A real lingua fracas

I used to live in an Indian city known for its impeccable education system.

Students, not just from all over the country, but from around the globe, flocked in each year to pursue their academic interests. The university had an international cell, which quite strangely was crowded with people who looked so lost that a soft “boo” would make them jump out of their skins!
Their main, and probably only, concern was the language barrier. Mostly hailing from the Middle East, these students had no idea of what was happening, as they could not speak the local language; the country’s national language or even English!
It was quite a sight watching a student try to communicate with the university clerk: Almost in tears waving their arms and squeaking for help while others yelled out of frustration.
The apartment block I lived in had more than half its flats rented to foreign tenants. It was a mixed community, with people from the Middle East, China, Africa, Europe, Far East and Indians. On a number of occasions I saw people from two different communities or countries having a conversation with each other, neither having a clue what the other was on about. Watching them was a riot and so amusing that my friends and I made a hobby out of observing them.
There was this one instance when a Chinese woman scurried to the security guard (a naïve old man from a North Indian state), close to midnight, and gesticulated angrily at how loud her neighbours were being (it was a weekend). At a safe distance we stood watching them until the terrified security rushed towards us and asked us what in hell’s name she was talking about!
What’s strange is, how these students leave their native countries, go through the mess of adjusting to a completely new environment and look forward to graduate in a subject taught in a language they can’t understand! And even more surprising is how they DO manage to overcome these issues and find alternatives plans of action. Most stay long enough to learn the language so well they would put the locals to shame. 
How important is it to know more than one language? One side of the divide claims that learning more than one languages is very important — in order to keep up with today’s crazy competition. They claim that multi-lingual efficiency comes handy in the corporate world when growth, profits and development is all that comes into focus.
On the other side of the argument they say that knowing one language will not kill you. It is human tendency to live and adapt to their resident environments. From the dawn of man, humans have evolved in a manner that would make God sit back and smile.
In the past, learning more than one language was considered an asset. Probably so because back then, the best you could do for entertainment was play word games or go fishing. These days though, with so many alternatives to make life easier and not struggle with words of discomfort, educating oneself with more than one language seems to be a waste of time. Irrespective, educational institutes are encouraging students to be linguistically prolific by offering a range of languages to choose from.
Worry not, I would say, if all you know is a single language: It would mean fewer arguments, and misunderstandings.
What do you think? Write in to gwnewsdesk@tradearabia.net, and let us know

Speaking of which...
● There are more than 2,700 languages in the world
● The most difficult language to learn is Basque
● By the time a child is five years old, he/she will on average have spent 9,100 hours learning his/her native language.
● The language spoken by the people most is Mandarin
● The Berbers of Northern Africa have no written form of their language
● The Cambodian alphabet is the largest alphabet, with 74 letters
● The world’s shortest alphabet, used in the Solomon Islands, has only 11 letters