THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE

(Adinda Fitria – 12 Science)

Learning many languages is very invaluable for us. But is it important to learn many languages? and how language is important in our life?

Human beings are naturally social animals. Our lives depend on other humans. So we need the ability to communicate with other human. Otherwise, we won’t survive. Our ancestors used body language to communicate with others many years ago. As the time goes, our ancestors has developed a way to communicate with others, by speaking. But their language might not be as complicated as we are nowadays. So, we know that language is basically a system of communication for human which help us to communicate with others and express our feelings using sounds and written symbols.

Nowadays, there are a lot of languages in this world, maybe more than 5000 languages around the world. There are even more languages in one country. For example, Indonesia. Our national language is Bahasa Indonesia. But in every island, every cities, every tribes, they have their own language. Central java speaks javanese, west java speaks sundanese, and so on. of course we don’t have to learn all of them because we have Bahasa Indonesia that unites us all. But is it enough  for Indonesian to be able to speak only one language? in that case, we know that Bahasa Indonesia is not commonly used by people all around the world. Do we need to learn more than one language?

“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein said. Why would he said that? well, there are a lot of benefits in learning different language other than your first language. Especially languages that are commonly used all over the world, like English, Mandarin, and German. As a worker, it is beneficial to be able to speak many languages. It can create job opportunities. You can have more opportunities to find better job if you can speak many languages. You can work in an international company that are willing to pay you more than a local company would. Another thing that you can get from learning many languages is you can learn the culture of the country. You can feel a sense of connection with the heritage and the history of the country. You can also interact with the people and make new friends. And not just that, it's been known that even if you are able to speak a second language, it can delay the onset of Alzheimer's Disease. One study has shown that being able to speak not only one language may delay the beginning of dementia for a good 5 years. So it is proven that learning more than just one language has a lot of benefits, not only for economical matters, but also for health.

In my opinion, learning many languages is really important and I’m so grateful that my school provide me to learn two more languages other than my first language. And I think it is important for students in Indonesia to also learn more languages other than our first language because it will improve the standard of education in Indonesia. It will also increase the quality of students here in Indonesia.