Learning Languages

Hello coffee lovers and avid readers! Welcome to Olive’s Corner at Olive’s Café, where you get insights on thoughts of life.

Here’s my opinion on learning languages: I truly believe that learning languages is so much fun, and it opens the doors to many opportunities.

When I took Linguistics courses for my minor in college, I learned that there are thousands of languages spoken in the world, and yet I only know two languages while learning a third. My love for languages started in college when I wanted to practice learning Korean, and because I learned so much in Linguistics, it helped with practicing even more and even improved my Spanish. At first, learning a new language is difficult especially when we don’t know where to start, but once we start somewhere, it gets easier the more we practice.

When people ask, “How many languages do you speak?” some of us would say that we speak two, three, or even four languages, and I truly believe that speaking multiple languages will help with career opportunities, especially when these careers involve a lot of traveling and meeting people in different countries. Traveling and career opportunities are awesome reasons to learn a new language, but another reason to learn a new language is to communicate with people who speak the language so it’s also much easier for them to communicate, and with communication, we can learn new things within someone’s culture and traditions that come with the language. I also learned that learning and speaking a language other than our native language can help with keeping your brain active and with critical thinking skills, going in between the languages that you know and learned. Learning a new language can also boost your confidence and bring ourselves out of our own shells. With my experience, learning Korean and even relearning Spanish taught me how to speak up and to speak with confidence, even though my level with each language is still elementary. With more practice and more studying time, I can become even more confident in not only speaking but also reading and writing in those languages.

For those of us who want to learn a new language, we can start at any time in our lives, and we can even teach our children as young as three years old a new language. We can use books and journals, watch film and TV shows, use programs like Rosetta Stone and Duolingo, and even listen to music and audio recordings. There are people who learn a new language and just want to learn how to carry a conversation, but for me, it’s not just about conversations. With Korean, I want to be able to read their literature without using Google translate, go to historical monuments, write journals of my experience while traveling around the world and read it back, and watch movies and dramas without the subtitles. I even want to listen to radio programs and watch documentaries that touch on events that took place in Korea. Learning Korean, and even relearning Spanish in college and with my family, has been a fun experience for me, and anyone can have their own experience that would give them wonderful memories with learning a new language.

Remember, learning a new language will be so easy once we know where to start, and to have another language is to possess a second soul. Give yourself the opportunity to learn a new language, whether it be English, Spanish, Japanese, Afrikaans, Swedish, Arabic, or whatever language that is available out in the world. You can have another language just for conversation or for something more, depending on what your desire for that language would be.

Thank you for tuning in on Olive’s Corner at Olive’s Café!