Ask HN: Should foreign language education include warnings about their use?

3 points·amichail··7 comments

In particular, some countries use their language as an obstacle to discourage foreigners.

Why isn't this fact part of foreign language education in schools?

If I'm taking a course to learn a language, we can dispense with wasting my time discussing why I'm taking the course. After all, 99% of the time the course was mandated in order to graduate.

Are you referring to countries with languages which are relatively difficult to learn for many foreigners? Or countries which aren't particularly friendly to foreign tourists? Or what?

Aren’t most languages used as a way to protect their cultures by discouraging foreigners?

Viewed in this way, one can understand why not being fluent in a language is often met with rudeness.

Languages are primarily used to communicate, not discourage communication. They are also not usually unique to a single country.

People will find all sorts of reasons to create in and out groups, but I can’t imagine a country setting a policy of limiting learning of their official language. To protect their culture they’d want it learned so it doesn’t get supplanted by another external language.

If protecting culture wasn't a major issue, then we would have ended up with one universal language by now.

That’s a pretty big leap in logic.

Languages evolve and are in constant flux as words come and go and their meanings change.

It’s the same reason that we haven’t all evolved to a single universal organism.

You can have a universal language that involves over time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com