Well at first, before I started college, language was already something important to me, but I learned much more of its importance when I started this cluster at Laguardia Community college. Language was important to me because I was born in the USA, an English speaking country and I grew up in Mauritius island, a french and creole speaking island. So I was a fluent English speaker, but I had to learn two more languages, and always juggle among the three languages during my whole life. But it really helps me now, as being bilingual is really a big thing nowadays. I also had to learn the language in order to communicate with the other members of my family because they only knew creole. The most interesting part is that while learning all these languages, I started to develop a certain fondness for languages. That's why today I want to become a translator at the United Nations. So I can say that language has a very positive effect on my life.
To be honest, before I didn't really know the importance of language. To my mind, it was just simple words, sentences, books, that we write and read, or speak. But then during my first semester at LAGCC I discovered that language is huge tool in life. It helps you break barriers, know more people and cultures of different countries. At first, learning new languages sounded really tough but as I was still young, I learned it really fast. I can still picture myself sitting in class and not understanding anything of what the teacher and other students were saying. Today it benefits me a lot.
During this semester, my view and opinions about “what is language” certainly changed, or broadened if I want to be more precise. I have learned that babies have several stages while learning how to talk, and it also depends on the atmosphere in which he is that will determine what language the baby will learn to speak, and also the accent he or she will have ( TED video watched in class) , That there are 6012 languages in the world (George Yule, The study of Language) and that a lot of languages/ dialects are being killed, and that linguists are doing huge researches to know the maximum amount of words in order to save these languages (Movie: The linguists). And also that forming sentences is not only the simple task of putting words together, its a more complex task which consists of putting together several components of language such as NP and VP. ( George Yule, The Study Of language). So I must say that the knowledge that I gained from this class helped me to know how important, how broad and how interesting languages can be. It is also a really vital thing in life, as a baby will learn how to speak depending on the environment he is in, and there are also several steps he will go through before being able to speak properly. I had no idea about all that! So now I am taking this whole subject of language a bit more seriously.
Finally, I can say that I understand a bit better how difficult it is for other people learning new languages, and I also admire people who can speak several languages ( even though I speak three ) because I know some people who speak more than 3 languages. I would really like to join the group of linguists, learn lots of languages and also do research on almost instinct languages and try to save them! I would also encourage kids in countries like Bolivia, Syria etc to keep on speaking their native languages, so that they do not become instinct in the future. It is important for their culture.
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