7 Reasons to Learn Langauges
I have, you know, indulged my interest in those languages and what's behind
those languages, and I have enriched my understanding of the world.
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here, and today, uh, I want to talk about why seven
reasons why we should learn languages.
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So while talking of podcasts, uh, I did a video recently, um, where I talked
about this podcast by Joe Rogan, where on two occasions he spoke about language
learning and one of the things he said was sort of if someone came from outer
space and saw that everybody on the planet uh, spoke a different language...
or he, he talks in sort of hyperbole, but everyone has nuclear
weapons and they speak different languages, and isn't that silly?
Of course it's not silly, and I wanna talk about seven reasons why it's
such a wonderful thing that we have different languages and why it's a
good thing and what the benefits are of learning a language, another language.
So the first thing is that it's extremely interesting.
People like to learn throughout history.
Progress in the world has come from people being curious about
things, wanting to learn things.
It's a natural sort of instinct that we have.
We want to understand things, we wanna learn things.
And so languages, learning languages is a very enjoyable thing to do.
It's basically a natural impulse that we have.
So that's reason number one.
It's an enjoyable thing to do.
Reason number two, learning a language is something that is available to all of us.
We don't have to have a special talent.
We don't need to be able to run fast or jump high or sing well.
We follow our natural instincts.
Instincts that we have from birth.
The ability of the brain to be stimulated and gradually develop new patterns to
cope with the experience that the brain is, is coming up against and finding
ways to deal with this new situation.
The brain can learn.
The brain is made to learn.
The brain is made to create patterns.
The brain learns slowly, but everybody's brain can learn, so it's enjoyable.
We can all do it.
Those are two good reasons to learn a language.
The third thing is, and I'm gonna check my notes here, is that learning a language
brings tremendous opportunities in life.
Success in life depends on our ability to find new opportunities, opportunities
that might relate to friendships, that might relate to business, that might
relate to, you know, learning new things.
If we know more languages, we will come across more opportunities.
That was my experience in my life.
It was through my knowledge of Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish.
Uh, other languages, Swedish, that I was able to develop my business.
That's not to say that, you know, developing a business is the only thing
that matters in life, but it is true that the more languages you have, the
more opportunities will come your way.
Some opportunities may not be, you know, turn out to be valuable, but
if there are a lot of opportunities coming your way, the likelihood is
higher that some of these opportunities are going to be valuable to you.
So more languages, more opportunities.
Now I have my crib notes here becasue I thought this through ahead of time.
And yeah, so the next thing with learning a language is that it
helps you discover new worlds.
You know, I, I can't sort of overstate how rewarding it is for me now since
I've been learning, you know, Arabic and Persian and, and I'm going back to my
Turkish over the last three years really, and I can't speak them particularly
well, but through that I am discovering, for example, right now, I've bought a
bunch of books on, you know, central Asia, particularly a thousand years ago.
That part of the world, which we tend to think of as being in some remote
corner of the world, was actually in a way, the center of the world.
The center of learning.
And that learning was in languages that subsequently those people
there became Farsi speakers or Turkic language speakers.
But in those days, the languages were somewhat different.
But it's still through my discovery of Persian and Arabic and Turkish, that
I developed this interest in that part of the world and I'm discovering it.
And I've done the same with every language that I have learned.
I have, you know, indulged my interest in those languages and what's behind
those languages, and I have enriched my understanding of the world.
That's very powerful.
That's very rewarding.
That's another good reason to learn languages.
And, and you know, in a way related to this is the idea that learning
languages is a form of travel.
Why do people travel?
They want to...
they might go over the sunshine, but also people travel because
they want to see different places.
They want to see different parts of the world.
They want to explore different parts of the world.
Learning languages is a form of travel.
Uh, you can stay in your own home, and by learning these languages and connecting
to television stations in Lebanon as I have done, or connecting with people
in Iran, or people who have uploaded good content in Turkish on LingQ, for
example, where I'm going through these Baja stories in Turkish on LingQ.
You can travel the world through your study of languages.
So it is a form of travel.
And finally, the final point, the seventh point is learning languages
is very good for your brain because it is training your brain to develop
new skills and creating new patterns, uh, creating new neural connections.
And the more we engage in activities that help us create new neural connections
in the brain, the healthier our brain is becomes, and studies have shown that
people who learn languages are able to delay the potential onset of senility
or Alzheimer's or things of that nature.
This, again, is what Joel Rogan refers to in his podcast as the brain atrophy.
The brain is not gonna atrophy, but to the extent that you can stimulate the brain by
learning new languages, you are creating, you know, new networks, maintaining the
youth and flexibility in the plasticity of your brain, and all of that is good.
So, seven reasons.
It's enjoyable, it's available to everyone.
See if I can remember what I just said.
Available, so it's, it's enjoyable.
It's available to everyone.
Uh, it enables us to discover new things.
It brings us opportunity, uh, it's a form of travel and I know what I forgot.
And of course it's good for the brain.
And maybe this should be the last one, the one to end up on, the one that I forgot.
And that is, it helps you connect with new people.
It helps you find new friends.
You might be in an airplane sitting beside someone.
You can speak their language.
You might be traveling and you're in a restaurant, or you're in a museum, or
you're in a bar or wherever you are, and you strike up a conversation with
someone who speaks a different language.
And I have made friendships while traveling.
I have made friendships in Canada because I overhear someone speaking a different
language, a language that I speak.
I connect with them in their language, they're happy that I'm able to do that.
And we create a connection that could be a short term connection,
could be a longer term friendship.
So maybe I should leave on that, which is perhaps the most
important thing, but I forgot it.
I was, I was trying to remember my notes.
Maybe, maybe my brain is starting to atrophy.
Uh, it enables you to make new friends, new connections, all
of which is very en enriching.
So, uh, contrary to Joe Rogan who suggests that the world, we would be much better
off if we all spoke the same language.
I disagree, in fact, by learning languages and because we have
a lot of different languages.
If you learn languages, you cannot only connect with people today and
create new opportunities today and make friendships today, travel,
travel to the country today.
You also can connect with the past.
So if we all only spoke one language, we're kind of cutting
ourselves off from everything that went before literature history, uh,
documents from previous periods.
So it is in fact a wonderful thing to learn languages and
despite what you sometimes hear.
Automatic translation software is not going to change the fact that learning a
language is a wonderful thing to do for at least the seven reasons that I mentioned.
And I'll leave you with two videos that I did on the subject, uh, several
years ago on why learn languages.
Bye for now.
Thank you for listening.
