Charlemagne once said that to have another language is to possess a second soul. Being born and brought up in India I was exposed to multilingualism. I grew up with three languages: Marathi as my mother tongue, Hindi as the national language and English as the academic one.
During my growing years, I realized that multilingualism enhances learning in general, complex thinking and creativity, mental flexibility, and interpersonal and communication skills. I believe learning a new language is not just grasping logic or a concept of how to construct words and frame a sentence. I think one needs to grow with it, because that is how one will capture the original essence and the finesse along with the accent.
Studies demonstrate that learning a new language has some amazing benefits. Being a multilingual speaker helps one to appreciate the cultural references and nuances of the art forms of other cultures. Things as petty as the title of a movie or a quote from a classic novel do not make sense or can easily be misinterpreted when translated to another language.
Additionally, being a multilingual speaker creates more job opportunities. Employers tend to appreciate people with fluency in another language. Also, traveling and working across different countries becomes easier with the knowledge of that local language.
Multilingual speakers appreciate their culture even more while learning another language because it pushes them to look into their own culture while understanding the other. This helps them to connect to their history and their roots.
A language with its history and slang gives a good understanding of the people speaking it. In today’s globalized society, appreciating each other’s culture has become really important.
Studies have also shown that multilinguals tend to have multiple personalities. Their thought processing changes when they speak different languages. They tend to think differently and this broadens their creative and cognitive domain. As a trilingual person I completely agree with this.
Talking from a global perspective even the United Nations feels that multilingualism can help bring the world together by promoting tolerance and increased involvement between its linguistically and culturally diverse member states.
Children should be exposed to multilingualism at an early age, typically between two and five.
That’s because the brain is in a state of “neural plasticity” which, because of its flexible nature, helps the child to understand the sounds, structures and the peculiar patterns of a particular language something which is difficult to do later on in life.
Thus, I feel that the benefits of learning a new language should start from early childhood and from an academic point of view preschool is the best place where these benefits can be incorporated into the child.
