Language is Music. Over 70 Fun & Easy Tips to Learn Foreign Languages by Susanna Zaraysky
We’ve all heard the word “globalization.” The phenomenon has various effects in our lives. One of them is the necessity to be able to communicate with people in different parts of the world. As traveling, working, immigrating, and living abroad become more common, increasing numbers of people are multilingual. Government jobs pay a bonus for each foreign language an employee can speak.
On January 30, 2012, the BBC’s Newshour interviewed me for a segment concerning the shortage of foreign language speakers to service export markets, which is costing the British economy between 11 and 26 billion dollars a year in exports. The British Education and Employers Taskforce had published a report, titled “The economic case for language learning and the role of employer engagement,” showing that many British employers had unfilled vacancies in various professional sectors for people with foreign language skills. Unlike their peers in mainland Europe, British youth were neither motivated nor forced to learn foreign languages, despite the fact, in the words of the report, that “more languages grad- uates are in work or study than their peers who studied Law, Architecture, Business or Computer Science, and earning high average wages.”
The reality is we have to be multilingual to thrive in this globalized economy. Young generations see the necessity to learn foreign languages for their careers.
A few months later, my Spanish skills were in demand. The Argentine Secretary of Communication was visiting Silicon Valley on a trade visit, and I was the only completely fluent Spanish speaker in our office. Even though I wasn’t even old enough to legally rent a car, my boss convinced the car rental company to let me drive the Argentine Secretary of Commerce and his entourage around in a rented van! Like with the Russian delegation, I attended meetings with top Silicon Valley executives whom I would otherwise not have had the opportunity to meet. Being in an Argentine environment was wonderful practice for me because I was going to Argentina the following year as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar.
Neither of these opportunities would have been available to me if I didn’t speak Russian or Spanish.
Even if you don’t engage in international business, being multilingual is important. According to United States Census data, 20% of US households speak a language other than English. Politicians and companies are targeting their messages to non-English-speaking communities. One of the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary debates was telecast in Spanish. In the 2006 California Democratic Gubernatorial Race, the candidates’ Chinese speaking family members made campaign announcements in Mandarin.
If the professional reasons for being multilingual have not convinced you yet, please consider that speaking another language keeps your brain healthy and helps children be more confident.
A research study by Viorica Marian, Ph.D. and Anthony Shook of North- western University, published in Cerebrum Magazine in September/October 2012, showed that “the bilingual brain can have better attention and task-switching capacities than the monolingual brain, thanks to its developed ability to inhibit one language while using another. In addition, bilingualism has positive effects at both ends of the age spectrum: Bilingual children as young as seven months can better adjust to environmental changes, while bilingual seniors can experience less cognitive decline.”
Actively speaking another language throughout your life may delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease because your brain is used to task-switching, going from one way of thinking to another.
The January 2013 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience reported that, “Recent behavioral data have shown that lifelong bilingualism can maintain youthful cognitive control abilities in aging.”
If you raise your children in a bilingual or multilingual environment, the benefits of this upbringing will go far beyond just the ability to speak in different languages. According to the American Psychiatric Association’s report on a study done by Wen-Jui Han, Ph.D. (Columbia University) and Chien-Chung Huang, Ph.D. (Rutgers University School of Social Work), “Being able to speak two languages likewise seems to reduce, in children, negative internalizing states such as anxiety, loneliness, and poor self-esteem, and negative externalizing behaviors such as arguing, fighting, or acting impulsively.” Han and Huang hypothesized that when bilingual youngsters understand two cultures, they can better appreciate diversity and get along with their peers and teachers.
Speaking more than one language is like a mental juggling act for your brain. Join in the fun!
Imagine foreign languages are like keys, both in the musical and physical sense. The more keys your voice can produce equals more physical keys you have to open doors to new horizons. Let me open up your world to the sounds of other languages. It will open doors you never knew existed!
- anxiety - тревога
- capacitie - мощность
- decline - снижаться
- demand - спрос
- diversity - разнообразие
- likewise - также
- loneliness - одиночество
- maintain youthful - поддерживать юношеский...
- multilingual - многоязычный
- necessity - необходимость
- peers - сверстники
- self-esteem - самооценка