Why learn another language? Speaking a second language will…

1.Open Up a World of Job Opportunities

The world is changing fast. More companies than ever are doing business in several – often dozens – of countries around the world, but they can’t do it without hiring globally-minded people who can speak at least one foreign language. Ever wanted to be like those people you see in the airport travelling to foreign countries “on business” all the time? That can be you.

Even in small, local companies, chances are that the ability to speak a second language will set you apart from other applicants.

2. Give Your Brain a Boost

Speaking a second language each day really can keep the doctor away! Study after study has demonstrated the cognitive benefits of learning another language, no matter how old you are. Memory improvement, longer attention span and a reduced risk of age-related cognitive decline are just a few of the known positive effects of speaking two or more languages.

3. Establish Deep Connections and Cross-Cultural Friendships

I’d bet that at least once in your life, you’ve felt a pang of regret during an encounter with someone from a different culture, when you realized how that experience could be enriched by knowing that person’s language.

Okay, so you can’t learn every language in the world oor have an intimate knowledge of every culture. But if there’s even one culture that you’d like to understand better, or even one person in your life you’d like to know better, one of the best ways you can start is by learning to speak their language.

4. Get an Outsider’s Perspective about Your Own Culture

Trying to understand your own culture exclusively from within it is like trying to understand what a bus is like if you’ve only ever ridden inside it. You can’t see the bus’s wheels, the exterior color, or the engine that drives it.

Want the bigger picture? You need to get off that bus and examine it from the outside.

I strongly believe that language and culture are intimately linked. Learn another language and you’ll have insight into another culture. Too many people go their entire lives never questioning the universal “truths” they take for granted in their own society. But step outside this narrow scope, and it’s like stepping out of the Matrix; once your eyes are truly opened to that new perspective, you can never go back.

5. Become More Interesting and Meet Interesting People

If your first language is English, the second most common language in the world, and yet you’ve made the effort to learn another language rather than expecting the world to accommodate your monolingualism, then you’re a rare breed indeed. This makes you interesting. People will approach you. They’ll want to talk to you. They’ll want to know what motivated you to “bother” learning another language.

Believe me, if you’re a native English speaker who speaks two or more languages, you’ll have many more lively, engaging conversations about a variety of topics than you ever would have had otherwise.

Sure, you could spend your life getting by in English everywhere you go, but that’s boring. Be fun! Be interesting! Be multilingual!

6. Stay Smart in Touristed Areas

There’s always a danger of obvious tourists being targets, or getting hassled by touts, which can ruin your experience of a place where people are actually warm and genuine. The “obvious tourist” tends to be whoever is speaking English, or some other distant tongue.

7. Enjoy Works of Art in their Original Language

Bollywood films, manga, telenovelas, Swah rap – the world is full of non-English works of creative art. Don’t you wish you could appreciate some of them in their original language rather than relying on badly-translated subtitles or English dubs, which lose much of the charm that made the original product popular to begin with?

You may find English versions, but you'd be surprised by what gets lost in translation.

If you’re a fan of any type of foreign media – or if you’d like to be- but aren’t interested in experiencing it in English because of all nuances lost in translation – then this is an excellent reason to start learning that new language. You’ll already have a very clear goal in mind, so you’ll know what type of vocabulary will be most useful to learn, and you can use those materials as a study aid for you to progress in your new language.

8. Discover You Can Do It!

You are not too old, you do not have too little time, and you are not incapable of learning it!