Why YOU Should Learn a Language, Explained in 4 Minutes

Sources:

Alladi, S., Bak, T., Duggirala, V., Surampudi, B., Shailaja, M., Shukla, A., Chaudhuri, J. & Kaul, S. (2013). "Bilingualism delays age at onset of dementia, independent of education and immigration status". Neurology, 81 (22).

Bialystok, E., Craik, F. & Freedman, M. (2007). "Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia". Neuropsychologia.

Pawle, L. (2013). "Language skills deficit costs the UK £48bn a year". The Guardian.

Roberts, R. & Kreuz, R. (2019). "Can Learning a Foreign Language Prevent Dementia?" The MIT Press Reader.

Written and created by me
Art by kvd102
Music by me.

Translations:
Le Napolitain - French
klawik - Polish
Avaxar - Indonesian
Leeuwe van den Heuvel - Dutch

#learnlanguages #linguistics #economics

[kklein]

Dear people who watch this video. For those of you who care (myself included), I made a mistake on the map I included in the video of Serbia. This map includes Kosovo, which is claimed as Serbian territory. I support the independence of Kosovo, however, and not the Serbian government.

[IvanToshkov]

Here's a relevant joke from my country (Bulgaria):

A foreigner approaches two cops and tries to ask them for directions. He tries in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian but they don't understand him, so he just drives off. One of the cops says: "Perhaps we should learn a foreign language." and the other replies "Why bother? This guy spoke like 13 languages and it didn't help him any!"

[Aadrian]

As a language nerd, I always get mistaken for a genius whenever I bring up how many languages I know. It's a bit weird how hard most people think language learning is. It's not hard; it just takes time and consistency.

[sreckotomic]

As a Serbian yes I would be impressed if I heard Serbian somewhere

[djvel]

It's so true about the instant connection when you see someone speak your language. I know an extremely small language (Faroese) and whenever I hear someone speaking it, I instantly go up to talk to them. Faroese is a small enough language where we are usually only 1 or 2 degrees of separation away from each other.

[AlexanderVlasov]

I am totally baffled by the English argument "why should I learn THEIR language, they understand me". Yes they do, but you don't understand them -- unless they want it, which might be much rarer occasion than you believe.

[antadhg]

As an Irish speaker in Ireland your second point really rings home. Unfortunately there aren't a whole pile of Irish speakers but that makes it feel great when you hear the language in public. Striking up a conversation as Gaeilge will instantly earn the other persons respect

[yoshifan]

I (A Dutch person) am learning Finnish because I can and it gives me such joy to see connections between words in Finnish or between grammatic structures between Dutch and Finnish. It even gives me a new understanding of what everyday words in Dutch really mean. Like have you ever really really thought about how "See you!" Is literally the verb for seeing and the word for the person you are speaking to. You say such things but only when you learn them in other languages (where you know the verb to see and recognize it in the saying) can you really appreciate the genius of your own language.

[yuvalne]

When I was in highschool I met a 90-year-old person who spoke *7* languages fluently. That was one of the most impressive encounters I had, and encouraged me to learn more languages on my own.
English I got from the schooling system, so that's a given. I also studied Yiddish via an app (and am now listening to media in Yiddish to further train myself) and am in the process of learning French. I also signed up to a weekly Arabic course starting next week.
Learning languages is just so satisfying. Even simple and not really spoken languages such as the conlang toki pona. Plus the cultural aspect can be really significant in many other ways - Yiddish is the language of my great grandparents, and my grandpa's second language. Arabic is the second most spoken language in my country.
Not speaking those languages is a barrier to the knowledge possessed by those people. And I am taking these barriers one by one.

[TheClintonio]

I'm bilingual now and I'm very proud of it, I know it's somewhat common but I've become bilingual in a language that's one of the furthest from English (Japanese). I moved to Japan in part to become fluent in it and I'm loving the fact I went from barely able to hold a decent length conversation to holding entire friendships, jobs and romantic relationships in my second language.

[ZarlanTheGreen]

Also: A different language isn't just a different way to communicate. It's a different way of thinking. A different way of understanding things. A different, sometimes extremely different, viewpoint and perspective. Grasping more ways of thinking, enriches ones ability to look at things and understand them. (this is especially undeniable, when one looks at deaf people's cognitive development, depending on whether they grow up with sign language or not)

Sure linguistic determinism isn't true, but linguistic relativism most certainly is, as K Klein has also implicitly pointed out in several videos. (despite explicitly rejecting it)

I've encountered many things in Japanese, that I find to be completely alien to, and shocking, to the Indo-European mind.

[haveawonderfulday]

I'm currently trying to learn two at the same time. I just hope that I'll continue to learn them

[alexus]

I kind of regret that my second foreign language in highschool was Latin, instead of a language I can actually use. But I guess it's never to late to learn something new.

[angeldude]

I almost feel like a fraud in some sense for having an interest in linguistics and how languages work, but while only being monolingual. Learning how different languages work is always way more interesting than actually trying to read or speak them. The latter is largely memorization, which bores me extremely fast, while the former is more like being shown the pieces of a puzzle and seeing how they can fit together.

[orchidcolors]

To me, the biggest reason to learn another language is this: you learn that there are multiple and equally valid ways of conceptualizing the world, the things in it, and then communicating it to other people.

Maybe this is just my corner of the States, but you sometimes run into someone who at least appears to not understand that. They're scared of words from other languages (or it seems like a fear response to me). They seem to see English as a sort of default or something. English is a fine language, but it has the same value as any other language.

This is something that I've learned as a perennial Spanish learner. I've never been fluent, but I still learned that valuable lesson. It allows you to engage with others more fully, I think, when you see their way of communicating as different (beautiful, puzzling, exciting), but not scary.

[LingoLizard]

Learn languages to make niche linguistics videos about them, duh

[TheDrunkMunk]

The first reason (enjoyment) is all I ever needed and it was nice to hear you say that. Language learning has been the hobby that I most enjoy for about five years now. I do it every day and it makes me so happy. It's sad that some people are always so negative

[cyberherbalist]

I've just discovered how to better convince my wife to learn a language with me. Her family has a history of dementia, and she's worried about it. If learning a language helps delay onset, that would encourage her!

[beady]

Learning Dutch as a German is not only fun but also really amusing. Seeing how many words are very familiar yet also very different (and often kind of funny) is always nice to come by.

[conspiracy_risk]

I accidentally paused the video right after you said "Languages are cool and you should learn them" without realizing it, and I thought you were just doing a bit and laughed pretty hard. Then the silence kept on going and I was like, "Wow, you're really committed to this bit, but when are you going to get on with the rest of the video?" Then I realized... lmao