Language Learning: A Truly Educational Experience | Ray T. Clifford | 2017

Learning a language gives you the incredible chance to enrich your mind, spirit, character, and ability to serve. But it takes work. Perhaps the most important language to learn, for all of us, is the language of the Spirit.
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"Internationally, BYU is known as “the language university.” The 2017 edition of the pamphlet Y Facts reported that approximately 65 percent of BYU students speak more than one language.
Let me do a quick survey to see if those assembled here today are representative of BYU students in general. If you know more than one language, please raise your hand. [The majority of the audience raised their hand.]
I hope you realize how extraordinary it is that you have been given the gift of being able to communicate in more than one language. Think about it: language is the most complex of all human behaviors, and most of you can communicate in more than one language.
Since we can all read English, I would like to demonstrate the complexity of language by giving you a simple English test. How would you read “St. Paul St.” aloud?
You probably said, “Saint Paul Street.” And your response to this simple task was likely not only correct but automatic. But can you explain to another person the rule for determining what the abbreviation “St.” stands for? Perhaps you would say that “St.” before a noun is an abbreviation for “saint,” and “St.” after a noun is an abbreviation for “street.”
Now test your rule on the following street sign, which I saw near Disneyland in California: “St. College St.”
Oops, there is no saint named College! However, there is a state college, so we will have to refine our rule for pronouncing the abbreviation “St.”
Yes, even simple language is complex. Language is so complex that we are often hard pressed to explain how it operates. Yet we are generally unaware of how complex language is. In some ways language is like the air we breathe: we don’t pay attention to it-unless there is something wrong with it.
Because people don’t pay attention to language unless there is something wrong with it, you should not take compliments about your language skills too seriously. The fact that someone complimented you on your language is an indication that they noticed it-and that happens when there is something wrong with it...
Because language is the most complex of human behaviors, it follows that language learning presents a formidable challenge. In fact, language study is a discipline that supports all four of the aims of a BYU education. As you know,
a BYU education should be (1) spiritually strengthening, (2) intellectually enlarging, and (3) character building, leading to (4) lifelong learning and ­service. [The Mission of Brigham Young University and The Aims of a BYU Education (Provo: BYU, 2014), 5]
Let me show how language learning supports each of those four aims..."
Ray T. Clifford was an Associate Dean in the College of Humanities at BYU when this devotional address was delivered on June 13, 2017.
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