Reach Further in a Shrinking World
The world is getting smaller! Hence, for the sake of improved communication among individuals, and a definite and positive edge with businesses, the knowledge of multiple languages is becoming a necessary asset.
Learn Languages for Business
Many organizations already require their employees to be multilingual in order to do business with their clients more effectively, and to better represent their brand, independent of where their business originates. Just being fluent in a foreign language makes one more empathetic with a third party. And, if that foreign language is the same as the one of the target audiences, the company may be even more successful in connecting with new consumers and penetrating whole new markets, thus gaining an advantage against the competition.
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Nelson Mandela.
Learn Languages for Social Reasons
Language learning is not limited to greater business opportunities. It can impact your personal life as well. Friends from distinct cultures and with various cultural/language backgrounds may be your ticket to “thinking outside the box”, whether for business or for leisure. These new friends may introduce you to groups or individuals you may not have had access to before – new tastes and smells related to their countries of origin, new sounds, new ideas, new concepts. These new friends may even bring you and your partner closer together for an exciting life of discoveries and memories.
But do not be presumptuous: Access to such good friends is connected to trust. Trust is conveyed through language, engaging communication, and corresponding actions. It can allow you to be more open and giving, more positive and more willing to overcome challenges. It increases closeness and tempers expectations. Therefore, it is always important to go beyond the understanding of words to the actual understanding of meaning. How?
Continuous learning. Yes, that is the biggest challenge! Because language is a living thing. It gets “adjusted” to various times, distinct locations, and diverse groups. It gets constantly updated, constructed, and deconstructed. It acquires new rhythms, new colors, new personalities, new textures. It gets influenced by other languages and ideas, space, and time. And a language learner has to deal with all of those factors all the time. Besides, if the language learned is not used regularly, it is forgotten.
Learn Languages for Personal Reasons
But learning new languages should not be a drudgery. It can and it should be a fun and playful process. Have fun with it! Look at it as a hobby. Make it interactive. Embrace diversity through language.
Be spontaneous and strive to communicate! These are two important reasons why children learn languages faster. Fearlessness. They are not concerned with grades or any other form of social judgment. They want the other person to know exactly what they want or what they think.
At one point, it is no longer enough to cry to indicate that you are hungry (or sleepy? or need your diaper changed? or have a tummy ache?). Children want to be able to state specifically that they are hungry. Or they are sleepy. Or they need their diaper changed. Or they have a tummy ache. So, they learn to say what they need to say to get what they need to get (Just let us not get into the “no” phase at this point). Later, they can use the language learned as a creative means of expression.
Body language may have helped them thus far (and continues to assist in many ways long past childhood), but as the children grow, they learn new and more effective ways to get what they want. Besides, the world continues to open before their eyes and becomes ever more complex and requires new ways to navigate the latest discoveries.
Adults would have to be extra careful and choosey when pursuing a similar path. Maturity would require a more sophisticated and organized approach. One would anticipate a more informed combination of words towards the expression of ideas. And a sequence of ideas would presume a certain meaningful, if not intentional, order. There is nothing more awkward than an adult speaking like a two-year-old child.
As an adult language learner, one must create a useful toolbox from where one would be able to retrieve the right information at the right time. As an organizer, I would go further by suggesting the use of multiple toolboxes (or folders, or notebooks, or cards) for various categories.
Different people learn in diverse ways. As long as one has decided to learn another language, that person must find the way that best suits one’s style and the best method to advance in one’s learning process.
Learn Languages for Physical Motives
But, independent of your professional and/or social environment, a new language learned holds many practical benefits affecting the functions of your brain (reading comprehension, memory, aging, analytical processing, etc.), which will open the doors to new ways of thinking, communicating, and living. It could be the equivalent to a gym for the mind, where you exercise, build, and enhance your thinking and processing capabilities. Besides, learning and speaking another language will make you sexier as well.
If you are interested in exploring a better understanding and command of a new language, such as Brazilian Portuguese, Lithuanian, or American English , BRALITUSA may be able to help you on your journey.
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