Why you should learn a new language

Which language should I learn?

Here at Plato's Cave we deal with a lot of languages, in the past year we've conducted expeditions on Italian, French, German, Hindi, Chinese and Korean just to name a few.

Being in Singapore, we may always have taken for granted the need to speak multiple languages. However, with English now becoming the dominant language thanks to the internet, many people are wondering whether there is a point to learning multiple languages.

Why you would want to learn a new language? Well here are few motivations that some of our Spelunkers have shared with us.

To get into a new cultural paradigm:

This usually is the case for countries with a very influential media culture. Most people want to learn languages like Hindi and Korean because of the glam of Bollywood and K-Pop. In certain instances, there are etymological relationship between languages (such as Hindi and Malay which share many of the same words such as maaf for one), which is breaks down the barrier in understanding a new language. Researchers are even trying to figure out whether all languages have a common ancestor.

Aesthetics

Ever met the person who is just in love with the way the language sounds? Here are some of the languages you should check out if you are into the sound of things.

It's a new way of thinking

Wittgenstein was the first to point that language itself is a model/tool we use to understand our world. This idea has caught on with research by anthropologist and linguist in later years that many cultures have differing ideas on seemingly common ideas because their language does not allow it. The Chinese do not have a grammar form for continuous tense "ing" or the Amondawa tribe not having the abstract idea of time. In my personal experience I have always found a different niche for each language that I know, and to me English seems more slanted towards objective narratives then epic flights of the imaginations.

For research

Things do get lost in translation, and for certain Spelunkers they would like to learn particular languages (Greek, Latin, German & Sanskrit) because a lot of important academic texts were written in these languages. Proponents of Latin say it completely changes how you internalize other subjects , some ascertain that Sanskrit it the most natural language and it seems to have great overlaps with programming languages.

Economic concerns

That's a big one. Everyone is learning Chinese these days and you can see blonde haired blue eyed Germans spouting the most eloquent of Traditional Chinese. That's how English became the most widely used languages in the 19-20th century because of it's economic viability. Want to see which languages you should learn to make you the cash? Check out this article.

Which one should you choose?

You may fall into anyone of the categories stated above. But of course, learning a language is a incredible task to challenge your mental capabilities. If you haven't tried learnt a language in a while go for a language which is simpler and you will have more opportunities to use it. If you need to figure out a process on how to do so, click here.