Why Is It So Important To Learn A Foreign Language?

Speaking is not only an action which is caused by mouth or larynx but primarily a mind mechanism. Indeed, being able to speak several languages enables to challenge our brain and eventually to speak better. Not only because mastering a new language is not so easy but above all because a language is a new concepts reservoir, provided with various sonorities and rhythms and sometimes having distinct symbolism through different writing for example. Speaking a language is not only an intellectual effort, it’s also about space travelling bringing us toward a world in which we act differently. Since a language owns its own characteristics, it’s logical that one reinforces one’s own trait depending on whether one expresses oneself in Shakespeare’s, Moliere’s, Cervantes’ or Confucius’ language.

One’s soul expresses itself through the filter of the language, thus some languages are preferable to others when it comes to being firm, sweet, sensitive, tenacious, rigorous, poet, laughing, sad, rigorous or even fiery.

That’s why it’s important to learn a language, one learns one’s own alterity with it, which in turn draws one closer to others. Consequently, bilingualism and let alone multilingualism teaches us the virtue of tolerance and the purest empathy toward other cultures. One knows how ridiculous it can be to see the arrogance of some people who ask for others to speak their native language while traveling overseas and become offended when the interlocutor isn’t able to do so. The apprenticeship of languages is in short not a modern necessity, it’s above all the key to one’s own realization and ennoblement of one’s own character.