs and tired fellow-travelers, those are still rather impersonal reasons to invest your time, energy and -dare we say it?- SOUL in learning another language.
This writer's journey with languages started in a none-too-promising way, nearly failing high-school French both semesters! And less than a year later, studying Korean for the US Army Security Agency in the hopes of NOT going to Viet Nam.
But I did go to Korea, and in Korea the language that had simply been grudgingly studied before to keep from failing (and being sent to Viet Nam) suddenly had more faces on it than our beloved teachers, there in Monterey, California. Korean was suddenly a way to actually ENGAGE students, to INTERACT with shopkeepers, nuns, principals and ROK(Republic of Korea) Marines guarding the DMZ.
Korean was, almost overnight from the moment I first arrived in Korea, suddenly up close and personal. It was a way to listen to the hearts and minds of people who had survived a bitter war raging in their land only 13 years earlier, a way to share the hopes and democratic dreams of people who'd lost family and friends in a battle to protect themselves and other Koreans from socialist oppression. Korean was suddenly a second language into a front-line, first-person account of hardship, terror, courage and victory!
This can be the importance of learning a second language, not to fault-find, criticize, demean, belittle or scoff, but to share ideals, ways, principles, means, hopes and efforts on the path to our better tomorrow, today!
Your second language MUST come up, off the paper of your student book and workbook, off the screen of your VDU for playing CDs, must expand to be more than just your teacher and a few fellow students... your second language must come alive, in the faces and voices of native speakers of your wonderful second language!
Then, perhaps, you will experience the joy and bounty of finding an angel who speaks not only your second language, but speaks to your heart, too. You may encounter a special someone who sings to your being, softly, both in spoken words and in subtle silence. Perhaps, even, you may experience the bounty of making a life with that angel, conceiving children, birthing them, working to feed them and raising them IN YOUR SECOND LANGUAGE and in YOUR mother tongue!
THIS is the (personal) importance of second language learning: it is NOT 'just a foreign language', it is MY language, MY imperfect stumble-tongue, where I'm always at a disadvantage in a dispute and always 'one of them', but gifted with the ability to draw a circle ever larger, that takes us all into our shared humanity!
Maybe this can be the importance of learning a second language, we lose ourselves when we strive to find others with our love and knowledge, and in this loss we find our higher selves!