Four Good Reasons to Learn a New Language

that you might not have thought of

The first word I ever said in a foreign language for communication purposes was the word for ‘iron’ in Hungarian: vasaló.

This baffles me now because the one thing I never do is iron anything. But I was 11 and must have had different priorities. I was in a Jewish summer camp in Hungary (my first time in a foreign country — we still lived in Russia). I don’t remember what I needed to iron that day, but I remember very well how somebody taught me the word vasaló and the word for 'thank you' (köszönöm szépen) and showed me the way to the camp's laundry station.

I remember what it was like to walk those 200 meters holding these words in my mouth and then to say them to the large Hungarian lady folding sheets.

It was like magic. I said vasaló and voila! I had an iron.

There is something magical about the act of communicating in a foreign language.

Not that being able to say ‘iron’ counts as communication.

Communicating requires a lot more than just knowing words or even knowing lots of words plus a having a good grasp of the grammar. To hold a conversation you also need to be able to understand the other person and retrieve words from your memory fairly quickly.

I can say things in a lot of languages. I can probably call for help if I’m attacked by a bear in a distant monolingual Finnish village (I might have to do it by screaming Äiti Possu! “Mommy Pig!”). But I wouldn’t say I can communicate in Finnish.

I think people mostly associate ‘knowing a language’ with being able to converse in it freely, but not everyone wants to be a fluent speaker or be able to speak at all.

I can think of at least four other good reasons to learn a language.

For the love of grammar

I’m mostly here for the high of encountering cool language patterns.

I got unreasonably excited this week when I found that in Arabic (which I just started learning again) you can attach a personal suffix to the question word.

So win means ‘where’. To ask “Where are you?” can say Win aante? where aante means ‘you’. But you can also say it with one word, Winnak? where -ak is the suffix meaning ‘you.’

To say ‘How are you?” you can say Kif halak? Literally “how is your status?” where kif means ‘how’ and halak is hal ‘status’ plus -ak ‘yours’. But you can also say Kifak? attaching -ak ‘yours’ directly to kif ‘how.’

Things like that make me happy.

Some people enjoying learning new words in their new language and having an extensive vocabulary. Me — I get bored with words that don’t have an interesting structure or a story to tell. Vocabulary for me is just the necessary evil that is needed to hold the beauty of the grammar together.

(I know: this newsletter should be called “Friends With Grammar, Hater of Words.”)

For the love of the learning process

I admire these grammatical structures like hikers admire the view from Mount Everest. But real hikers don’t just want to be dropped off on top of Everest in a helicopter. They crave the brutal effort of ascending it.

I also wouldn’t want to just take a pill that would make me know the langauge. I want to get up there with my very own brain.

Knowing a language might be the mountaintop I’m aiming for, but it’s not worth it if you didn’t get there all bruised, having been through all the tiny wins and drawbacks at every step.

Not everyone has to enjoy the process as much as I do, but you have to be at least curious about it because as of today, the only way up there is on foot, there are no helicopters or even cable cars to take you there (and I sincerely hope there won’t ever be.)

For the love of reading

Some people learn a language because they want to read books in the original. Like this person here:

When it comes to language use, reading and writing is my comfort zone too.

Even if I have to learn a whole different script.

Even if I have to look up every other word in the dictionary.

Reading and writing don’t require me to get out of my head. Speaking does. Speaking takes me way out of my comfort zone. Besides, speaking comes with an unsettling sense of immediacy and more often than not involves another person.

Speaking for me is like bungee jumping. You can do it sometimes but it can’t be an an everyday thing.

Except that I've now developed a curious addiction to getting out of my comfort zone possibly because of the high that you get when you’re out there braving the wilderness. Even if you’re not exactly communicating yet. Even if all you get for your bravery is a bowl of green curry soup. Or an iron.

To challenge our subconscious bias…

And some of us might decide to learn a language to fight stereotypes ingrained deeply in our brains, to stop associating emphatic consonants and uvular stops with bad people. To reprogram our amygdala that’s been conditioned to send us into a fight or flight mode at the sound of a voiced pharyngeal fricative.

Took Maya to the playground so that one of us could practice her aerial while the other one is learning the Arabic script