But in trying to understand people with different symbol-systems and different ways of expressing themselves, nothing serves to transcend cultural barriers better than the learning of a language other than one's own. To understand the basic elements of language use, the student must be able to grasp the foreign language as a rule system and make it his. The learning of foreign languages is one of the few fields of endeavor where the student can come to appreciate in concreto claims of diversity and universality with reference to specific facts. No one can appreciate the phenomenon of communication fully who is confined within the limits of his own language, and who, therefore, cannot explore the possibilities of translation. Foreign Languages and the Humanities Important as it is to view foreign languages as part of the central core of the humanities, the difficult problem is to arrive at a satisfactory definition of the humanities.
Any humanistic discipline has to deal with facts, with the mechanical as well as the non-mechanical.
In this respect, humanistic disciplines are not different from the social and natural sciences. Moreover, the humanistic disciplines are not the only ones concerned with the study and cultivation of values. What does distinguish the humanities from the sciences is the emphasis on self-knowledge based not upon the scientific study of human competences, but upon the exhibition and illustration of constitutive rules and practices which define distinctly human qualities. Given this definition of the humanities, it is clear that foreign languages are as humanistic as art, religion, history, literature, or philosophy. There is no history without emphasis on facts, no aesthetics without detailed knowledge about art, no genuine literary criticism without a mastery of the intricacies of language use, and no appreciation of a foreign language or literature without a thorough command of the fundamentals.