I would like to talk about my personal experience. I have two young children. My daughter is quadrilingual; she speaks English, French, Polish and Spanish, and I don't need to tell her to learn a second language. We don't need to tell the young generation to learn a second language. Young people do it themselves because they are citizens of the world. Young people today know very well that they must be proficient in at least one or two languages in order to get along in the nearly borderless world we live in.
Youth who live in the high north, who are open to what is going on and who have means of communication, such as the Internet and so on, know very well that the world will open up to them if they are proficient in two or three languages, whether it be Spanish, English, French or, increasingly, Mandarin. These are increasingly useful languages. And I find it hard to see how I could try to advise young people. I can give them advice, such as that official languages are important.
Having lived in Europe for a number of years and seen that English and French are the two official languages normally spoken in all international institutions, I can see that being able to speak them is, in my opinion, a competitive edge.
This enables us not only to open up and to learn another language, but also to understand the culture. Language is what we are and is therefore also very cultural. When we are proficient in two or more languages, we can not only communicate, we are also able to better understand the culture of the other linguistic communities. So I believe that young people today are very open to learning a second language. You need only see the increasingly pronounced interest in immersion classes, both English and French. Increasingly…