The Huffington Post – Sam Cohen
“A cousin of mine went for an internship program in South Africa early last year. When she came back a couple months back, she narrated to me her various adventures that included everything from hiking to bungee jumping. She stayed with a friend in a tiny rural community for the duration of her internship. Naturally, I expected that she should have picked up a bit of the language. But when I brought it up she gave me this answer: “I enjoyed my stay in South Africa and will love to revisit it someday. But more than half the time I could not understand what the natives were talking about“. Many of us can relate to her story; we complain about how difficult it is to pick up a foreign language, both in written form and conversationally. But as businesses continue to cast their net across the globe – thanks to the global reach of the internet – and immigration persists, cultures will continue to meet and overlap and consequently so will languages.”(more)