One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way(c) It was an essay for the first part of academic competition "Languages and Cultures in Close-Up" One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way. Frank Smith. Speech distinguishes man from animals, but having speech is not enough. Possibility to understand what other people speak is more important. And that is what language is needed for. I do not say that it is the only thing, but the understanding is base for many other things like learning how to live in society, learning culture, finding opportunities, creativity. Native language is your way to the world. It sets you into the corridor with many doors and gives general, unclear knowledge. This knowledge is enough only for reading inscriptions on the doors. You can image what is behind them, but you cannot see it, feel it. You can listen a song in another language, enjoying the music, but you cannot understand lyrics, words mean nothing. You can read a translated book, but the best translation cannot match the original. Moreover, if you know only one language and only one culture, your native language and culture, you never will really understand and really respect another culture and people of it. Learning another language, you learn to think in another way, you learn another system of thought. It helps you to find other sides of the world or another connection between usual things. The way of how you sense, see and understand the world transforms not only because of using words different from words of your native language. In my opinion, another grammar changes it more, especially because of tenses. For example, in Russian you can use Present Tense speaking about some actions in the past. English is much stricter and may be much exacter than Russian. And you can find a lot of such examples comparing not only Russian and English, but English and French or Russian and German for example. Learning second, third, fourth etc. foreign language can give you fantastic opportunities if you want to use them, if you are ready to abandon your old patterns and live in the multifaceted world, where everybody think, live and see the world in another way. If you are ready to learn every day of your life. If you are ready to fill in every moment in your life.