How Will Learning a Second Language Change My Worldview?

How Will Learning a Second Language Change My Worldview?

By Sarah Eckert | 5-minute read

People often decide to learn a new language for work, travel, or the many brain health benefits it provides. But what you may not pay as much attention to is the ways that learning a second language (or third or fourth, for that matter) changes your outlook on the world. In this article, we will explore what the research says about how learning a new language can alter your worldview in a positive way.

Deeper Understanding of the World and its Diversity of People

One commonly experienced effect of learning a new language is a deeper understanding of the diversity of the human race. In one qualitative study, Johnson and Nelson (2010) interviewed three students who had recently taken two semesters of college-level introductory Spanish. All three of these students felt that learning Spanish was not only teaching them how to speak the language, but also providing them with insights into the diversity within Hispanic cultures. Over the course of the class, they came to understand that “there is no one Hispanic culture, but that the Hispanic world is a multicultural place” (p. 43). In this way, the students were able to replace inaccurate stereotypes with more nuanced awareness. Furthermore, learning Spanish made all three students more aware of their own culture’s ethnocentrism—its centering of itself as superior to other cultures—thus reaching a vantage point from which to challenge this belief.

This increased understanding of and respect for a diversity of cultures and worldviews makes us better at intercultural communication, enabling us to have more meaningful and generative interactions with people who come from different cultural and/or language backgrounds than us. Learning a new language also improves our mental flexibility, in part because it requires that we learn how to present information in different ways depending on the context and language of our conversation (Cárdenas & Verkuyten 2021).

All three of these skills—an appreciation of diversity, intercultural communicative ability, and mental flexibility—lead us to understand more about our fellow humans, making us more informed citizens of our interconnected world.

Less Prejudice, More Acceptance

Another way that learning a new language may change your worldview is by making you more accepting of differences and inviting you to challenge stereotypes that you may have held previously. Mepham and Martinovic (2018) conducted a study in the Netherlands, where 94% of the population is multilingual, 77% of which can speak fluently in at least three languages. They found that as the number of languages we can speak increases, so does our general acceptance of others. This is partly because of the mental flexibility that I mentioned in the previous section. Put another way, learning a new language leads to an “awareness that in any given situation there are options and alternatives available… [a] willingness to be flexible and adapt to the situation, and self-efficacy in being flexible” (Mepham & Martinovic 2018, p. 53). This mental flexibility in turn leads us to develop “the recognition of, and insight into, alternative cultural worldviews and a reframing of those held by [our own culture]” (p. 54). In short, when we work towards adding a new language to our repertoire, we are likely to become less judgmental in the process.

Increased Sense of Connection and Belonging

Learning a new language is a great way to foster a sense of belonging through new ways of thinking. “It encourages students to… explore concepts like community, national identity, and cultural relativity; and embrace the individual’s place in and responsibility to an interconnected global community” (Johnson & Nelson 2010, p. 38). Many studies have discovered a strong link between language learning and a feeling of solidarity with native speakers of that language (Cárdenas & Verkuyten, 2021; Johnson & Nelson 2010; Mady 2011). These are just a couple of the ways that learning a new language makes us feel more connected with others.

Mady’s (2011) paper entitled The Results of Short-Term Bilingual Exchanges Keep on Ticking: Long-Term Impacts of Brief Bilingual Exchanges is a report on a series of interviews with individuals years after they had taken part in a bilingual exchange program for Anglophone and Francophone Canadian youth, subsidized by the Society for Educational Visits and Exchanges in Canada (SEVEC). The interviews revealed that even ten to fifteen years after the experience, participants reported that they were eager to seek out multicultural experiences and travel more due to the bilingual exchange program. Many interviewees cited music as one aspect of their second language’s culture that made them feel more connected to native speakers. Some discovered that their opportunities, career-based and otherwise, were improved due to their second language abilities. Throughout the participant responses, an enhanced sense of community was a recurring theme.

Another study from the Netherlands is centered around European identity and how learning additional European languages can foster a sense of connection with Europeans from outside of one’s home country, for the benefit of a strong European Union (Cárdenas & Verkuyten 2021). Dutch nationals were asked to complete two surveys about their sense of identity. In the end, “the results of both studies show[ed] that more frequent European foreign language usage was associated with greater openness to other cultures (Study 1) and other ideas (Study 2)” (p. 342). This shows us that learning a new language leads us to identify ourselves as connected with a greater percentage of the human population.

Language learning can also lead to deeper connections within one’s first language community. Group activities, frequently used in language classes, foster a community of mutual support and encouragement in which many students enjoy learning with their peers. Additionally, some students have shared that teaching their children what they themselves are learning in their language class is a deeply meaningful experience that makes second language learning even more worthwhile (Johnson & Nelson 2010).

New Perspectives

Learning a new language will almost certainly bring new perspectives into your life. In an illuminating TEDTalk, cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky points to the variety of ways our languages shape our perception of reality in deeply transformative ways. One example she shares is that of the Kuuk Thaayorre people in Cape York, Australia. In their language, there are no words like “left” or “right”. Instead, they describe everything in terms of cardinal directions, so “turn left” becomes “turn North Northeast” or whichever direction applies. Because of their language being constructed in this way, everyone in the community, including very young children, are unbelievably well-oriented at all times (Boroditsky 2017).

Language constructs our reality in many other ways too, such as grammatical gender, color perceptions, and how we describe events. For example, in German, the sun is feminine and the moon is masculine. In Spanish, the opposite is true (Boroditsky 2017). In what ways could the gender we perceive something as change how we think about it? With about 7,000 languages spoken throughout the world, learning a different language can mean learning an entirely new way of thinking. “Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe,” Boroditsky offers, “but 7,000” (12:35).

Putting it All Together

In summary, learning a new language might change your worldview in a variety of wonderful ways, such as:

• Helping you understand more about the world around you,
• Replacing prejudice with acceptance,
• Increasing your feelings of connection and belonging,
• Providing you with new perspectives,
• And so much more!

In today’s globalized yet divided times, it is more important than ever to open our hearts and minds to new possibilities, diverse groups of people, and deeper understandings of ourselves. You have so much to gain by taking that first step towards learning a new language. Go for it!

References

Boroditsky, L. (2017). How language shapes the way we think [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/dubbing/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think?audio=en&language=en

Cárdenas, D., & Verkuyten, M. (2021). Foreign Language Usage and National and European Identification in the Netherlands. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 40(3), 328–353. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X20979631

Johnson, S. M., & Nelson, B. M. (2010). Above and beyond the syllabus: transformation in an adult, foreign language classroom. Language Awareness, 19(1), 35–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658410903079165

Mady, C. (2011). The Results of Short-Term Bilingual Exchanges Keep on Ticking: Long-Term Impacts of Brief Bilingual Exchanges. Foreign Language Annals, 44(4), 712–726. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01158

Mepham, K. D., & Martinovic, B. (2018). Multilingualism and Out-Group Acceptance: The Mediating Roles of Cognitive Flexibility and Deprovincialization. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 37(1), 51–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X17706944