We now know that children receive tremendous benefits by growing up bilingual, as do adults who become fluent in another language during adulthood. While it may seem like common sense that learning another language is beneficial, did you know that this perspective on bilingualism is considerably different than the one purported throughout much of the 20th century? At that time, teachers, scientists, and politicians considered a second language to be a hindrance to a person's academic and intellectual development, especially for young children who were thought to become "confused" when learning multiple languages simultaneously. Read more: How Long Does it Take to Learn a Language Abroad? Bilingual Hispanic women reported feeling more assertive when they spoke Spanish, or even registering different feelings when seeing the same advertisement in English or Spanish. In the study, some subjects who spoke fluent French and Portuguese were perceived as sounding "angry" in French but "well-mannered" in Portuguese.Īnother study found that some bilinguals classified themselves differently based on which language they spoke. Research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that bilingual people emphasize different character traits depending on which language they're using. For example, when asked to complete the sentence "When my wishes conflict with my family." in English, the women said things like "I do what I want," in Japanese, "it is a time of great unhappiness." These huge spectrums of responses caused her to develop the psycholinguistic theory that human thought takes place within language "mindsets" - perhaps why many bilingual people note feeling almost "like "a different person" when they speak a different language. Susan Ervin-Tripp studied Japanese-English bilingual women in the 1960s by asking them to finish sentences in each language and found that the women responded very differently depending on which language she asked them to use. Bilingualism is highly valued on the job market Read more: The Easiest Languages for English Speakers to LearnĢ. My knowledge and enthusiasm for foreign languages have come up in every single job interview I've ever done, not only because of its utility but because of what it says about my intellectual curiosity and ability to learn new things.
I've used my foreign language skills (fluency in Spanish and Chinese) in every single job I've had since graduating university in 2011, in everything from consulting to sales and now global operations. In another study, MIT economist Albert Saiz reported that bilingual college graduates earn 2% higher wages on average, which The Economist believes can add up to an additional $67,000 in savings by retirement for this people. Not to mention it makes you more valuable to your employer and more likely to be sent on overseas assignments. Another estimate put the value of speaking a second language at $128,000 over 40 years.
Studies have shown that on average, bilingual employees can earn between 5-10% more per hour than their monolingual peers, and that can certainly add up over a lifetime. With less than 20% of Americans speaking another language, being bilingual gives you a serious advantage on the job market. If you find yourself struggling to stay motivated in French class, perhaps we can entice you with our discussion of nine concrete benefits of being fluent in another language. Most countries have more than one official language - Zimbabwe has 16, South Africa lists 11, Aboriginal Australia is home to 130 indigenous languages, and India is home to at least 22 languages! An estimated 60-75% of the world speaks at least two languages (versus only 20% of the population of the United States), making monolingual native English speakers a minority.īeing multilingual has numerous benefits, from long-term psychological health advantages to simply being more attractive on the job - and dating - market. I find half my thoughts start in English and end in Spanish as the weeks go on, a new phenomenon that has me feeling closer to the global norm of being bilingual.
My Venezuelan team lead trains half the team in rapid-fire Spanish and the other half in English, and our team members routinely start a sentence in Spanish and end it in English. There's nothing like working in a multinational start-up office to make you ogle at the linguistic abilities of everyone there. I recently started a new job in the Mexico City office of a major Silicon Valley company.