Language: the Gate and the Bridge

When you travel in a foreign county, the foreigness--especially the language--lends a giddy color to the entire environment.

Foreign language has a very valuable masking value. Billboards and advertisements become rendered as pure visual design. Abstracted from their crass messages, they become more like graffitti. The murmur of conversation becomes like pure music, devoid of complaints, banalities, and pointless speech. A meditative air exists punctuated only by extremely deliberate attempts to communicate. A retreat from language and its pressures. Returning to an English environment one immediately hears the imposition of thoughts from every direction.

The fun of learning a language is remembering the challenge of speaking in the first place. It's actually fun to understand and be understood. You revisit the subtle distinctions say between too and very, tall and high, wet and moist. It reminds you question distinctions in your own language, like under and beneath. The doors of perception and open and close.

And who hasn't felt attracted to someone due to their accent and charming malapropisms? Foreign accents are like women. There is a hint of strange other parts that don't fit in a normal way.