In husband Pieter's magazine: 'The Rotarian' from February 2015, there was a very interesting article about Facts of the Matter - Second Languages.
TWENTY-SIX PERCENT of U.S. adults and 25% of British adults speak a 2nd language. In the European Union, 63 percent of adults know at least one foreign language. Ninety-eight percent of people in Luxembourg speak at least one foreign language, and 84 percent speaks three languages. In Latvia, the percentage of people who speak at least one foreign language is 95; the Netherlands, 94; Malta, 93; Lithuania and Slovenia, 92; and Sweden, 91.
GLOBALLY, the most widely spoken language is Mandarin Chinese, which has nearly two billion native speakers, and the most popular second language is English, which has 335 million native speakers. More than one billion people are studying English today; it is the most studied foreign language in China. In the United States, Spanish is the most studied; Chinese is seventh.
THE GOVERNMENT of India recognizes Hindi and English as official national languages, but most Indians speak a third language as well: that of their region. All three are usually taught at school.
BILINGUAL SPEAKERS outdo monolinguists at problem solving, planning, decision making, multitasking, remembering directions, and other mentally demanding tasks. They're also better at staying focused and shifting their attention when needed. Speaking two languages may help delay Alzheimer's symptoms.
YOUNG CHILDREN are assumed to be the best language learners: They have twice as many brain synapses as adults and haven't yet burdened their minds with such things as remembering social security numbers or learning to drive a car. But researchers say their real edge is a heightened ability to mimic pronunciation: Studies show that, with ample practice and instruction, adults learn new languages almost as well as kids do, except for pronunciation. Also, adult learners have to master much more vocabulary than kids to seem proficient.
THE EASIEST language for native English speakers to master include Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian; each requires 23-24 weeks or about 600 class hours, to become proficient. The hardest languages for native English speaking are Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese, which require 88 weeks, or 2,200 class hours.
THE TOP FIVE languages for business are English, Mandarin, French, Arabic and Spanish. The British Council says English is the lingua franca of publishing, airports, air traffic control, international conferences, science and technology, diplomacy, sports, pop music, and advertising. Eighty percent of the world's electronically stored information is in English. The market for digital English-language learning products is forecast to reach US $ 3.1 billion by 2018.
RESEARCHERS AT THE Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated the return on investment for English speakers of learning a second language: It boosts earnings only about 2 per cent. For Spanish, the return is 1.5 per cent; French 2.7 per cent; and German 4 per cent. Similar studies in Turkey, Russia and Israel, however, found a 10 to 20 per cent return on investment for people learning English as a second language. — KATE NOLAN
