Top 11 Benefits Of Learning A New Language

Language is like a bridge to knowledge, that helps to close cultural gaps between each other.

A few months ago, during my vacation overseas, I went to try out this particular street food. After I placed my order, the lady smiled and said something in their local language to me, unbeknown by the meaning, I smiled and nod back to her. After she handed my food over, I started munching it. On that night, I had been running back and forth to the toilet, wondering what did that lady had done to my food.

I started to reflect on what happened and I realised that I was being ignorant of what the lady had said to me. Instead of clarifying with her what she meant, I chose to smile and nod.

Prior to my visit, the thought of learning the local language has been lingering in my head, but I was giving myself excuses like I do not have extra time, I do not know where to start or I might take too long to master this language.

After such an unforgettable experience, I became determined to proceed with my thought. Along with my journey, I found out that learning a new language does benefit me in many ways.

11 Benefits Of Learning A New Language

1. Ability Of Selective Attention Control Is Higher

Due to the need of constantly juggling between two or multiple languages, a bilingual or multilingual brain is practised to eliminate irrelevant distraction and allows the focus to be where it needs to be, according to Dr. Judith Kroll, Professor of Psychology and Linguistics. With that being said, by learning a new language enable us to exercise our minds and allowing us to have a longer span of selective focus.

2. Provide A Unique And Customize Experience

“You can’t see other people’s point of view when you have only one language” a quote by Frank Smith.

With customer loyalty as one of the biggest challenges faced by marketers today, by providing a unique customer experience is very crucial as customer retention plays a big part in business development. A remarkable customer service will leave a lasting impression for customers and enticing them to spread a good word about their encounter with their friends and family. One way to achieve that is to speak their language.

For example, a nurse can take better care of her patient if he/she can converse in his/her patient’s language, a customer service representative has higher chance to recover a customer in after sales care if both of them converse the same language.

3. Harmonizing In A Diverse Workforce

Being multilingual helps to build relationships in a deeper level with your co-workers or your superiors. It provides you with the depth of understanding behind someone’s decisions or actions as speaking a foreign language indirectly enables you to understand the culture behind the language as well.

For instances, In Japanese culture, it is common to have Japanese colleague coming up to you and say “otsukaresama deshita” before you leave your workplace. It has the meaning of paying respect to someone who did a good job or thank you for your hard work. Whereas in Swedish culture, the Swedes will take their coffee break during work hours seriously to socialise with colleagues as this can be seen as a way to catch up with each other on work-related news informally, which in Swedish work culture also known as “Fika”.

4. Open Up A World of Job Opportunities

Being multilingual or bilingual might just open the door of opportunity to travel overseas. Especially international companies, where some might have their branches or business at different corners of the world, occasionally requires a multilingual employee to travel over, whether is to support a new branch opening, to develop promotion strategies, to meet an important overseas supplier or to visit a project site. Thus, by just learning a new language can increase your chances of being chosen to travel by the company, if possible, with all expenses paid.