Some Imperfections of John McWhorter’s TED Talk

I am sure that John McWhorter is a super fan of learning language by watching his TED talk. He illustrated why we should learn foreign languages at the age that almost everyone uses same language and instant translation gets better every year by providing four main reasons. Some reasons are too far-fetched to support the his opinion.

McWhorter believed people need to learn the language of a certain culture if people want to imbibe a new culture more deeply. Language is the precondition for participating in a foreign culture. Moreover, as McWhorter mentioned, learning foreign language is healthy. As recorded, bilingualism is a good way to avoid dementia. From my perspective, the third reason given by McWhorter is the most far-fetched reason. He thought languages are funny and interesting and tried to use some examples to show how interesting languages are. Also, like he mentioned, learning language becomes easier and more convenient because of the development of technology.

However, in my opinion, I don’t really agree with him. Among his four reasons, only the second reason which learning language can help avoid dementia is able to convince me. I don’t think language is the ticket to learn a foreign culture. Interests dominate what I want to learn and people also can learn a foreign culture deeply because of the developed network. And when people know and like a foreign culture enough, they may want to learn the corresponding language. Like I said, McWhorter is a super fan of learning language. He thought learning foreign languages is interesting so that it can be a reason that can promote people learn languages. But many people, like me, who think doing other things is more interesting than learning languages may use their time to do something except learning languages. Undeniably, learning languages truly becomes easier nowadays. But this reason may fit the topic comparing learning languages before and now instead of why we should learn foreign languages.