Is There Any Point In Learning Another Language?

Unfortunately if you like in the United Kingdom then part of your school life will be spent learning another language. In fact when I was at school I had to learn not one, but two languages simultaneously, yet 10 years on (or in fact about 6 months after leaving school) then I can barely remember one word of them and have never used what I learnt in any way. So is there any point to learning a language?

I don’t think you can jump into learning a language half heartedly, like just buying a learn French DVD and spending an hour going over some basic phrases, you just won’t get chance to use them, even on holiday. Or you could end up in a pickle even if you do manage to find a useful phrase you can learn like ‘Which way is the beach?’ as they will assume as you are speaking their language you can understand them, and then start speaking to you in their own language.

If you want to learn to speak the language, either because you go on holiday there every year or you want to move there etc, then you really need to do a course of lessons in your own time and learn it for a year or so. That will give you a good understanding of the basic phrases, the most popular words, and allow you to maybe hold a basic conversation, it will take years for you to get fluent. If you don’t want to get that serious though as you only holiday in the country every so often, then I think you are better off getting a phrasebook. That way you have nothing to remember and can show the phrase to the person even if you can’t pronounce it.