Learning new languages is not just an opportunity to improve yourself career wise, or get yourself a nice job. Not even the cultural benefits are the extent of it.
Being a polyglot is more of a mental exercise that can serve as a tool that will in turn make you more aware and comfortable into using your own language, forming thoughts into sentences and helps you express yourself more.
Here are some benefits that are known to come along with learning a new foreign language, that really stand out and make you give another thought into engaging yourself in such a journey:
1. Positive effect on intellectual growth
This is actually quite understandable but nevertheless it must be mentioned here. You see, being a polyglot, learning a new language and the whole idea of multilingualism makes you more efficient in tapping into your intellectual capabilities and gives your brain the exercise it needs in order to develop furthermore.
You first start with learning words and associate one term with another in your brain. Afterwards this expands into learning phrases, ways to order the words into meaning and as soon as you know you’ve made quite a lot of an intellectual growth.
The brain soon starts to associate between other things in life, build the similar pattern when approaching problem solving and this process continues even outside the classroom.
Although the link between language learning and emotional growth is not yet fully explored, it is well know that learning a new skill always promotes the idea of independence and increased self-confidence. By learning a new language, you stop depending on other people and develop a sense of self-reliance.
2. Greater sensibility and sharper ear
Funny fact, but multilingualism helps your awareness become more expanded, thus making you more of a sponge in terms of taking information. You grab each and every sentence more quickly, and your ear (read subconscious) is sharper when deciding which information is worthy enough for it to give attention to.
3. Improves the understanding of your own language
This is quite interesting phenomena. People that start studying second language, and the polyglots overall tend to make better sentence constructions in their own native language, and choose their words more aptly and suitably.
Therefore these people start to become more eloquent over time, and their whole spectrum of words in their own language, as also their usage of the language itself becomes more and more expanded and sophisticated.
4. Gives you more flexibility in thinking
Many people have come to realize that with learning a new language their response time when it comes to participating in a conversation of any kind whatsoever is dramatically decreased.
It is like all of the sudden you’ve become this conversational wizard, and have better word to serve each purpose. You browse through your vocabulary in an instant, and word selection is something that is now so damn easy, just because you decided to embrace the idea of multilingualism.
Being eloquent feels like second nature now, and you’ve come to realize that not only your speech skills are improved, but also your ability to come up with analogies, stories, and better ways to correlate or interpret things.
5. New people and new cultures
Although you’re probably now thinking of me as the master of the obvious, it is really important that we acknowledge this one too. Imagine being able to experience another culture independently from your own, and do that in the way that culture is being supposed to be experienced.
Imagine how many people, and by that how many understandings of the world in which we live have never been possible for you to see, examine and experience. Imagine that those boundaries are now gone. Just imagine the countless possibilities by being a polyglot.
6. Social circles attention
By what I’ve put together above, I assume you can guess the parameters of this one. Your status is now different in social circles, and you start to differentiate with others in some ways when you adopt new language, and the effects its learning process has. Need to say more than the fact that you are now at least slightly more appreciated?
7. Advantages of being a polyglot in this modern day material world
Even though I don’t quite want to talk about this one, the one thing that is for sure is the fact that you are now way ahead of your competition. In terms of employment, seeking better job opportunities, going one bar up on the corporate scale… You name it, it really doesn’t matter. Multilingualism will open many opportunities, and give you the upper hand nowadays.
This list can go on, but this is what I came up with so far, and what I personally consider to stand up as being important on this matter. You can feel free to add a thing or two in the comment section right below or share your experience with multilingualism and the possible advantages that you’ve encountered by being a polyglot. In fact I really want to know what you have to add, and learn to appreciate the language learning process more and more.
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