Learning a new language can be one of the most rewarding experiences someone can undertake. This is because learning a language involves much more than simply learning the mechanisms of understand and being understood in a foreign language. Language learning is a process that may ultimately lead to a new skill, and to greater opportunities such as better career prospects and even improved cognitive function. However, language learning and the impact of being bi or multi lingual is, according to research, more wide reaching, even affecting personality and decision making.
A recent article in The Guardian newspaper that is supported by publications in scientific journals suggests that the languages that we speak can affect the way a person perceives and experiences the world. There has long been evidence that learning a second language can improve brain function. Research highlighted by the Guardian even suggests that language learning can change perspectives of how we describe the world.
Language Learning Can Change Perspectives
The case study in The Guardian and other publications acknowledges that people can report feeling like “different people” depending on the language that they are speaking at the time. It also looked at how people speaking in different languages talk and describe things differently; for example, how the way a bi-lingual person describes an event can differ from someone who is monolingual. It has also been suggested that this influence can also extend to social interactions, with a person exuding different levels of confidence and social interaction depending on the dominant language of the conversation and their relationship with it. For example, someone who speaks three or four languages may feel more confident speaking in one language than another. This will then have an impact upon interactions in that language and the personality that the speaker portrays to the rest of the group. Another area that could be affected by language experiences is the way that risk is perceived and managed. The study suggests that decisions made in a second language could be more rational than those in a first language due to the reduction in biases emanating from the first language affecting the decision. Overall, as a result of these studies we can see that language has a wide range of impacts that go beyond simple communication: language learning can change perspectives and change the way we experience the world.