Learning is one of those few things that keep us alive as it makes us move and reach new horizons. And today this is possible more than ever with our high global connectivity via the internet as well as the additional amount of time that the remote work saved for us lately. Indeed, working from home saves us nearly 35 hours per month, which equals a whole working week. Just think about how much you can accomplish in one week. So, it’s really a great time to learn. And one of the best new skills to master is, of course, a new language. One can learn it at school, with a private tutor, via the language app, or using books.
Source: Body Language Central
The Power of Language Learning
In our highly social and largely connected world, communication is one of the vital things. With languages powering communication, it is impossible to underestimate their role as the primal driver of our society. On top of that, translation and language work is often considered extremely important with interpreters being in high priority when it comes to emergency situations. Finally, from an economic standpoint, language fluency is an extremely advantageous skill to own as the demand for translations grows steadily and has some promising perspectives, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Yet, there are other benefits to learning the language. Although they don’t really relate to any material advantages, they are still some great payoffs from your investment of time of learning the language. These benefits are your development and self-improvement, which are highly valued today. Here are the top five advancements you make as you learn a new language.
Source: Macmax
- Multitasking boost. Being able to efficiently complete several tasks at the same time is a great and highly valued skill in our fast-paced and dynamic world. Learning more than one language is exactly one of those things that improve this skill in particular. As you learn a new language, you essentially have to think about the same thing twice at the same time. By continuously doing such operation, our brain becomes more used to the simultaneously running intellectual processes, thus, enabling you to complete several tasks at the same time with higher accuracy and efficiency.
- Different perspectives. As you learn another language, you immerse yourself in its people’s culture. You have to think about things in that language in order to understand those things from the perspective of the people who speak this language as well as master it in the end. All of this allows viewing other things from a different perspective. This, in turn, boosts your creativity, allows you to look at things as patterns, and be able to solve more complex issues on your own. According to PickWriters, most of the translators are able to complete creative tasks more efficiently and at a faster pace. This also keeps them intellectually active and satisfied with their job overall.
- Native language fluency improves. As you’re able to look at things from a different perspective, you can self-reflect better and see any flaws in your own manner of speech and whether it’s precise and correct. At the same time, when you learn a new language and master a new perspective, you can also reflect on certain positions about things that might seem more fitting for you. In the end, you can transpose those things in your native language and think, perhaps, more rationally or clearly for you about some things, entities, or ideas.
- Memory improvement and preservation. Obviously, as you have to memorize the new words and see patterns in order to remember and apply the grammar rules, your memory should significantly improve as you master a new language. Moreover, considering that the brain does serious multitasking as you learn a new language and its activity is overall higher, your memory and other cognitive (intellectual) abilities will stay with you longer. Currently, such diseases as dementia and Alzheimer’s become more and more common, which is disturbing as they disrupt our brain, stripping us from our memories and skills as we become older. One of the recommendations against these diseases is to keep your brain active, which cannot be done better than by learning a new language.
- Decreased stress and aggression. Yes, learning a new language doesn’t only make you smarter but also calmer, more rational, and overall a better person. One of the older studies suggested that people who learn more languages are able to connect better with other cultures and, hence, are more prone to understanding and less to stress out. This echoes the idea of looking at things from another perspective discussed above, so this benefit is very much true. As a bonus, by being able to look from another perspective, you are able to look at the stressor from the distance, evaluate it without fear or anxiety, and approach it decently and creatively.
Never Stop Learning
Source: Learning
Learning is truly a wonderful thing. It broadens our horizons, makes us faster, calmer, more understanding, forgiving, loving, loved, etc. By learning, we manage to grow a new and refreshed person in ourselves and look at the world from the perspective of this new and refreshed person. As we master new skills, we essentially become children that learn to walk in baby steps and, hence, we learn about patience, acceptance of failure, and imperfections of ourselves and this world. Considering this, learning languages is as twice as good as it brings out all of those things one more time, thus, doubling the payoff of our efforts. So, never doubt whenever you want to learn something new and never stop learning even if you could not succeed upon your initial try.
