Side Benefits to Learning a Language
If each one of these stuffed animals spoke a different language, what languages would they speak? And which one would be French? Tours, France. September 3, 2020.
I’ve now spent a solid eighteen months in full-court-press effort to learn French. (Whew.) In the process, especially once I passed the baby-steps phase, I discovered a few unexpected side benefits that I’ve found interesting to contemplate (and that have kept me slogging forward).
This—the realization and the contemplation—led me to wonder about the side benefits that other language learners may have uncovered in their journeys. After all, the umpteen classes I’ve taken over the past year and a half have shown me that more people in the world try to learn languages (and with dedication!) than I’d realized. Each one of these people must have their own experiences and perspectives to add to the conversation.
So I did a little musing and a little research and I figured I’d share what I’ve learned.
What are the Primary Benefits of Language Learning?
The four primary benefits of language learning remain the primary reasons people learn a second (or third or beyond) language:
If you’ve moved to a location where many or most people do not speak your native language, speaking the local language will help you navigate life, make friends, and find work.
Speaking of work, if you have additional languages in your repertoire, they look mighty nice on a resume or curriculum vitae—even if the job you want doesn’t require them.
Languages in addition to your native language will help you exercise your brain (important at any age and especially critical after you’ve finished your ongoing, regular schooling).
If you love to travel, you’ll find facility in one of the world’s predominant languages (the world has over 7,100 languages as of this writing, though more than half of the world’s population speak only 23 of them) gives you a better experience when visiting a country where your additional language is the primary language.
Though some people dabble in language learning for the latter two reasons, the people who really apply themselves to language learning do so for the first two reasons: life in a new country and securing employment.
First: Why Did I Decide to Learn French?
In other words, to which of the primary reasons for language learning can I credit my intensive effort?
I started with number three (brain play) and wound up really applying myself to the task when the primary reason shifted to number one (moving to a francophone region).
Here’s the story:
Before we married, I signed up for a French language class to learn a few words in Arnaud’s native language and to give my brain a new challenge. However, I quickly realized that two classes a week without much practice otherwise meant I couldn’t really call the activity “language learning.”
When we moved to Lausanne, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, I didn’t have much time the first year for dedicated language learning, yet I realized even before we moved that if I wanted to build friendships and truly enjoy the region (and more of France), I needed to lean into learning French.
About a year into life here, after I’d created more space in my schedule for the process, I tossed nearly all my free time into language learning to try to build a base layer of French. I defined “base layer” as a level of functionality via which I could manage the more basic life tasks. On the (very wordily phrased) Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, or CEFR scale, I defined a base layer as functioning at the A1-A2 level.
Though I could have gotten there in a more slow and measured fashion, I knew that the early stages would feel extremely frustrating—and hoped that an intensive effort at the beginning would push through the pain as quickly as possible and give me a quicker route to feeling progress. And a feeling of progress always motivates me to keep going.
Did it work? Yes and no. I overestimated how comfortable I’d feel out in the world at the A1-A2 level. (I didn’t feel comfortable at all.) The base layer I’d envisioned meant more like the B1-B2 level—and that took a significantly longer time to reach than a handful of months.
A year and a half later, though I haven’t yet taken a formal test, my teacher estimates that I’ve reached a B2 conversation level that borders on the C1 level, a C1-C2 reading-comprehension level, a B2 level when it comes to listening comprehension, and a B2 level with my written French.
If you’d asked me to predict my language level after an intensive effort over eighteen months, I’d have said that I’d never manage to work this hard at it for this long. And I’d have said that, if I did somehow keep trudging at this intensity, I should be able to give moving keynote speeches after a year and a half.
Unexpected Side Benefits to Learning a Language
I have, at least, achieved a level at which I’ve discovered three predominant side benefits to language learning that can, if you look at them from the right angle, make it even more rewarding (and fun):
Language learning reintroduces sustained frustration—something we rarely experience in the same way after we exit regular schooling. Pushing yourself to fight through frustration to accomplish something that feels nearly impossible at times—especially when nothing (like mandatory education) requires you to keep going—builds resilience and patience. We all need resilience and patience at all stages of our lives.
Language learning increases understanding and compassion for people who do not speak your own native language fluently. When you’ve felt awkward and maladroit trying to speak a language not your own—knowing full well your own intelligence and competence in your native language—you will have more patience to put up with someone speaking in a choppy or broken manner. Further, your newfound openness to nonnative speakers will expose you to relationships with people from walks of life and with experiences and backgrounds you’d never otherwise meet.
Once you relax into it enough, you'll find that language learning provides a sense of play and creativity that your life might have lost. After the earliest stages of childhood, adults teach us to buckle down, get serious, and focus our energies on useful activities with defined goals and purposes. In the process, we lose our sense of play. Even if you have an end goal for your language learning, you’ll reach a point in the educational process where you experience afresh the feeling of making something new with new building blocks. And—key elements of play—you’ll regain comfort with making mistakes, feeling silly, and laughing at yourself.
I tend to be extremely Type A and focused, so rediscovering play and allowing myself to fight through frustration (even when I have other things to do) has been a good exercise in keeping myself nimble and bringing in a little joy and laughter, too.
As for increased understanding and compassion, we could all use a little more of both. While I like to believe that I work hard to cultivate empathy, I recognize that we all need to keep exercising empathy to cultivate it further.
More Language-Learning Positives
I asked people on Twitter who’ve learned additional languages what side benefits they discovered in the process.
People mentioned better listening skills, an improved understanding of English grammar and etymology, an increased problem-solving capability through training the mind to view things from a different perspective, and training the structures in the mouth to improve pronunciation in general—including in the native language.
I hadn’t considered most of these additional benefits, though I can honestly say that I’ve had the same a-ha moments in my own learning journey with French. (Though I still can’t manage to correctly pronounce words with “-euil” in them, such as “écureuil” for squirrel and “fauteuil” for armchair. I may give up on -euil words.)
In further research, I found an article by Foreign Policy guest columnist Captain Mark Jacobsen (from the U.S. Air Force) musing on the same topic from a very different perspective: one of someone in the military living in Jordan and studying Arabic and conflict resolution. (He had much higher stakes with his learning than mine, I daresay.)
Jacobsen wrote about many of the same a-ha moments as my Twitter correspondents and me. He added two other interesting side benefits: He said that learning a new language taught him how to learn, in that he discovered what learning methods worked for him—a knowledge he can transfer to other learning challenges. Second, he learned “how to make relationships, what skills are important, what details to pay attention to. These skills will carry over to other languages and other cultures in the future.”
Further, Jacobsen’s editorial added depth to my experience around deepened compassion and empathy for others via language learning. He wrote that cross-cultural communication often means communication in broken languages. To learn better how to communicate with the world, we better need to understand how to communicate reasonably well in other languages and to stay open-minded and patient with nonnative speakers of our own language.
“Fluency” has Multiple Definitions
One of the biggest a-has I’ve had in learning French? The word “fluency” has multiple definitions.
Before I started my language-learning journey, I may have thought I could achieve native-born fluency. I’ve learned otherwise. I will never gain the facility, fluidity, agility, and elegance in French that I have in English.
Today, I define “fluency” as having the ability to read, write, think, and communicate at the highest levels—even I make a few mistakes, mix in a few wrong words, stumble in my search for an expression, or have to look up an occasional word when reading a book or watching French-language programming.
Alas, I haven’t reached fluency yet—even by my latest definition.
What I thought I’d need to do to achieve fluency hasn’t gotten me anywhere close. In fact, what I thought I’d need to do to be functional didn’t get me anywhere close.
Yet I persevere, even through the frustration, because I see momentary glimmers of progress, because I don’t want to waste the immense effort I’ve put into this process—I can’t get this far and just give up!—and because I want to participate in a world that I can only access with this new-to-me language.
If you’ve worked hard to learn a second language, why? What got you started? What benefits have you seen? And why do you keep going (or why have you stopped)?
P.S.—Also trying to learn a new language? Click here for a collection of articles about my experience—and the resources I’ve used!