Do you want to stand out? Do you want to turn heads around wherever you might be? Most importantly, do you want to give yourselves a unique trait that will instantly separate you from all others in your professional and social circle?
If your answer is yes, then you should start learning another foreign language yesterday!
It is a common belief that learning a foreign language, in combination with the excellent use of your native one will be more than sufficient to qualify a person for the challenges of our fast-paced world. However, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Nowadays, everything is hyper-connected at a global scale and both career as well as personal life are intertwined to any development of the world around us.
Since you have already conquered one, what stops you from learning another foreign language?
There are numerous reasons why we shouldn’t stop at one foreign language!
- Welcome to a world of amazing professional opportunities.
The world of business today is international. No matter which field of work you are in, there are innumerable work positions globally. What is your passport to enter them? Foreign languages.
Multilingual people are able to communicate and interact within multiple communities. Potential employers consider this a valuable asset in an employee’s set of skills, as they’re able to connect and interact with a broader range of people. Especially, in this new age of start-ups, companies are increasingly breaking into new markets, all over the world. You will greatly add up to your personal and professional value if you’re able to negotiate with manufacturers and businessmen in another country or communicate with customers who don’t speak your native language.
Naturally, your ability to speak a second language conveys that you are motivated and driven to learn new skills, and this will also give you a competitive edge over those who haven’t yet learned more languages.
- Traveling
You are at a stage that you feel some kind of comfort before traveling, because you have mastered speaking one foreign language. And you can definitely compare that to the feeling of insecurity and probably slight panic, you used to feel before traveling to any destination, before that, when you could only speak your native language. Just imagine the excitement and impatience you will experience when you will be able to open the door to exotic destinations and experience their culture first hand as you will be able to interact with the natives.
In addition to that, you won’t be stuck in the exclusively touristic areas and activities. By speaking foreign languages, especially the language of your destination, you will be able to blend in with the locals, learn more about the place you are visiting from their stories, get invited to local celebrations, taste their cuisine and overall, escape from the all-inclusive, suffocating type of travelling.
- Establish cross-cultural friendships.
How many times have you felt regretful while being in a foreign country and feeling unable to continue a conversation with a beautiful stranger just because you are lacking the language skills? In your gut, you know that you could have formed a new friendship or other kind of relationship with that person who just walked away now smiling..?
By speaking one more foreign language, you diminish the chances of that happening again. It is certain that you will be feeling a lot more confident while traveling and you will be looking forward to form relationships with the locals. You won’t stop at the small talk, but you will be able to exchange ideas and opinions on various topics. You will be able to bridge the communication gap between you and you will be welcomed into the real life of the locals.
Imagine, from now on, how many times you will be able to travel to a foreign country where your local friends are going to be waiting for you and how many times you will host your foreign friends in your country! Soon, the whole world will feel open and ready for exploration!
- After learning one, it is 1000% easier to learn another one!
The first time you decided to learn a foreign language, it took some considerable time for you to discover how to study effectively. Probably, you tried various techniques, and after failed and successful attempts, you concluded to the best ways for you.
This time, you won’t have to go through this period again. Your brain already knows the techniques which will bring the best result. This phenomenon is actually called “metalinguistic awareness”. After learning one foreign language, your brain has trained the memory muscle. It can intrinsically understand the way to learn another language as well as how different languages are structured. This happens as the brain now enjoys an increased awareness of syntax, grammar and sentence structure.
- You become smarter and you stay smarter!
It is undeniable that learning a foreign language highly improves your memory and increases the attention span. In addition to that, learning a foreign language enhances our ability to solve problems.
As you learn to juggle from one language to another, you also improve your ability to multi-task. Last but not least, multilingual individuals are proved to be more logical and rational, as well as enriching their decision-making process and showing better perception of their surroundings at any given moment.
Now, what happens to the “stay smarter for longer”? Recent research has shown that multilingualism can prevent from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia by years. Regardless of the education level, gender or profession, multilingual people, in the linked study experienced about the beginning of Alzheimer’s, on average, 4 1/2 years later than monolingual people did.
Study results out of the American Academy of Neurology are also showing that speaking more than one language increases the amount of neural pathways in the brain, allowing information to be processed through a greater variety of channels. They have as wee, begun to demonstrate that multilingualism improves development in the brain’s areas of executive function and attention, no matter what age the language learner is.
- You become more creative!
Apart from enhancing your ability to solve a variety of problems and to think more logically, it is scientifically proven that speaking more than one language makes you more creative. This happens simply because your brain has to choose between several words to find the best equivalent for the idea you want to transmit and sometimes may even end up in creating new ones. The process of having to choose between languages and specific words, will often mean that you won’t remember the exact words you were looking for, you will substitute them with other similar words or phrases, yet somehow you will manage to express what you originally wanted.
This tampering between different worlds of languages will make you far more creative and smarter!
- It builds a stronger self-confidence!
The moment you say “yes” to learning another language is the moment that you start saying to yourself “Yes, I can.”
The moments of not understanding a single thing, the moments you fail and the moments that you will want to quit will far outnumber the moments that you will feel the slightest amount of satisfaction for actually getting something right, especially at the start. So, what?
You will continue to try and learn, anyway! Because the minute you will feel like stopping, you will look yourself in the mirror, and you will remind yourself: “ I have done this once again. It wasn’t easy but I made it. So, I can make it once again!”
This type of confidence that you are building through language learning is definitely going to expand to all sections of your life. Welcome it and dare to go for your dreams!