Three Reasons You Should Be Learning a Second Language Right Now
Languages can be tricky to learn, but there are more benefits to taking on this task than you think.
“Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.” — Chinese Proverb
Like the majority of Canadian schoolchildren, I studied French… for years. My dad, of French-Canadian descent, is fluent in French. I’ve also spent time in Paris.
So it might surprise you to know that I actually don’t speak very much French.
Well, at least I didn’t until a few months ago.
Recently, I decided I was finally going to do the language learning thing properly. I bought the books and put my teacher training to good use, designing a mini-curriculum for myself.
As fun and rewarding as language learning is on its own, I found myself wondering what other advantages there might be to learning a language.
Was there more to learning a language than becoming more employable and connecting better with the locals on my next trip?
Polyglots are better problem-solvers.
“Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.” ‒ Flora Lewis
It turns out that people who have mastered more than one language are better at thinking outside the box to surmount obstacles. One study of students in Canadian French immersion programs found that bilingual students had heightened creative thinking, mental flexibility, and emotional intelligence.
Another suggests that children who speak more than one language are able to keep more information in their working memory, which means they were better able to carry out tasks with multiple different rules — the types of tasks that unilingual children seemed to struggle with.
Polyglots live their lives having to understand multiple languages at any one time. This means that their understanding of each language isn’t the only thing that needs to be sharp. They need to be able to hold lots of information in their brains at once, juggling translations, idioms, and nuance.
No wonder they’re such good problem solvers.
Learning a language makes your brain bigger.
No, really!
This study found that interpreters that struggled to learn a new language showed an increase in the gray matter in the parts of the brain commonly associated with language acquisition.
It also showed that those same parts of the brain tended to be more flexible in multilingual people than in people who only know one language.
So if you want to grow your brain and improve its flexibility, learning a language seems to be the way to go.
You might be protecting yourself from dementia.
It’s an unfortunate fact that over 60% of people in low- to middle-income countries have dementia. Many of us have had to, and will have to, watch our loved ones struggle and suffer with cognitive decline as they age.
This study suggests that learning another language might have a protective effect on our cognitive function as we get older, even if we didn’t start learning until adulthood.
Another study compared two generations of bilingual and monolingual adults to compare the neural efficiency of both groups as they get older. Not only did bilingual young adults outperform their monolingual peers, but the old folks who spoke more than one language significantly outperformed theirs too.
Final thoughts
“The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” ‒ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Language learning has an unbelievable range of benefits that I haven’t mentioned here. That’s no surprise.
If we want to be better creative thinkers and problem-solvers, if we want to be more intelligent and adaptable, if we’re going to better connect with global society… learning a new language is one small step in the right direction.
As an English speaker, I know that the colonial legacy of my ancestors has ensured that I don’t need another language to enjoy my time in most countries the world over. But many people my age have already learned two, three, even four languages. People the world over learn English. So why wouldn’t we go to the effort of learning from others too?
