Acquiring Foreign Languages for Various Purposes

A few people believe that acquisition of another country's language is only for the purpose of either travel or work.  On the contrary,  some argue that there are more reasons people learn foreign languages. Personally, I think the latter is right for some reasons. 

Scores of people attend tutorials by experts, read a lot of books, and surf the Internet for relevant online courses that could help them gain a mastery of the foreign languages. Often, the reason for this is the pursuit of employment  opportunities or a travel visa to such foreign country. Many Nigerians, for instance, have been constantly applying for visa and jobs in a number of countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. This is owing to the deplorable state of the country, especially in terms of the economic recession and austerity. Hence, there is a need for them to improve their English vocabulary and grammatical accuracy, and build up their accent. 

However, the list is not exhaustive, in that the two aforementioned_ travel and work  _ are not the only motive for people's acquisition of foreign languages. Undoubtedly, language has served as a tool which breaches the issue of language barrier across continents. When people learn others' languages, there is a chance for peace to rein amongst all. Another reason apart from 'fostering of peace' could also be 'appreciating others' cultures'. Language forms the basic groundwork of culture, hence, people who learn other languages tend to understand them better, as well as their values, norms and heritage. Moreover, people acquire other languages as an aspect of their study. People who run academic programs such as Linguistics, French, Hispanic English or American English would find themselves learning one or more languages. Thus, they become bilinguists or multilinguists. Furthermore, individuals could decide to acquire a language because of their passion for it. For example, I have been taking French classes lately because of my enthusiasm towards the language, and so have some other Nigerians. In addition, people could acquire foreign languages for business transactions, most especially in recent decades,  when globalisation has radically transformed businesses, and entrepreneurs have to work within a global market in order to expand their clientele and maximise productivity. 

From my perspective,  I would opine that the latter is absolutely right, in that apart from work or travel, there are multitudes of reasons people learn a particular foreign language.

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