1. You can speak to more people

Ultimately, isn’t this the main reason why the majority of people acquire a second language? You can build stronger relationships and understanding when you converse with others in their native tongue. If you start learning a foreign language when you’re young, you’ll benefit for the rest of your life from cross-cultural friendships, more opportunities in the workplace, fascinating travel experiences, and a greater understanding of other people’s perspectives.

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You can communicate with over a billion people globally if you learn Mandarin. You can converse with an additional 650 million people if you learn Hindi. Speaking Spanish will earn you about an additional 420 million. Speaking English would practically allow you to communicate with half of the world’s population!

Even though English has emerged as the global language of choice, acquiring a foreign language—or two—increases communication opportunities and provides access to the many advantages of bilingualism.

2. It develops kids’ minds

Research has indicated that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals on tasks requiring multitasking and attention to detail. According to brain scans, the areas of their brain related to executive function have more gray matter. It is hypothesised that bilinguals benefit from extra practice in attentional focus due to the mental gymnastics involved in constantly selecting the appropriate language at the appropriate moment.

These advantages are evident from an early age; according to recent research, babies exposed to multiple languages before the age of a year old exhibit distinct cognitive patterns in their brains from those of monolinguals. In fact, some researchers contend that exposing young children to multiple languages is the best way to produce smarter children.

3. It raises test results in foundational subjects.

Research involving tens of thousands of high school students has revealed that those who have taken foreign language courses score higher on the English and math portions of the American College Test (ACT). According to more research, students’ SAT verbal scores increase the longer they study a foreign language. So, encourage your child to learn a foreign language if you want her to do exceptionally well on those exams.

4. It improves children’s proficiency in their mother tongue

It was once thought that children would become confused by learning a second language. According to recent research, children who study a foreign language outperform students who are not bilinguals on standardized tests in their native tongue. Children learning a second language begin reading earlier, and the benefit grows the earlier the second language is introduced to them, according to additional research. Furthermore, bilingual kids were more adept than monolingual kids at recognizing sentences that lacked proper grammar. “Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own,” as Goethe once said.

5. Learning a foreign language as a child is simpler

Everyone has heard babies referred to as “sponges” for language acquisition. There is a “critical period” for language acquisition, according to research, during which your brain is ready to learn. After puberty, we are less capable of learning a second language.

According to Dr. Patricia Kuhl’s research at the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, babies begin to lose their “ear” for sounds in other languages by the time they are 8 to 12 months old. Instead, they begin to concentrate on the sounds in their native tongue. If the infants are exposed to a second language, though, they continue to be able to discriminate those unfamiliar sounds.

Children can learn to speak a second language with flawless grammar and no accent up until the age of 7 or 8. The capacity to learn a foreign language gradually deteriorates after this crucial time.

Additionally, learning additional foreign languages becomes simpler after you’ve mastered one. Therefore, it is easier if you start your children early in learning a foreign language.

6. It increases compassion

Children who were monolingual and bilingual were tested by Dr. Katherine Kinzler of Cornell University on a task that required them to understand someone else’s point of view. Children raised in bilingual settings outperformed children raised in monolingual settings. “Children in multilingual environments have social experiences that provide routine practice in considering the perspectives of others,” according to Dr. Kinzler. “They have to think about who speaks which language to whom, who understands which content, and the times and places in which different languages are spoken.”

7. It guards against cognitive decline brought on by aging.

According to certain research, persons who routinely speak a second language may be able to postpone dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, by 4.5 years. It is hypothesized that bilinguals create a “cognitive reserve” that helps postpone dementia symptoms by strengthening the brain’s executive function.

8. It advances intercultural comprehension

It is crucial that we get along because there are 7 billion of us on the only planet in the universe that is known to be inhabited. And as any relationship therapist will tell you, effective communication is essential to getting along. If at least you can understand each other’s language, that becomes much easier.

However, acquiring a foreign language has a greater impact. Because language and culture are so closely related, learning a foreign language fosters cross-cultural understanding and offers profound insights into the perspectives of others. Linguistic relativists contend that our language usage shapes our worldview.

Even the same person may respond to questions differently depending on the language they are asked in, according to research!

There are various ways that learning a language can develop your brain. Certain languages only use the geographic coordinates—north, south, east, and west—instead of arbitrary terms like left and right, to describe where something is. It should come as no surprise that those languages’ speakers have remarkable spatial navigation skills.

Learning a language gives one insight into the cultural customs that influenced its development. For instance, there are distinct terms for relatives in Chinese based on their birth order and whether they are from the mother or father’s side. Why? This used to transmit significant information about a person’s social standing in ancient China.

Speaking their language therefore enables us to gain a deeper understanding of how others perceive the world, if getting along truly does depend on our ability to put ourselves in their position.