Importance of the language

Since the world is becoming smaller place and opportunities and unlimited around the world, most of us are lucky enough to experience as much as we want to, but there are many barriers each of us has to face while moving abroad.

We can all agree that knowing the language of the country you live in does work for your benefits for following reasons:

Being new in the city and knowing no one sounds exactly as lonely as it is. Understanding people around you and to be able to express yourself with the language is enough to find new friends.
In most of the cases, we all have to deal with paper work and all the law vocabulary is already complicated enough to make your life harder, so why would you make it more complicated by not understanding simple things?
Getting simple things done, such as buying certain amount of paper in local market or noticing that you train just changed the platform and trust me, you don’t want to miss it.
Getting a job without language skills most of the times is hard and options tend to be limited. Learning the language used in the country is absolutely essential for progressing and earning more money after immigration.

But, apparently language is more than just an asset to make your life more flexible. It is not only great way to make friends or realize yourself, but also one of the most important parts of integration.  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 said Nelson Mandela and no doubt, that integration cannot be achieved without the language.

Language is fundamental to cultural identity. This is so for people everywhere. For Bininj, their unique world is expressed in their language - Kakadu National Park, Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre, NT.
This is a perfect phrase to understand what the effect of the language is.  It is intrinsic to the expression of culture. Language has an important social function and fosters feelings of group identity and solidarity.

To think about other way around, it is impossible to integrate in a society without knowing the culture and one of the most important aspects of the culture is language itself. It reflects the values and beliefs of a culture.

So, will living in another country, in another culture be exciting without knowing the language? Definitely, yes!
But are you missing something big without even trying? Absolutely!





Sources:

 

http://ftp.iza.org/dp11485.pdf

https://bibliothek.wzb.eu/pdf/2006/iv06-akibilanz4b.pdf

https://www.alumniportal-deutschland.org/en/germany/country-people/integration-germany-foreign-country-home/

https://www.fluentu.com/blog/language-and-culture/