Week 5

     Well, after far to much confusion and mistakes on my part, I've discovered the blogs, all be it five weeks to late. So, here goes nothing.

     I've often said that if there was one thing I could change about myself, it would be that I would love to know more languages. I don't know that I even mean 100% lingual acuity in a specific foreign tongue, but more the ability to get by in multiple languages. That is to say, to posses a broad based knowledge of enough varied languages to travel around the world and get by. I think, in today's world especially, multilingualism is something that can really help expand someones horizons. As a child, I idolized Indiana Jones, although not for the reasons that other kids idolized action heroes. It wasn't his suave masculinity or adventurous swashbuckling that drew me in, but, oddly enough, the worldliness and academia of the character that drew me in. Here was someone who could travel almost anywhere on earth and not only blend in but seemingly belong. He never knew a language fluently, but he taught himself enough vocabulary of enough differing languages to get across what he needed to. This to me was always very exciting, it felt like a way to live a different life through connecting with different people. It has been said, I believe by T.E. Lawrence, that when traveling, learning the language of a people opens a window to their world, and is the only true way tp experience a culture. In my experience, nothing could be more true.
    I feel that in our schools today foreign languages are introduced at far to late a point, and with far to much ambivalence. By the time foreign language enters a student's radar, they are far to preoccupied with teenage development, and are told that they must learn to enter college, but after that the knowledge slips away. I think that the first step in making our future generations more worldly is introducing foreign language studies at a younger age. As stated in our book, "maturation and myelination added to extensive social interaction make  age 2 to 6 [...] a sensitive period for language learning" (240). Every year past that age bracket that we wait, it becomes more difficult for us to learn  language.