Right, so I readily admit I may be biased here - but I agree and think that learning another language is part of a true commitment towards peace and global understanding.

I remember how my understanding of different cultures was heightened when learning different languages and finding, for instance that the French had no word for "wife"; in Zulu there is no word for "Thank You"; that in Mandarin personal pronouns are not gender specific and in PNG pigin no word for "love".

Negotiating ones way through communications with these and a myriad of other differences gives a much broader perspective to cultural differences than any dry factoids could ever do.

What few people appreciate that having English as your first language can in fact be a disadvantage. For most of the world learning English as a second language tends to be the norm. This means that whilst the rest of the world is travelling into our world we are isolated from the realities of the various other worlds. Innocentas abroad we have very little real understanding of the way people in other cultures think. Does this matter? Perhaps a couple of examples: Standing on the railway platform somewhere in Vietnam you are either able to understand the announcements in Vietnamese or you are not. If you can understand them you will hear that the vendors are reminded to overcharge the tourists for the country needs the foreign currency. The assumption of the announcer is that the tourists will not understand Vietnamese so they can talk about them with impunity. (Mind you I have no problems with being charged extra; we should be prepared to share some of our affluence.)
Example 2. A colleague went to Israel to negotiate a deal. Whilst he was waiting the people with whom he was negotiating were talking hebrew amongst themselves. Unbeknownst to them he could speak Hebrew fluently. He kept quiet. When the meeting commenced he said, in Hebrew, "Gentlemen, whilst waiting you discussed what your best deal ought to be. So lets cut to the chase; I accept your best offer."
The rest of the world tends to assume that English speakers will not understand them and hence can use language as a weapon to achieve their own ends.
Lets hope that the outcome of this month's feature is a fresh commitment to end Australia's linguistic isolation.

Learning other languages does heighten awareness of another culture in a different way than through travel.

I also learnt a second language at school which also happened to be the language of my overseas relations and it gave me a greater insight into their culture (the childhood culture of my father). Later I dabbled with French and Arabic and a bit of Latin. The greatest discovery was the interconnectedness of language, the derivation of many English words and a sense of historical context.

If I had more time and more discipline I would love to learn Latin more thoroughly and even Gaelic (the language of my mother's ancestors). The sad fact is some languages, like Gaelic are at risk of dying out, many older Nordic langauges have all but all but disappeared.

What an irony.

In this country of immigrants we are flooded by various languages as people enter the nation, yet invariably at the back end these languages are lost through the non-teaching of the original language by the parents to their offspring.

Yet, in a mono-cultural country like Greece (emigation to Greece only occured in the last 15 years), most people under 30 speak Greek and English (not to mention other languages).

Sorry Claudia, I doubt this country will change this sorry fact. We will become as increasingly ignorant of the rest of the world as the USA.

Savvas

I would say that studying other languages has other benefits too.

Because each and every language also crafts or moulds our sense of self, how we perceive the "world out there", and how we relate to other humans and the world altogether.

Different language groups effectively live in different "worlds".

We never ever see the world as it is but only ever see our brain and nertvous-system created projections.

Two early pioneers in this understanding were Benjamin Whorf the author of Language Thought & Reality.

1. http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11072/Whorf

And Alfred Korzybski the author of General Semantics.

1. http://www.generalsemantics.org

As for the study of Latin. Let the dead bury the dead. Quite useless in my opinion.

Here is another couple of perspectives.

Learning another language increases the intellect. More notably however the history of education in the West had as a cornerstone the learning of Latin. The object wasn't to become fluent to understand Romans or Italians. It was simply recognised learning latin improved the intellect. Whether learning other languages does the same ... well I don't really know but my experience suggest learning a Latin influenced European language might well do so. I've noted, among my son's cohort of recent Engineering graduates (Something in massive short supply) a second language and predominantely Latin seems to be common. Mathematics (Applied) graduates seems to have a similar language influence. There is no former Asian language student or Asians among either of his cohorts.

Another viewpoint has been touched upon but not explored in any depth. Learning Latin is predominantly achieved by studying the classics. In simple terms these constitute many of the foundations of our society, and lead to a greater respect and understanding of ourselves. They also generate an interest in following further reading in the areas of the development of our Western culture. That is probably more important to us in dealing with aspects of other cultures especially those that are fundamentally at odds with our own.

Notable in this is the clash of cultures. Our Western culture because of our history is open, accepting and extroverted in nature. It's very essence is democratic. While we adopted the historically closed and introverted semitic Mid Eastern religions our practise has tended to be limited to the more modern and open New Testament and especially the 'Sermon on the Mount' by Christ. Hence our Christianity. We've also abandoned the dominace of religion on our political life .. by choice.

Our history as our language is based in a Greek and Hebrew compromise.