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“You live a new life for every language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once.” ―Czech proverb
Did you know that 92% of students in Europe learn another language in school, and nearly a quarter of Canadians can hold a conversation in both English and French. Roughly one out of every two people on the planet knows at least two languages, and three out of four humans don’t speak English. (source: ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages)
To happen to be born or grow up in a country that coincidentally also peaks the language of most the economic world is the definition of luck, depending upon how you see it. However, this happenstance may also be viewed as a crutch that prevents us from experiencing many amazing benefits, not only for ourselves, but the world. The benefits to the world being a strengthened sense of humanity, peace and connection.
Way back in 2012 I wrote a post sharing six reasons to learn a new language. These reasons expressed the personal benefits we gain when we choose to challenge ourselves to learn a new way of communicating that for many of us is a choice, not a necessity. In today’s follow-up, I assert that learning at least one additional language, (and what many polyglots share is that the most difficult language to learn is the first one beyond your native tongue) is imperative for the wellbeing of humanity and a foundation we all can partake in building to bring more peace into our lives and the world.
That may sound hyperbolic or pie-in-the-sky, but take a moment and consider what a democracy rests upon: civility, acceptance of differences, even if the majority rules, minority’s rights are protected, along with a educated populous in vast fields of knowledge. These benefits, as we will talk about in more detail at the end of today’s post, not only benefit the individual in the career and life pursuits, they also benefit the social and economic security of a democracy.
“Growth in the number of people speaking languages in addition to English creates new opportunities for greater cross-cultural understanding, and integrates different ideas and perspectives in ways that will improve democratic discourse.” —The Century Foundation
As we get older, the argument is that it becomes more difficult to acquire a new language, and while that can be true, it depends more heavily upon the individual, their cognitive strength, the type of language they are learning (what Group level is it), as well as their awareness about what it takes to learn a new language. Yes, there will be challenges. Yes, you will be required to set aside your ego, and yes, it will take dedicated and consistent effort for at least 500 hours of learning to gain basic proficiency in a Grade I language (French and Spanish are included in this category). But the temporary stress is worth it for all that is gained.
“A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let’s take a look four truths that are revealed about someone who chooses to learn a new language. Each worthwhile attributes that not coincidentally play fundamental roles in living a life of contentment.
1. Humility is a guiding characteristic of how you engage with the world
“Speaking a foreign language tells your interlocutor that you are humble and committed enough to come into their world.” —Henry Mance, “Pardon My French”, The Financial Times
When I read Henry Mance’s article earlier this year, this particular quote spoke to me as I immediately observed its truth. Not only do we literally have to be humble during the learning process of language acquisition, we then upon visiting a new country where we will have to use our newly learned language have to let go of what we know and find peace with uncertainty.
The moment we project our culture onto the culture we are visiting, the ego is at the wheel, and our fear, masked as judgment or rigidity, takes center stage. When we are humble, we understand that our perspective is not the only one. We commit to learning from other people’s approaches and challenge our own unconscious biases.
“To learn something new, you need to try new things and not be afraid to be wrong.” –Roy T. Bennett
Wonderfully, engaging with humility is the key to forever being a student of life.
2. You have an open-mind
“One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.” –Frank Smith
Dovetailing with the first point, when we engage with humility, our mind is held open to witness possibilities. Possibilities we never imagined, considered or dreamed to be possible. When we hold as our intention to connect and understand others who live (and speak) differently, not only discover more about the culture we have stepped into, but learn more about ourselves as well – what energizes us, what sparks our curiosity, passion – something we will talk about below in the discussion about benefits.
3. You are brave
“Do you know what a foreign accent is? It’s a sign of bravery.” –Amy Chua
At first glance, choosing to learn a new language may not sound like an act of bravery. After all, you are sitting in a classroom, physically not moving much at all, and exercising your brain to exhaustion. To some, this may seem to be a luxury and far from being anything akin to a courageous act. But I am happy to share that in fact, it is an act of bravery.
When we choose to learn a language, we are choosing to be vulnerable. We will trip (verbally), we will misspeak wildly, we will find ourselves lost and absolutely baffled by what we have heard, and to continue to try to understand, even amidst all of that confusion, is absolutely bravery. The easy route would be to stop, to throw your hands up and return back to being a monolinguist, but the courageous choice is keep speaking horribly, keep trying to put sentences together, and in time, you will begin to sound more proficient than your previous self thought was possible.
Learning a language requires us to find something within, because nobody else can motivate us to speak, to say something that is ‘foreign’ to us. We have to gather up the courage to do it for ourselves.
4. Curiosity inspires and motivates you
“[To learn a foreign language is] is an act of friendship . . . It’s a promise to educate – yes- and to equip. But also to awaken; to kindle a flame that you hope will never go out.” —John le Carré, written in response to the Brexit vote
As someone who has forever been curious about so many things, upon reflection, it was my curiosity that led me to want to learn the French language. As TSLL readers and any Francophile know, French is a beautiful language to speak and to hear. This is not by accident. As I moved through my courses with Alliance Française de Washington DC over the past three years, I learned the truth that indeed many of the rules of the language, what is spoken, what is not, enchaînement and liaison, are to create a beautiful sound of the language when spoken. Now, that alone is insight into a culture and what they value. (I detailed all that I learned – literal grammar skills as well as rules and tricks and historical details just like this in my 9-part series that wrapped up this past August.)
When we engage with curiosity, we never know what we will discover, and that is the gift. Someone who chooses to learn a new language is comfortable with not knowing and instead of being fearful, delights in the anticipation of what they will learn.
Benefits of becoming proficient in a new language beyond your mother tongue
Now, let’s take a look at the 10 benefits of learning a new language, beyond just the solely personal gifts we received (those were discussed in this post).
1. Delay the onset of dementia
“The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.” ― Victor Hugo
When we are learning a new language, we are literally creating new neural connections. As the brain builds new neural networks and modifies existing ones, we strengthen our cognitive reserve which strengthens the brain’s ability to be resilient to damage or loss. By speaking different languages, we “rely on more efficient brain regions and pathways for information processing, which helps compensate for areas that decline with age.” (source)
2. Improved memory
“It is literally the case that learning languages make you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning.” ― Michael Gove
Tied together with point #1, neuroplasticity is at play as we begin to again create new neural connections. And as we are exercising our brain’s recall capabilities instead of relying on long-engrained (long-term) memory banks that don’t require as much (or any exercise at all), this is an exercise for the brain making it capable of recalling all sort of details we want to remember, not only the new grammar or verb tense we learned in class.
3. Improve decision-making due to heightened objectivity
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein
ACTFL points out that when we step outside of our primary language, we give ourselves distance emotionally, and our thinking becomes more reason-focused. Consequently, our decisions are made with more clarity.
4. Improve problem solving
“Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.” – Flora Lewis
Cognitive flexibility, paired with heightened objectivity shared above, gives us a wider breath of options to consider. When we learn a new language, we have to often use context clues to figure out what is being said when we do know all of the vocabulary presented. This skill carries over into considering new and different ideas as well.
As we learn more about a different culture, we begin to see new ways of living and approaches to everyday tasks based on cultural values and history. This helps us to consider different options that we may not have considered with only one cultural view point.
5. Enhance creativity
“Change your language and you change your thoughts.” – Karl Albrecht
By now, a theme is developing. When we exercise the brain and ask it to learn something new, we open up the mind to possibilities it hadn’t considered. Enter enhanced creativity. Along with problem-solving, new creative ideas come to the forefront of our imagination because we have given new ingredients to our memory to entertain, to consider and to understand. This flexibility enables our mind to detour into areas we didn’t know previously were available to be considered.
6. Better focus and attention
“Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.” – Roger Bacon
When we learn a new language, we are strengthening executive functions – being able to hold our attention on one subject as well as being able to switch with ease from one language to another. When we can do this consciously, as we must do when we speak a new language other than our native language, we strengthen this skill of focus which carries over into the rest of our life beyond speaking the new language.
7. Deepen connection with more people and build diverse connections
“One of the benefits of being bicultural is simply the awareness that how you live is not the only way.” –Ann Campanella
Simply the opportunity to understand what another person is saying that doesn’t speak our first language, opens the door to connect. Once we understand what they are saying, and we can share a little bit about ourselves, and they hear us, we start to realize the humanness in us all. Even if we only speak at a basic proficient level, that proficiency can plan to meet up and have lunch, plan to help out in the community, offer to help. The ability to communicate invites physical activities where we can learn more about each other.
8. Deepen the skill of empathy
“Just learning to think in another language allows you to see your own culture in a better viewpoint.” – Gates McFadden
When we learn a new language, we get to know a new culture. We discover how that culture views the world – their values, their heritage, and the genesis for it all. This then broadens our perspective to understand why they live or do or prioritize what they do. We do not have to make the same choices for our lives, but we come to understand why they make the decisions they have.
At the same time, empathy arises because we know what it feels like to be in an unfamiliar culture or speaking a new language. We can then look around us in our first language culture and extend kindness with sincerity to those who are building a life in a country that is not where they were born. Their act of bravery is seen, known and the feelings of being threatened evaporate if ever they were present.
9. Set ourselves free to express our true selves
“The more you speak more languages, the more you understand about yourself.” – Sandra Cisneros
While part of this benefit is definitely a personal gain, the world also benefits when we step closer and closer to understanding our true self. The more fluent we become of ourselves, the better decisions we make that will take us closer and closer and eventually to discovering our dharma. And our dharma isn’t just about us individually; it is about giving what we can uniquely give to the world.
Learning a new language reveals many humbling truths if we are self-aware enough and courageous enough to acknowledge what we discover. For example, do our hackles go up when we misspeak. Why? We’re in class with a teacher who wants to help us, with students who are just as unsteady with the language as we are. We then examine our reaction of becoming defensive, ask ourselves why that happens, and pick ourselves up and keep trying. Another way we learn more about ourselves through language learning is that we may recognize cultural practices that speak to our predilections and discover a freedom to trust that we can like what we like even if our primary culture doesn’t get it. We can let them live how they live and we can live in a way that brings us to life without feeling the need to ‘fit in’.
10. Deepen respect for other cultures and strengthen our awareness of our interconnectedness as humans
“With languages, you are at home anywhere.” —Edward de Waal
When we realize that we are all humans, each of us trying to figure it out as we go, and if each us is lucky enough, we have about 80-90 years to figure it out, then we start to realize that fear of not having a job or home or food is a universal fear. We just may go about establishing each of these in a different way. Building a community where we feel safe, a feeling of connection, again, a universal need regardless of culture. Language is the barrier that we can remove on our own. We just need to choose to do so.
We don’t have to love everything about a culture to understand it and see that people, humans, make up a culture. We each have feelings, we all feel pain, are nourished by love and kindness and want to be seen. When we stop letting language give us an excuse not to care or not to understand, we start to infuse peace into the world one person at a time. With this awareness, we see beyond our everyday life and recognize we are not alone, we never have been and we can live our lives differently while maintaining that peace.
The scary arises for many when we don’t understand how to communicate, and so we shrink back to what we know. We cling to it, and in so doing we limit the possibilities of all that the world is making available for us to discover. Not only will we discover the awesome beautiful people, places and ways of life, but we discover what brings us to life, even as we trip over verb conjugations and sentence constructions. That too is giving us much. To not take life so seriously, to live fully in the now, and to keep trying.
“It is astonishing how much enjoyment one can get out of a language that one understands imperfectly.” – Basil Gildersleeve
Whatever age you might be as you read this, I encourage you to learn that language that has been tickling your curiosity muscle. Trust that curiosity, your inner compass is inviting you to do so for a reason. And then hold in your memory this truth shared by Helen Hayes (the second person and first woman to win the EGOT, and the first person to win the Triple Crown of Acting), “The expert in anything was once a beginner.” Not only will your present life and short term experiences be enhanced but your health and wellbeing for the rest of your life will be also.
SIMILAR POSTS/EPISODES YOU MIGHT ENJOY
First post in the 9-part series: What I’ve Learned in French Class So Far
Petit Plaisir
