Our spirit cannot travel as fast as our body. That’s how someone explained jet lag to me.
I just got back from San Francisco and my spirit is all over the place. Although I have been desperately trying to tie it to the cup of Ghirardelli coffee on my desk, my mind keeps replaying many of the conversations I heard last week in California.
One bit keeps coming back again and again.
Sir Ken Robinson, the innovation expert, was talking at IABC’s conference about the ability of human beings to learn foreign languages.
His take is pretty much that if you don’t learn a foreign language at an early age, your chance to be able to do it in your 20s is slim.
What a sad and elitist view…
And this coming from an otherwise inspiring speaker.
If Sir Ken is right, this would mean that only those children who have the fortune to travel or live abroad or grow up in a multicultural household, will be able to speak other languages and function in a multicultural setting.
Luckily, this is not how the world of tomorrow is likely to turn out.
China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world. I believe not all the Chinese who are studying English today have learned it from their parents or by travelling abroad.
The ability to develop a passion for communicating with other cultures and learning foreign languages is not a prerogative of the more fortunate and has never been.
Take the example of Billy Wilder who grew up in Austria-Hungary speaking German, had to escape first to France and then to America in the 1930s, learned French and English in his 20s and went on to write the screenplay of what is considered an icon of American film making.
Thank God for “Some Like It Hot”!
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