One Sure Way to Improve Yourself in Every Way: Learn a New Language

Just about everyone can think of some aspect of their lives that they’d like to improve. One way to cover a lot of bases in a single swoop is to dive head first into learning a new language.

It doesn’t matter which language you choose, it just has to be new to you. It might be helpful to choose one that is already interesting to you in some way. Maybe you’ve always enjoyed French dining and would love to be able to comprehend those menus and order with confidence. Maybe you know an attractive co-worker and would love to display your knowledge of his or her native language. Whichever language direction you choose, it should be compelling to you in some way since you’re going to be spending a good deal of time mastering it.

Even though language acquisition isn’t something to embark upon lightly, keeping in mind its myriad benefits will help you stay motivated and enthusiastic as you begin to improve. And you’ll actually become smarter. Research cited in a 2004 Peoples Weekly World News article, has shown that children who grow up bilingual academically outperform their monolingual counterparts. That’s not to say that one has to grow up speaking more than one language to reap the benefits. To be sure, mastering an additional language later in life requires a different level of effort than being brought up in a multilingual environment, but it’s certainly possible, and most likely can happen more quickly than might be imagined. And it can even be fun.

Additional studies have shown that expanding your linguistic repertoire literally expands your mind. In 2004, the journal Nature reported that researcher Dr. Andrea Mechelli and colleagues compared brain tissues of individuals who were fluent in more than one language to those who spoke only one. In all cases, the multilingual brains were noticeably denser in gray matter. Brain density has been linked to intellectual capacity: the denser the tissue, the greater the capacity. Therefore, learning another language will actually make you more mentally agile and better able to learn in general.

A larger, smarter brain is only one benefit from mastering another tongue. Jumping comfortably from one language to another is always impressive. Particularly in the United States, where multilingualism is more the exception than the rule, it can certainly up your popularity and earn you greater respect to rattle off some banter in another language. It will also make you a better communicator in your native language. Many students of foreign languages claim that they understood the grammatical structure and rules of their own languages far better after having learned a foreign language.