Native and Foreign Language

            What is language? A universally accepted definition of language or the criteria for its use does not exist. This is one of the reasons for the disagreement among scientists about whether non-human species can use language. In nature we find numerous kinds of communication systems, many of which appear to be unique to their possessors, and one of them is the language of the human species. Basically, the purpose of communication is the preservation, growth, and development of the species (Smith and Miller 1968:265). The ability to exchange information is shared by all communication systems, and a number of non-human systems share some features of human language.

What is mother tongue? Based on origin: the language one learned first  in which one has established the first long-lasting verbal contacts. Based on internal identification: the language one identifies with/as a speaker of; Based on external identification: the language one is identified with/as a speaker of, by others. Based on competence: the language one knows best. Based on function: the language one uses most.

What is foreign language? A foreign language is a language indigenous to another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her. These two characterisations do not exhaust the possible definitions, however, and the label is occasionally applied in ways that are variously misleading or factually inaccurate.

Some children learn more than one language from birth or from a very young age: they are bilingual or multilingual. These children can be said to have two, three or more mother tongues: neither language is foreign to that child, even if one language is a foreign language for the vast majority of people in the child's birth country. For example, a child learning English from her English father and Japanese at school in Japan can speak both English and Japanese, but neither is a foreign language to her.

In our case, fluency in speaking our own language is really needed these days. Many of us, Filipinos are often wrong in constructing sentences in tagalog or just even in a simple conversation, most of us are having wrong grammars. Which is very not good, I mean, it is our own language, it is our mother language, yet, we are not that familiar and we haven’t perfected using it. We must master our own first, before moving or practicing other languages. It is not alright just to be familiar with it, but we must know it by heart and by soul. It helps you know what the Filipinos are made of.  

But still, we need to know how to use other foreign languages, like English, Spanish etc. which are very often to use in the whole world. So that, in case you do not know how to speak the native language of that particular country, at least, you can try to speak to him/her in English, which is the universal language. Learning foreign languages will also be a big help for us to have job and work. And not only that, mastery of other language, it also gains the trust of international business people making the job of convincing them into a business venture all the more simple.  It also affects our mind, because it let us open our minds to other cultures and ideas.

Both learning the native language more and deeply and mastering foreign languages are both needed for a person to develop a better and greater understanding in life and to himself. Both are beneficial to us, and has its own advantages and disadvantages.