Learn a New Language with Satellite TV

If you are trying to learn a new language, you have probably run into the frustration of seeing so many other people who are bilingual and seem to have learned so easily. Anyone who has even been to Western Europe has experienced this. In countries like Germany, Belgium, and Denmark, even people who own the local convenience stores speak almost perfect English. When you ask them if they have ever been to the United States, they almost always say no! Maybe the wealthier ones have been to London for a weeklong vacation a few years back. But most of them learn to speak English fluently without the semester abroad, the immersion camps, and the decade + of in-school lessons that it takes Americans just to be able to reach the ability to order food in a restaurant in Mexico or France. How can this be so? Are Northern Europeans just smarter than we are?



There are many complicated reasons that Americans are notoriously bad at knowing second languages. But part of it is the fact that we live in such a language homogenous region. If you are living in Marion, Ohio, you could walk a five hundred miles in any direction – north, east, south, or west – and the people around you would still be speaking English. Maybe they would drop their "rs" or speak with a nasal pitch or linger a little bit to long on the letter "a", but they would be speaking your language in something quite similar to your accent. Try doing this same trick in the Netherlands. The borders with Germany and Belgium are less than a two-hour drive from Amsterdam. Switzerland, a country with a population that would make it only the 13th most populous state in the United States (after New Jersey and Virginia), has four official languages! That’s German, French, Italian, and Romanian. No wonder people have to learn other languages. Every time they turn on satellite TV, someone who lives a few miles away from them is talking in another tongue. And it is not just a problem of satellite TV – if they ever want to travel, they need to learn a language that can be useful to them. How may people in this world speak Flemish? Not many. So a Belgian who wants to go abroad needs to find a way to communicate. That means learning English, which has essentially become an international language for the purposes of travel and business.



And it does not hurt that the English language is all around Western Europeans. The movies that they watch in high definition at their local theaters, the newscasts that tell of news from around the world, the sitcoms that they watch on satellite TV – a huge percentage of all of this programming is in English. So if you want to learn another language, follow their example: immerse yourself. Yes, you need to spend time learning vocabulary and memorizing the subjunctive tense. But once you have those done to a basic degree, you need to switch gears and start making that new language a central but casual part of your life.



With direct tv local packages, you can order channels that feature the language you want to learn. So head to www.directstarTV.com to sigun up today!