Learning a new language used to be a perk a few years back, and now in some situations, it has become an absolute necessity. Learning a new language is a fruitful skill and while you may not be able to take time out to learn a new language during your normal routine, the best time to learn a new language is when you are traveling.
When you think about it, did you first learn the alphabet and then start speaking English? No, right so, where and when did you learn English? God didn’t send you down and tell you to speak English right? Your surroundings taught you a language, and you didn’t even know. That can happen again; all you have to do is give it some time and practice a bit.
Traveling is the best time to do so because you are in a different environment and you can get some hands-on experience.Here listed below are a few benefits of learning a new language while traveling.
To Have A Richer Experience
You cannot know about a culture and the people without knowing their language. The essence of their actions lies in their language, and it is impossible to get a translator everywhere you go. For example, the best way to learn Japanese and about the Japanese culture is while you are in Japan. What you need to do is learn a few phrases before you go just enough to start conversations and communicate with the locality verbally and non-verbally, it will help you learn additional words.
You Will Have Great Jokes To Tell
When you are in a country, and you don’t know the language properly, you are bound to have hilarious experiences that you will have a great time telling your friends and family. For example, some words may sound so much alike that you might end up getting them wrong, a friend of mine once asked for a small room and ended up at a strip club.
Make More Friends
Learning the language while you are abroad will give you more time to learn, and the exposure to the language speakers will help you leaps and bounds. This will result in you making friends with a lot of people that you have to interact with on a daily basis.
More Acceptance
Another thing that language learning will help you with is getting accepted within the society. While they might have seen you as an outsider before, when they see you making an effort in learning their language, they will be more friendly and will accept you as one of their own, which means you will have someone to look out for you.
Learning Underlying Structures
Another thing that learning a new language can help you with is realizing underlying structures within languages. It will help you learn more variations of the language or derivatives of the same language if you get a chance to spend time over there again.
About the Author:
Lara Smith has worked for Wall Street English for 20 years. After studying at Stanford University and subsequently doing a CELTA course, she began her career in teaching. She is obsessed with languages and currently writes blogs at https://www.mimicmethod.com/.
Love traveling.
