More or less 72% of the American population doesn’t know any other language than their own root tongue. This is not surprising, considering that English is deemed global and is the world’s most widely spoken language. Every person with a nationality other than British or American, they try to learn English as their second language out of necessity and exposure, the latter people themselves grew to be comfortable in that language but have the disadvantage of knowing only one.
Every American child grew up to be speaking in English in their daily conservations, at their home and in the school.
People often discourage themselves by thinking that they are too old to learn a new language. While being bilingual or trilingual is a skill that comes naturally for those who grew up in other non-English countries, becoming a bilingual in adulthood is not impossible to attain. It may require a lot of hard work, but it is certainly achievable.
It’s never too late to learn another language. You may not have known these scientific facts yet, but the following may motivate you to dive into it:
Improves your English fluency. Learning a second language allows you to appreciate your native tongue, and ironic as it may seem, it augments your knowledge of English vocabulary, grammar, intonation and speaking skills.
Johan Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.”
Boosts your concentration skills. Bilinguals have the ability to focus better because in their minds, they are constantly filtering out the language that they ought to use when engaged in speaking situations. In a study, researchers found that both languages are active in the speaker’s brain, only that the bilingual is being selective in what he wants to activate as he consciously switches between the two language systems.
Enhancement of the mind’s inhibitory control. Dr. Viorica Marian, a multilinguist expert and Professor at Northwestern University, stated that “inhibitory control is a hallmark of cognition.” In a study she coauthored, it was observed that children who knew two languages were better at disregarding classroom noise than the ones who know only one.[16]
Serves as a brain exercise. The most interesting part of the inhibitory control mechanism in the brain is that it acts like a lifelong brain exercise. Other skills, being a sharp shooter or a good baseball batter for instance, has the advantage of becoming almost like an automatic ability once you’ve mastered it.
Neuroscientists call this the “flow state”, in which a super skilled person masterfully execute what he’s doing while disengaged from the conscious mind. The disadvantage in this is that it becomes so easy that it is no longer mentally challenging.
When speaking however, it seems impossible to go into flow state because you have to be conscious of what you’re uttering. Thus, selecting each word on one language system, although your brain has two or three languages in store, can be a great brain exercise.
Makes you better at dealing with ambiguities. Being tolerant of ambiguities is a skill that business magnates certainly possess because they are always confronted with unpredictable situations. Knowing a second language doesn’t require you to be precise all the time.
That is why even when you are engaged in a conversation and don’t know the meaning of one word, you don’t interrupt the person speaking just to ask for its meaning. You learn to be tolerant as you go on listening even if the meaning of a message is not entirely clear to you, and through that process, you maintain the eagerness to learn more.[17]