What You Can Do If You Speak a Foreign Language

When you speaking someone else’s language you open up a new level of communication. Other cultures talk about different topics and have other burning issues and concerns. So it goes way beyond just the words, syntax and grammar. Yet the new language can be a way in.
You begin to understand the other nationality’s way of thinking. You begin to see things from their point of view. You have something you can communicate back to your own people.
You might read books in the other languages. Books are rarely translated from foreign languages to English, so English speakers can really be missing out. If you can read fluently in another language, you have so much more literature at your disposal. Films also.
There are so many more people you can communicate with in the world.
Think of a crowded holiday beach and think of the people you might be able to understand. What if you could understand the French, German, Spanish and Dutch? And in addition, more or less wok out what the Portuguese and Italian were saying? With a smattering of Welsh as well. I can do all of that, and it makes a difference. I sometimes think it has made me be neither one thing nor another because I understand a little of many cultures and question my own. Oh, they all have their good and bad points. I can see that. Monoglots often don’t.