There are over 6,000 languages in the world. Some are more important than others, not better or more advanced, just more important. Why? Because they are spoken by more people, in more countries. That does not mean that Finnish is not important to the Finns, and Maori is not important to the Maoris. It is just that these languages are not so important to the rest of us.
On the other hand, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by over one billion people. Chinese origin words account for 60% of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese vocabulary. Knowing Chinese will help you learn these languages too. It helped me. Chinese culture has influenced the world for thousands of years with its art, philosophy, technology, food, medicine and performing arts. Today China’s economy is booming. Chinese seems well worth learning.
Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese are essentially dialects of the same language. If you learn one, you can learn the others. I did. If you learn Spanish, you open the door to the culture, music, history and possible business dealings with 800 million people in 60 countries, including the US and Canada.
If you get ambitious you could try Russian, as I have been doing for the last two years. Once you have Russian you can probably communicate with other Slav speakers.
But hold it here! Before getting carried away, let’s look at the present situation of language teaching. According to one Canadian survey, after 12 years of daily French classes, only one high school graduate out of 147 (0.68%) achieved “intermediate” proficiency. Another survey of immigrants learning English in the US showed that “classroom instructional hours” had little impact on progress.
If we cannot teach our own official languages in North America, what hope is there for other languages like Chinese or Spanish, let alone Russian, Arabic or Hindi?
As a speaker of 10 languages I know the benefits of speaking more than one language. We simply have to change the way we go about teaching languages. To start with we need to dispel seven common misconceptions about language learning. Read the rest of this article »
by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman to giveaway courtesy of 
The foundation of any relationship, whether it be with a business associate, spouse, parent, client or, friend, is trust. Trust is not something that can be built with quick fix techniques. Rather, it is something that is cultivated through consistent habits in your interactions. The following are twelve patterns of behavior that increase trust in your relationships.
Everyone has things they hate to do, but need to do anyway. Sometimes it is doing basic chores that need to be done. In other cases, it’s the boring part of an otherwise interesting project. People who get things finished (as opposed to people who just get things started) have mastered the ability to push through the things they hate doing, to work on the things they love.
You don’t have to be a famous politician or an aspiring poet to keep a journal. Spending some time writing on a daily basis can boost your motivation, help with conditions such as depression or insomnia, and have vast, life-enhancing benefits. And if you ever become famous, you’ll have plenty of material to draw on for your biography …
How often do you want to make love with your partner? How often does your partner want to make love? Many times the answers to both questions are not in sync. The best answer for your relationship may be found somewhere in between. When most relationships first begin there is high degree of passion and sexual frequency. The newness of discovering one another as well as the newness of the relationship is the primary contributor. Over time this new-found excitement and intrigue begins to wane and a more realistic pace develops.
Already, by writing this title, I’m sure I’ve annoyed a few people. Extroversion is supposed to be a personality trait, not something you pick, but something you were born with. That might be true. But even if you are fairly introverted, I think you can still capture some of the best parts of being an extrovert:
Talking is such a natural act we tend to take it for granted. But when you think about it, this life skill is crucial to the development and maintenance of strong and healthy relationships. Our talking habits can also be very revealing of our personality. Some people talk too much – they are the kind of people you try to avoid at a party. Others avoid talking when actually it would help quite a lot.The following are a few suggestions for getting the right balance between being a talkative bore and a shy recluse.
Goal setting techniques are not always very effective. They are often overcomplicated or do not inspire motivation from the user. When it comes to goal setting, simpler is better. You want to accomplish as much as possible by taking the quickest road from A to B. This goal setting technique is simple enough and it will destroy your excuses and obstacles along the way.
There are two ways to go about your career. The first way is to simply put your head down and do your thing – show up on time (or maybe a bit early), do your work, take the opportunities that come your way and see what happens. The second way is to take proactive control of your career, to actively seek out ways to improve your chances, put yourself in the path of opportunities and steer your career in a clear direction. The former is less work, but the latter is far more likely to get you where you want to go.
