1、語言是打開文化的鑰匙

“To go into a culture and to only ever process people through that kind of skrim curtain is to never truly get the culture.

去了解一種文化，如果只是透過表面那一層薄紗，我們是無法真正理解的。

one reason to learn them is because they are tickets to being able to participate in the culture of the people who speak them, just by virtue of the fact that it is their code. So that's one reason.

學外語的一個理由就是——它是我們理解和融入一種文化的一張門票，語言就是打開文化的鑰匙。所以這是其中一個原因。”

2、雙語教學有益健康

“Second reason: it's been shown that if you speak two languages, dementia is less likely to set in, and that you are probably a better multitasker.

第二個原因：有證據顯示如果你說兩種語言，更不容易患失智症。

And these are factors that set in early, and sothat ought to give you some sense of when to give junior or juniorette lessons in another language. Bilingualism is healthy.

並且你可能更容易處理同時做多件事情。這些都是目前的研究結論，能夠給你一些參考，幫你決定什麼時候讓孩子們接觸新的語言。雙語教學有益健康。”

3、語言本身就是有趣的

“Third reason: languages are just an awful lot of fun. Much more fun than we're often told.

第三點：語言本身非常有趣。比人們一般認為的要有意思的多。

So for example, Arabic:"kataba," he wrote, "yaktubu," he writes, she writes. "Uktub," write, in the imperative.

例如在阿拉伯語中“karaba”表示：“他寫了”，“yaktubu”表示“他（她）寫”。“Uktub”，是祈使句中“寫”的意思。

What do those things have incommon? All those things have in common the consonants sitting in the middle like pillars. They stay still, and the vowels dance around the consonants. Who wouldn't want to roll that around in their mouths?

這些單詞有什麼共同點呢？這些單詞的共同點就是由輔音構成主題，保持不變，元音圍繞著輔音變化。誰不想多讀幾遍呢？

You can get that from Hebrew, you can get that from Ethiopia's main language, Amharic. That's fun.

你可以從希伯來語看到這個樣子，你也可以從埃塞俄比亞的主要語言阿姆哈拉語中看到。非常有趣。”

4、這是一個適合自學語言的時代

“And more to the point, we live in an era when it's never been easier to teach yourself another language.

我們現在的時代，要自學一門語言比過去容易的多。

It used to be that you had to go to a classroom, and there would be some diligent teacher --some genius teacher in there -- but that person was only in there at certain times and you had to go then, and then was not most times. You had to go to class.

過去你要學外語，就需要去上課。或許會遇到勤勉的老師，以及一些睿智的老師，但是那個人只在特定的時間出現，你需要去按時上課，除此之外就沒有機會了。你只能去課堂。

If you didn't have that, you had something called a record. I cut my teeth on those. There was only so much data on a record, or a cassette, or even that antique object known as a CD. Other than that you had books that didn't work, that's just the way it was.

如果你沒法聽課，你能拿到錄音帶。我小時候就是這麼學的。錄音帶只有這麼點信息，或者在磁帶上，或者是那個叫 CD 的老古董上。除了那些，還有用處不大的書，過去就是這樣。”

看完 John McWhorter 的演講，大空翼想說：

這的確是一個學習英語極為方便的時代，方便到你根本不用花時間整理，只需關注翼啟學公眾號，就可以挖掘到無限寶藏。