Broaden your Horizons
learning a second language can change your prospective on life
Mark Twain wrote: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
The benefits of traveling are manyfold. We fear that which we do not understand, through travel you can understand and meet new people with different ideas, trying new types of food, experiencing different cultures and beliefs, seeing new sights — travelling gives you a whole world of experience and perspective, literally. Perhaps the biggest impact travel has is that it can broaden your mind. It makes you think about your own culture and beliefs too, either strengthening your convictions or causing you to rethink opinions you previously held.
Twain also once said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
learning a second language can change the way you think
To properly interact with the locals, you need to be able to speak with them, either in their own language or a common language, such as English, the lingua-franca of the modern world. You gain in confidence and independence. But there are more advantages than purely being able to communicate better with the locals on your travels, language-learning is training for your brain, it improves your cognitive performance and self control.
Studies have shown that learning second language such as English is great for your brain! When you learn a new language, you improve your planning and decision making skills, memory and reasoning, and could even delay Alzheimer’s symptoms.
Language-learning improves your overall cognitive performance. Researchers found that when a bilingual person speaks one language, the other one is active at the same time. Their brains rely on executive functions, such as attention and inhibition. Bilingual people use these mechanisms whenever they are speaking or listening.
Provide new opportunities for travel and work
Learning a second language can broaden your horizons and open up a world of opportunities for travel and employment. Out of the world’s approximately 7.5 billion inhabitants, 1.5 billion speak English — that’s 20% of the Earth’s population. However, most of those people aren’t native English speakers. About 360 million people speak English as their first language .In 2015, there were 54 sovereign states and 27 non-sovereign entities where English was an official language. The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, where the overwhelming majority of native English speakers reside, do not have English as an official language de jure, but English is considered to be their de facto official language due to its dominant position in these countries.
It is the language of commerce and of science, academia and diplomacy, on-line business, management consultancy and finance. Not forgetting, anything to do with tourism; whether your work directly in the travel industry, in hospitality (hotels, restaurants or bars) are a tour guide, ski instructor or an estate agent in a tourist destination.