10 Benefits to Learn a New Language
To start, there are about 6,500 spoken languages all around the world and the most spoken language would be Mandarin Chinese with 1,213,000,000 people able to communicate through the language. To learn a new language does not only improve employment but also improves the mind.
❝If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.❞
‒Nelson Mandela
- It is an Impressive Skill to Know multiple languages
- Develop Confidence
- Improve on Decision Making Skills
- Increase Your Brain Power
- Completely Transform Your Travel Experience
- Improve Employment
- Study or Live Overseas
- Become More Open-Minded
- Discover A New Culture
- Meet new People and develop life-long Friendships
Duolingo
An app that has been rewarded as the best app of the year back in 2013 by Apple, Duolingo has easily become an efficient yet free way to understand a new language. Duolingo lets users choose a language of interest and from there will provide daily tasks to accomplish on the road to understanding the language. Users must choose a topic to study within the language such as historical figures, items, colors etc… From there Duolingo will give out a sentence in the language in which users must translate in their native language. The app treats it as if it were a game to kill time when really you are beginning to lean a new culture.
With all apps they have their ups and downs and Koko The Polyglot had an interesting blog post about the pros and cons of Duolingo.
In terms of improvement, I would like to maybe see more mini-game like learning modes where users are more visually involved while still trying to translate as it is more engaging. But, it is a free source and an incredible idea that can stay free through collaboration with the students. By translating articles from CNN and Buzz Feed to different languages, with the help of the millions of students who translate on the daily is a brilliant idea to keep the organization free to everyone around the globe.
❝Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can; there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.❞
‒Sarah Caldwell
