Born in France and raised in Germany by French parents, I had not even mastered the German language yet when I decided to take up Spanish and English. I moved to Peru and England as a high school exchange student. While I was there, Spanish and English finally became second nature. However, when I returned to Germany, I had a German accent when I spoke French. When I completed my undergraduate studies in France, English replaced German as the language of my thoughts and dreams. What in the world was going on? Let’s go through some of the phenomena that multilingual people like me encounter.
Languages Attach to Your Emotions
I started learning Spanish when I was 10-years-old and developed it more during my exchange semester in Peru. Because this exchange was the first time that I was independent and in a receptive environment, Spanish became linked to emotions such as happiness and vivacity. In fact, I continued thinking in Spanish for six more months after coming back to Germany because I never really liked Germany. Thus, I never associated the German language with positive emotions.
You Will Make Better Decisions
People who speak several languages will eventually think in languages other than their mother tongue. When thinking in a second language, your mind is restricted by the knowledge you have about it and is thus forced to rely on cold, analytical cognition, rather than emotions. That is why English, my fourth language, is the one I usually use for every analytical thought process, including academics, philosophy and debating.
Languages Shape Your Opinions
Languages incorporate and represent opinions that are common to a culture. In a study published in Psychological Science, Arab Israelis were asked to assign Jewish names positive or negative connotations. When the test was performed in Arabic, the Israeli Arabs were much more likely to associate the names with negative traits than they were when the same test was given in Hebrew. Why? Simply because taking the test in Arabic altered the participants’ worldviews. In a University of California Berkeley study, Japanese Americans were asked to finish the sentence “When my wishes conflict with me family…” In Japanese, one person finished it with: “…it is a time of great unhappiness.” In English, the same person said: “…I do what I want.” These are just two examples among many studies which show that people’s thoughts differ based on the language they are using. This leads me to conclude that speaking several languages can allow you to understand cultures more profoundly.
What Does This Mean for You?
As you see, languages hide many obscure wonders that only multilingual people would notice. So, develop your language abilities as much as you can. And maybe try to learn a language such as Mandarin, which has no future tense. Speakers of a non-tensed language are 30 percent more likely to save money, according to a Yale University study. This is simply because, for them, the concept of the future is related to the present. English speakers, on the other hand, perceive the future as some far-off place. There we go! Languages can even save you money.
Story by Guillaume Alexandre Perdrix; Guillaume Alexandre Perdix is an undergraduate exchange student from Sciences Po, a university in Paris, France. He is studying international relations in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.