Remember when your high school language teacher lectured you on the benefits of learning languages?
Turns out they had a point. From neurological to social benefits, learning a language will help you. If you’re considering starting up a new language, especially through self-study, keep reading to find out what benefits you’ll uncover.
Neurological Benefits
First off in the benefits of learning languages, we have all of the amazing neurological opportunities you open yourself up to. You’ve probably already heard one of the most significant benefits: the fact that language learning helps slow cognitive decline. Part of this is likely due to how active it keeps your brain. Learning a language is no easy task! This challenge may help keep you sharp in old age.
Additionally, learning a new language literally rewires your brain. Not only do speakers of multiple languages have more grey matter (neurons and dendrites), but they also have increased white matter strength (the system of fibers connecting the lobes of the brain). This study offers fascinating information on these psychical changes.
The bottom line is that language learning doesn’t just help you grow smarter now, but it will also help you in the future.
Career Benefits
It’s no secret that one of the biggest benefits of learning languages is the professional opportunities it brings. Everyone wants a bi/multilingual employee.
According to this Indeed article, 90% of US businesses said they relied on multilingual employees, and several also noted that there is a language gap they need to fill. Especially if you want to work in business, healthcare, or education (see my article here on succeeding in a teaching credential programs), it’s important to reach as many people as possible! As I’ll mention below, it doesn’t just let you speak with others, but it also shapes your communication skills and builds trust.
Additionally, like with a study abroad, one of the benefits of learning languages is that you gain so many soft skills along the way. These are valuable–and transferrable!
Communication and Social Benefits
When you have to literally learn how to communicate again, it enhances your ability to do so, even in your own language. Not only are you able to communicate in multiple languages now, but you also have gained other skills, including active listening, empathy, problem solving, nonverbal communication, and thinking on your feet. Additionally, the social benefits are incredibly valuable.
Making Friends
I can’t tell you how many friends I have made during my own language learning journey. By this point, more than half of the people I talk to daily don’t speak English as a first language.
That’s the beauty of language learning–the social benefits! There is something so wonderful and powerful about communicating with someone in their own language. Even if you alternate between your language and theirs, you will still uncover so many nuances and gain clarity that you wouldn’t if you just stayed in your first language. It also shows that you are making an effort to get to know them and their culture, which means a lot.
Expanding Your Worldview
One of the best benefits of learning languages is that your worldview inherently expands with each language. When you learn a language, you also learn to see through a different lens. Part of it is just having to sit back and listen. It’s a humbling experience! You also learn who you are in another language. Many polyglots find that their personalities vary slightly by languages, and I know that this is certainly true for myself.
Regardless, this new form of communication is incredibly powerful. Your brain expands to fit this new information, nuance, and culture, and it makes you infinitely more well-rounded and enhanced as a person.
Travel Benefits
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that increased language capabilities=easier travel. When you go somewhere and know the language, the experience is so much different than if you don’t know a single word. That isn’t to say that you won’t enjoy your trip otherwise, but it definitely increases your ease of travel, comfort, safety, and pleasant interactions with citizens of that country.
By this point, I have had the privilege of traveling to several countries, both solo and with others. I also completed a lifechanging study abroad in Belfast, Northern Ireland. As you can imagine, it was immediately easier to communicate when everyone else spoke English. Later on, however, after learning several languages, I was able to visit the countries where they were spoken. Not only did it make the logistical things easier, but it also opened the doors for enhanced communication with locals. It gave me the opportunity to go way beyond the tourist sites and have a genuine, multifaceted view of several cities. Even if it’s just for these beautiful moments, I cannot underscore the importance of learning languages!
Academic Benefits
As this meta-analysis discusses, the benefits of language learning extend to the academic sphere. Students who study other languages are more likely than those who don’t study languages to perform better academically and have increased literacy, which lends to success in non-language-related subjects as well. When you add in the enhanced concentration, discipline, and memorization gained from the studying, you have a recipe for success.
Increasing your problem solving skills
Learning languages gives you skills that extend to all other subjects. As mentioned above, you have to return to your studies consistently to see progress. Additionally, you learn about how you learn! By studying languages, you begin to see what works for you and what doesn’t. For example, maybe one memorization method is fantastic, but another doesn’t work. You can take this and learn from it.
All of this contributes to increased problem solving skills. When you are figuring out how to speak with someone else, you need to work around words you don’t know, think on your feet, and determine how to get your point across. Not only does this give you more confidence to do it in your mother tongue, but it also inherently primes your brain to problem solve.
Understanding culture in its original form
It is so enriching to revisit texts, works of art, music, or movies in their original context. Language has so much influence on culture and expression, from connotation to structure. When something is translated, we miss some aspects of the author’s original message. Especially if you’re interested in the classics or comparative humanities, this is one of the amazing benefits of learning languages!
In my own life, I am currently revisiting Dante’s Inferno and listening to it in its original Italian. It’s not easy by any means. However, it is incredibly rewarding to look at it in a new light and hear how it was meant to sound.
Adding to the conversation
As aforementioned, when you speak another language, you get so much more out of traveling. You learn about the culture in more depth. This lets you contribute to conversations with more insightful, valuable information. The feeling of being part of a larger whole and understanding the world better is something that can’t be beat. It definitely translates into the classroom!
A Final Word
Hopefully this has inspired you enough about the benefits of learning languages that you’re ready to embark on your new adventure. From social benefits to academic and neurological changes, there truly are no downsides to expanding your worldview this way. What language will you try? Let me know in the comments!
Image by Tumisu on Pixabay
