Roughly 365 million people have English as their mother tongue.
More than two billion others learn and speak English
as a second or third language.
If you speak English,
you can make yourself understood to almost 2.5 billion people.
Why would you need to learn any other foreign language?
Isn't that just a ridiculous waste of time?
Nelson Mandela was fiercely criticized
by black South Africans for speaking Afrikaans.
He replied,
"When you speak to man in a language he understands.
that goes to his head.
When you speak to him in his own language,
that goes to his heart."
So here's the thing:
if you want to win somebody over,
you need to speak to their heart.
Popes know that.
John Paul II spoke like ten languages fluently
and a dozen others on a more elementary level.
Wherever he went, he would greet the people
with at least a few sentences in their native language;
and that was an important key to his popularity.
People with foreign mothers-in-law,
or foreign mothers-in-law-to-be, know it, too.
They may speak English with their girlfriends,
but when they want to be on good terms with the girl's mom,
young men are willing to learn the craziest languages,
including Dutch.
(Laugher)
And it usually does the trick.
Why?
Well, our native language is totally entwined with
our personality, with our identity.
Our whole personal history is deeply rooted,
it's soaked in our mother tongue.
There are so many memories and feelings connected to words, expressions,
even to the grammar that we have grown up with.
So, If you learn another person's language,
you show that you are genuinely interested
in their life. in their personality.
What mother-in-law wouldn't be flattered?
When you hear your own language you feel connected.
When you're traveling,
and you've been speaking a foreign language for days or weeks,
the moment you board a plane
where cabin crew greets you in your own language,
you know you're going home.
If mother tongues had fragrances,
I think they would smell of cookies,
and of comforting chicken soup,
and of granny's cologne –
maybe even a little bit of mothballs.
This may very well be the reason why constructed languages,
like Esperanto, have never caught on as broadly as could have been expected.
However cleverly designed,
and simple, easy to learn,
no country has ever adopted an artificial language as their own.
Nor as a foreign language to be taught systematically
on a large scale over a longer period of time,
though it has been tried.
But somehow, despite the difficulties with natural languages –
like frustrating irregularities,
the discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation,
sometimes absurd complexity of the grammar –
but despite all that,
we prefer to learn languages that have grown organically with people.
Constructed languages speak to the head.
Natural languages smell of cookies.
To Nelson Mandela, learning Afrikaans was all about "knowing your enemy".
He said, "You have to know their language, and their passions,
and hopes, and fears, if you want to defeat them."
He did. It worked.
But it's not all about enemies all the time, is it?
This applies to all kinds of human relationships.
And I'll be the last person to claim that mothers-in-law are enemies –
per definition.
Some seven or eight years ago,
I was driving through Poland with my family.
And the shops were about to close, and we needed to buy food.
Finally, we saw a supermarket on the other side of the street.
The only way to get there in time was by making a U-turn.
So that's what I did.
That was probably dangerous.
It was definitely illegal.
On the car park, before I even had a chance to switch off the engine –
– I heard a knock-knock.
So I buzzed down the window, and two pairs of eyes appeared.
Each pair of eyes was attached to a policeman.
Now, I cannot claim any level of real fluency in Polish
at the best of times,
but I used to be able to keep a simple conversation going.
But in that setting, though, with a guilty conscience,
eye in eye with two men of the law, in uniform,
every sensible Polish word I had ever known just drained out of me.
Yet, I didn't consider for a moment,
trying to deal with this situation in English.
English would most probably have given me the linguistic advantage,
but that might have made the policemen uncomfortable.
So, I was determined to stick to Polish.
How?
That tiny Polish corner of my brain had just gone blank
except for one thing.
There was one thing that I had repeated so often
that I could have recited it in my sleep.
It was a children's poem,
about a sick frog.
(Laughter)
That's what I had.
I know it was a bizarre thing to do, but I blurted out:
(Polish) A certain frog felt weak
so she went to a doc and said she felt sick.
The doctor puts his glasses on because he was rather old."
I glanced at the policemen.
And they were like staring at me.
(Laughter)
I seem to recall that one of them like scratched his head.
And then they smiled.
They smiled.
And that, in turn, put me at ease,
well, enough so that a few more relevant words
could come tumbling back into my head,
I could stammer a few half sentences like,
"Very sorry, needed food, will never do it again."
They let me off the hook.
As I ran into the shop, they called, (Polish) “Szczęśliwej podróży!"
"Have a nice trip!"
It is not my intention to incite you to learn languages
so that you can travel around the world, break laws, and get away with it.
But this little episode illustrates how a few words,
however simple or silly, just a few words,
can go straight to the heart and melt it.
By the way, there was an alternative to the sick frog.
There was one thing I knew equally well:
a drinking song.
(Laughter)
That might not have earned me a smile
probably a trip to the local police station
for a blood test.
You don't need to learn many languages,
and you don't need to learn them thoroughly.
A little can go a long way.
Ten words to the heart can have a bigger impact
than a thousand words to the head.
You can choose to always use English and meet in the middle.
But you can also choose to be the person to cross that middle line
and meet your new acquaintance, or your opponent, whoever it is,
meet them on their own territory.
Speaking the other's language does not make you weak,
it proves you strong.
It's the person who has the courage, and makes the effort to cross lines
that wins in the end.
Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes make you human.
And in this case, there's a bonus:
If you make a mistake out there,
you give the others an opportunity to help you, to come and meet you.
And in this way, the connection you have just initiated will be stronger.
So, do you want to make yourself understood
or do you want to connect?
Let's all continue to learn and to use English.
So that we can interact with mixed audiences, like we're doing here at TEDx.
English is a powerful tool for sharing knowledge,
for international conventions on global problems.
Above all, English is the highway to 365 million hearts.
To 365 million people, the English language smells of cookies.
But why stop there?
Why not make the extra effort
and learn at least one other foreign language?
There are many flavors of cookies out there.
Let's go and taste a new one.
Thank you.
(Applause)