Found in Translation: The Value of Learning Languages @USC
Talk ~literally anything but English~ to me ;)
By: Lindsey Hamilton ‘22
Fact #1:Only about 20% of the world’s population speaks English .
Fact #2: That means if you only speak English, you can’t speak to 80% of the people on Earth.
Fact #3: It’s a little tricky to treat these people as equals and learn from them if we can’t even talk to them.
Fact #4: That’s an issue.
It’s easy to get caught up in our English-speaking bubble and think that’s all there is. Easier still when you’re not even aware of a problem. But (despite popular belief) ignoring a problem doesn’t make it any less real. By limiting our abilities to only converse with a fraction of people, we are severely handicapping our abilities to do great things in the world. Because “great things” shouldn’t just affect English speakers — they should have an impact on everyone.
Granted we have some obstacles in the way: immersion in an English-speaking world, education’s lack of emphasis on language learning, the false security of Google Translate…
Here I translated a few English phases to random languages and translated the results back to English to check for accuracy. Needless to say the results were…interesting.
Small words with big meanings are sometimes lost…but in case you were wondering, yes, I did in fact write all of the 1000+ posts on Trojans360 (not).
A slightly more violent spin on our beloved motto. I don’t know about you, but if someone enthusiastically yelled “combat!” at me, I would run.
Take it for what you will. At least the tone of this one translates…we feel you, Google.
But we here at USC have one HUGE advantage…we’re at USC!
The languages offered here include:
Arabic
Chinese
Korean
Japanese
English
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Persian
Italian
Latin
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
That’s fifteen languages! (That’s if you’re counting English, which I think we absolutely should given the amount of international students here — English ain’t easy.)
While some majors require three semesters of language classes, I urge people to think of language learning as not a chore, but as an awesome opportunity.
Learning up a language not only allows you to communicate with more people, but it has been show to boost cognitive function. Working towards long term goals and learning a new skill such as a language is a great confidence and self esteem boost as well.
You don’t have to go all-in to tune up your language skills.
There are several two unit classes that those of you with tighter schedules can squeeze in (my thoughts and prayers go out to Viterbi and pre-med students).
Two Unit Language Classes Include:
EALC-101x: Conversational Chinese and Intercultural Communication
EALC-102: Language, Art and Culture: Calligraphy
EALC-118: Essential Communications in Korean I
FREN-235x: Intermediate Conversational French (pre-req. FREN-220)
SPAN-280x: Conversational Spanish (pre-req. SPAN-220)
So! You’ve learned a language. Guess what that means?
Learned Spanish? You can now talk to the 400 million+ native speakers and millions of second-language speakers.
Chinese? Add another 1.2 billion people you can now talk to.
Another language? You’ve just unlocked a unique insight into that culture that no reading or translations could ever match.
Imagine living your whole living only talking to your direct family. No matter how wonderful they may be, imagine then stepping outside for the first time and hearing new voices of all sorts. Different voices with different stories and thoughts surround you, exposing you to ways of thinking previously untraversed.
About 360 million people speak English as their first language out of 7.7 BILLION people on earth.
If our hypothetical family consisted of three other members, stepping outside would put you in a chattering crowd of 64 people with entirely new perspectives and ideas to share. Just imagine what you could learn.
Fact #5: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” -Nelson Mandela
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