Have you thought about learning a new language? If yes, odds are it’s due to the reason that you’re either planning a trip and you like to enrich your experience to communicate with the locals, or you might want to reconnect and interact with your relatives in their native tongue. You might also think that learning a new language can open doors of career opportunities and give you a competitive edge.
No matter what your reasons why you’re interested in learning a new language, below are some of its surprising benefits:
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Improves Your Memory
The more you use your brain, the better it functions. Learning a new language, whether through offline or online education, needs not just familiarity with rules and vocabulary; you also need to apply and recall this knowledge. Learning a language provides your memory a good workout in the brain gym. It means that multilingual individuals have brains that are quick to identify directions, names, figures, and facts.
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Boosts Your Brain Power
A new language means a new system of structures, rules, and lexis. It means that once you learn a new language, it means that your brain needs to cope with the complexity as it absorbs new patterns.
As your brain works out the meaning, endeavoring to communicate, you develop critical learning skills, such as problem-solving and cognitive thinking. A highly developed critical thinking skill can benefit you both professionally and personally.
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Helps You Build A Gateway Into A New Culture
Language is an excellent introduction to a new culture as you’ll be exposed to cultural traditions, which are tied to learning a language. With this, it’ll enrich your interpersonal experiences, such as discovering unique traditions and histories, appreciating different cultural and ethnic values, and building relationships.
Bilingualism is a crucial asset in today’s interconnected world. Being able to engage with different people can go a long way in understanding and tackling global challenges, which can make you a real citizen of the world.
Another thing you’ll enjoy is that you can travel to some foreign countries and easily dive into their cultures. If you know a country’s culture and language, it can make a difference in your travel experience. It can allow you to travel like a local in various countries and gain experiences you might not be able to achieve as a monolingual individual.
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Improves Your Multitasking Abilities
Multitasking can be stressful and challenging for those who don’t do it well or aren’t used to it. The reason behind it is that it requires disengaging from the activity and switching to different activities, which require a new mindset that can leave the mind vulnerable to distractions.
Some studies indicate that people who speak several languages are better at multitasking than those who speak one language only. The reason behind it is that it turns out that bilingualism strengthens your executive functioning in the brain’s areas that are responsible for blocking distraction, which, in the context of speaking different languages, keeps the word from one language slipping while speaking another foreign language.
This kind of brain training affects your ability to multitask in some areas of your life, reducing the stress linked to multitasking and increasing your productivity.
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Boosts Your Creativity
According to research, multilingual individuals are more creative compared to monolingual people. Learning a new language improves not just your ability to solve problems and think logically, but it also makes you experiment with new phrases and words.
Leveling up your skills forces you to reach for other alternate words once you can’t quite remember the original term you wanted to use. It boosts your divergent thinking skills, which is the ability to determine different solutions to a single issue.
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Strengthens Your Decision-Making Skills
Do you feel like you make rash decisions often? Are all your decisions tend to be based on your current emotions? Well, regardless of your concerns, did you know that learning a new language can help you with that?
One study has found out that people who speak different languages tend to make rational decisions. This is due to the fact that one’s judgment can be influenced by the biases contained in the subtle implications and nuances of the language in which the concern is presented. After thinking in another language, such biases can be reduced, which can result in a more rational and better decision.
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Increased Resistance To Alzheimer’s And Dementia
A study shows that people who speak different languages tend to develop dementia than those who speak one language. This is regardless of the person’s income, educational attainment, physical health, and gender. With Alzheimer’s being a devastating illness, delaying its onset by several years is a real benefit.
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Enhances Your First Language Skills
You can easily learn your mother tongue intuitively and it’s possible even without any formal education. If you’re raised in a society where a certain language is spoken, you can quickly pick up the language you often hear.
However, learning a new language is a different story. From the very beginning, you’ll get introduced to vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and idioms. As you learn more about your second language, you become more conscious of what you know in your first language.
While you couldn’t explain the language structure and abstract rules before, learning another language can help you put names to what you’ve learned instinctively in your first language.
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Provides You More Career Options To Choose From
In a highly competitive job market, employers are searching for skilled individuals who stand out from the rest of the candidates. Knowing a new language might help you be chosen among other job applicants. Having multiple languages listed in your portfolio or CV could be what potential employers are searching for.
These days, individuals proficient in more than one language are high in demand in all industries and sectors as employers consider them to be problem solvers and better communicators. If you’ve learned another language, expect to get more job offers.
Bottom Line
The benefits of learning a new language are innumerable. Those mentioned above are just some of the many perks you can enjoy. So, if you want to reap all of those benefits, choose a language you find appealing and exciting, and which open the door to the many advantages that come with language proficiency.
