Celebrating Diversity: Speaking Multiple Languages
In a world that is ever-evolving and globalising, a rich personal background of language, culture, and heritage goes a long way. Learning a new language is a great way to build that up. Speaking multiple languages can reap great benefits for you in the job department, in your personal development, and in your lifestyle and well-being.
With regards to your career, learning a new language can improve your attractiveness in the job market and open up new career opportunities. Businesses today are increasingly global, diverse, and multilingual both internally and externally. This means that both the consumers businesses serve and their employees themselves are becoming more and more international. Knowing a second language (or multiple) in this instance would make you a valuable employee and colleague, boosting your competitiveness in the job market. Fast-growing fields like translators, interpreters, travel and tourism, national security, and more are all focused on foreign language skills and knowledge of different cultures.
Other than your career opportunities, speaking multiple languages can also boost your personal development. Learning a language usually involves learning about a new culture, which leads to a change in the way you see other people. Interestingly, gaining a new perspective through speaking another language also helps with understanding yourself better. A professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States found that bilinguals emanate different character traits depending on what language they are speaking. Another study found “frame-shifting,” or changes in self-perception, to be common among bilinguals. For example, some found that they were more assertive in one language and more demure in another. Understanding different cultures also makes you more appreciative of others and their backgrounds, which leads to better and stronger relationships.
Finally, speaking multiple languages can also improve your lifestyle and well-being. Many studies have found that speaking another language can lead to significant improvements in brain functions like the ability to focus and perform mental tasks. As you are constantly choosing which language to speak, this gives you practice choosing important information and ignoring irrelevant or superfluous details. This seems to help people who speak multiple languages do better at multitasking and blocking out distractions.
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