Do you speak any foreign language as natives do?

I read about a Chinese joke a long time ago. I am sharing it with you here.

One day, a hen that is looking around for food with her chicken babies. An eagle hovering high in the sky sees them and dives down abruptly in order to catch them. On seeing this, the chickens quickly hide themselves behind their mother.

The eagle rolled down on the ground and die instead of catching them. Why? Let’s flash back. Just before the fatal talons touch them, the hen spurts out, “Sister Eagle, you must have been in such a hurry when you left home that you left your zipper open.” The eagle was just too embarrassed and tried to cover the zipper.

That’s not the end of the story. The kids are very proud of her mother who says to them, “That’s why it is important to learn a foreign language.”

Yes, that’s just a joke intended to bring people laughter. However, the knowledge of a language can really be a solution to some emergency. I will not go any further on this here. You know what I mean if you imagine the situation where you are sitting in train compartment with another person from another country without conversation. Silence sometimes kills.

In this series of articles I will leave away common second language benefits like the following.

A second language will open you mind and eyes for a new world, enable you to be promoted in job or find new opportunities for your personal development or you business. These advantages of learning a new language are indeed true. But they are already publicly known and people don’t like to be preached. You must have been trying to avoid them.

Tags: Chinese language, ForeignLanguage, language joke, Second language

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 9:59 am and is filed under Second Language Benefits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.