[Neuromancer]

I agree that one should learn the "official" language of the country he/she is planning to live in. For their own sake, if not for anything else. It is rather awkward not to be able to buy a loaf of bread without fifteen minutes of hand-sign communication and always pulling out big banknotes because you don't have a clue what the shopkeeper is talking about. This example is trivial, but it covers day-to-day problems one maybe doesnt experience at their workplace - in my case, at least. I would deff. want to learn enough for that day-to-day bussiness as soon as possible.
As for the one year limit - it depends. What kind of language will one have to learn ? If native language is of roman variety, then moving from Italy - France - Spain , f.e. , wouldn't present such a problem. Or from Czeczh republic to Russia, etc. They will have much worse if there is nothing of their previous knowledge to rely upon - or find similarities that would make it easier to learn new things atop of it. Esp. people that weren't in any kind of school/course/training for a long time, lost their flexibility and working habits. When I was living in Prague, I could do very well with serbian language only - for starters. People did understand me, I could *nearly* [img]smile.gif[/img] understand them, but there was enough similarities to alter words/speech patterns accordingly with time. Now, Turkey was really something else. There I really had to learn things from scratch (with fairy tales & childrens books). *And* those people do talk a lot and quick [img]smile.gif[/img] .
As for my native language - I take pity at anyone who will have to learn it. Like it's not enough to have dual stashed in-between singular and plural & a die-or-kill grammar, but there's lots of words litterally unpronouncable if you don't learn to twist your tongue in knots from na early age on. Like : krt, vrt, brskalnik, brkljalnik, etc... (yes, none or few wovels [img]smile.gif[/img] )
About secondary language - Here it is (as it should be) implemented in all school system & from an early age as possible. We have kindergartens where kids "learn" english or german language from ages of four or five. And continue with a different difficulty level through school. Not that it only broadens views ( sometimes even a superb translation can't capture the real meaning - poetry even more so) , but it also expands oppurtunities in life in general. For a country as small as mine, it has become a *need*.
I know that I learned the lot of them from this or other "need". English - a must in my line of work . German - hey, the really good movies way back then were only on German TV [img]smile.gif[/img] . Serbo-Croatian - being a part of Yugoslavia 'till 1991 where it was unofficially-official language (and all the good comic books publishers were located in Serbia [img]smile.gif[/img] ). Turkish & Czeczh - for buying groceries, lol [img]smile.gif[/img] .

Neuro