It has long been established that being multilingual aids you in your career growth. Being multilingual can even help you climb the corporate ladder faster than your work colleagues. By picking up a second language, you will not only be equipped with long-term health benefits, but there are also many other gains to be obtained for professional and personal life.
Let’s look at some of the important health benefits of becoming a multilingual:
Boosting concentration
Indeed, picking up anything new after already starting on your professional life generally requires more focus. The quote “it is never too late to learn” is accurate, but after a certain age, more concentration and effort is needed for the individual to learn correctly. It is why teaching a second language to your kids is much easier than when they are older. When we grow older, full concentration is required to absorb and learn these foreign languages, and thus enhance our concentration levels.
Increasing memory
It is not an easy feat to learn a foreign language. As individuals, we are often much more comfortable speaking a language we already know and moving out of our comfort zone to learn the basics of a second language is a difficult task. Many languages, such as Mandarin, Spanish and French, aren’t easy languages to pick up. Even getting started with Japanese courses can be pretty tricky as our memory power has to increase further for us to speak and master any language. The grammar and pronunciation takes up a lot of remembering, and thus exercises our memory in keeping it sharp.
Mastering your first language
Learning a second language makes you more aware of your mother tongue. For example, as you learn Japanese or any other foreign language, you acquire linguistic skills that enable you to master your mother tongue. It can be easier to distinguish between the grammars of the two languages and speak your mother tongue language better.
Delay of memory-related diseases
It is scientifically proven that human memory grows weaker with age, as speaking regularly in a foreign language requires the exercising of your mind always. Due to such mental exercise, many grow to become sharper than monolinguals at old age. Memory-related diseases in old age can be delayed as we learn and converse in a foreign language. The two most common examples of progressive diseases, dementia and Alzheimer’s, can be delayed by picking up a foreign language. Such symptoms are common among the older generation and knowing a foreign language can aid us in delaying memory loss.
Slow down ageing process
Physical exercise proves that we can keep our body fit. Similarly, we should also look to exercise our minds and keep them fit. Multilinguals require exercising of their minds to converse and speak a foreign language. The more you exercise your mind, the more it slows down the ageing process. When we speak more than one language, our human abilities such as multi-tasking, creativity, reasoning and problem-solving become much stronger. It, in turn, helps our brain work faster and better as we grow old.
Being multilingual not only benefits your career but also has many positive impacts on your health. It gives you one more reason not to delay and pick up a second language.