Among the great number of languages that exist on our planet today there are some which stand out. Scientists distinguish 13 great languages. These are the languages that are spoken by no less than 50 per cent of people on the Earth. They are Chinese, English, Russian, Spanish, Hindi and Urdu, Indonesian, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Japanese, German, French, Italian.
A person who knows these languages can speak to and understand almost 2 thousand million people and doesn't suffer from the language barrier. To state the significance of this or that language one must take into consideration not only its prevalence but the quantity of printed production. For instance, the largest number of books is published in Russian including technical literature. The greatest number of press production is published in English. As far as books are concerned, the largest number of them is translated from English, Russian, French and German accordingly.
Today there are a lot of people in Europe and Asia who know several languages. A person who knows several languages is called a polyglot. They are not few. The name of Henrich Schlimann, a famous German archaeologist who discovered Troy is known all over the world. It took him two years to learn the first two foreign languages. Later on it took him several weeks to master another foreign language. Among polyglots there are champions. Thus, Cardinal Mezzophanti who lived in the middle of the last century knew 100 languages. Professor Hesstermann from Germany knew 132 languages. The more languages man knows the easier is the way he masters a new one. As polyglots say it is difficult to begin. But when you start learning a third language «everything is going on swimmingly». It is within everyone's power to know, read and speak a foreign language. But one should regard learning a foreign language as a very important and serious task. The knowledge of other languages is very useful, especially if you have to work abroad or if you must read foreign literature in the original. If you know the language of a foreign country, you can talk to its people and understand what they are speaking about without anybody's help. The knowledge of foreign languages also helps young people of different countries to develop friendship.
Many people are learning English, because in the recent years it has become not only an international language, it is now a number one language in the world. Besides, English is becoming a lingua franca. It is used a great deal by businessmen from different countries, which don't have a common language, in order to do business. It is already a lingua franca at international conferences. Besides, every person who travels in Europe, Asia or Africa, even in the South America gets around by using English. So English is becoming more and more the “language for practical use”.
English has become the world's most important language in politics, science, trade and cultural relations, aviation, international sport and pop music. It is nowadays second only to Chinese. It is the official language in 44 countries: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand and others. It is used as one of the official languages in Canada, the Irish Republic. It is also spoken as a second language by many people in India, Pakistan and numerous countries in Africa, to say nothing of people all over the world who know English as a foreign language. From the British Isles English spread all over the world. 75 per cent of the world's mail is in English, 60 per cent of the world's radio stations broadcast in English and more than a half of the world's periodicals are printed in English.
It is known that different languages can come into fashion or go out of it. It is generally considered that the most fashionable language in the world nowadays is English. Spanish also becomes very popular. It is learnt nowadays more often than earlier. Oriental languages are also widespread today. Learning a foreign language has a practical value but the choice of a foreign language sometimes depends on a fashion (this fashion turns out to be the demands of life and society). Thus, the knowledge of a foreign language today is a life necessity.
Learning Languages
Language is the means of communication. The most common way of expressing an idea for people is to say it out loud. Language enables people to understand each other. At the same moment language can be a major barrier to understanding because there are thousands of different languages on our planet. From the earliest time, with the development of trade and exchange of ideas and techniques people saw the necessity of learning foreign languages. Egyptian pharaohs had scribes and interpreters at their disposal.
A language that is used as a means of communication by people of different nations is called international. International language helps people of different nations to understand each other. Different epochs had different international languages. As a rule the existence of the language as an international one is determined by political, cultural and economic development of the country which language is spoken as international.
International language is not the phenomenon of our age only. The first international language appeared on the Earth with the birth of civilization. The Biblical myth about the mixture of languages during the construction of the Babylon Tower, when the people lost their universal language and thus could not communicate, was a reflection of how dearly the people of ancient periods held the gift of speech and understanding. Ever since those times the foreign languages and people who knew them played a significant part in the development of international relations and trade of different countries.
The first international language that we know about was the language of the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were a nation of industrious merchants and brave seafarers who settled originally on the territory of the Lebanon. Their trading ships traveled across the Mediterranean, they often appeared in Egypt, Italy, and Greece, they voyaged across the Indian and Atlantic oceans. They were the first to round the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost point of Africa. The Phoenicians were the first to create the alphabet, that later was borrowed by the Greeks. It is not surprising in this context that Phoenician was the international language for many centuries.
The Greek language replaced Phoenician as a means of international communication. After the military expeditions of Alexander of Macedonia the Greek language won recognition all over Asia. The Greek culture and language were imposed in all Hellenistic centres and states, including Egypt, Syria and Persia. The Romans went a little further. The Roman legionary marched to the ends of the earth carrying Latin, their language, with the help of their orators and philosophers to Europe, Asia, and Africa. From that time on the role of languages in the historical development of humanity has increased. Latin survived the collapse of the Roman Empire. Until the establishment of national states, new national languages that originated from Latin (French, Spanish, and Italian) were still emerging. In such circumstances although the native speakers of Latin were gone, it was a universal language of Mediaeval Europe for fifteen centuries. In Europe Latin was used for the serious business of government, diplomacy, and philosophy. A person who did not know Latin was unable to become educated because Latin was also the language of the Universities. In the Middle Ages students and professors traveled from one country to another, from one University to another, and nowhere they had any difficulties in understanding their colleagues and friends as all lectures were delivered in Latin.
Then with the emergence of national states and development of national languages the need to learn foreign languages became especially acute. Besides classical languages modern languages were introduced in the list of school studies. Educated people of Europe were to know several modern languages. For example, Rubens, the greatest painter of the Western civilization who lived in Flanders in the 17-th century, spoke and wrote six modern languages.