Language and foreign culture

[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

[Vaskez]

I think anyone moving to a foreign country should learn the country's official language, that's it. If they're too lazy to learn they shouldn't have moved there in the first place. Ideally, they should learn as much of the language as they can BEFORE they move there. Not learning it when they ARE there is completely incomprehensible in my view, I mean if I moved somewhere I COULDN'T HELP having some of the language stick to me, even if I tried to not learn it!