From the UNESCO study in 2003:
Language diversity is essential to the human heritage. Each and every language embodies the unique cultural wisdom of a people. The loss of any language is thus a loss for all humanity.
I appreciate that it says language embodies cultural wisdom. I’ve often heard it reduced further to “language embodies culture.” If you want to understand a people, you must understand their language. If you want to truly understand your own culture, you must be able to look at it from the outside, and there’s no better way to do that than from a foreign language.
I speak my native English and fluent Japanese. I studied Japanese formally as an exchange student and then on my own and by being immersed in it in a business setting. It was jarring. Japanese culture is vastly different than the US culture I grew up in, but learning the language helped me to love the country and its people.
Learning Japanese also taught me more about the US than I ever learned in school. I could step back from the center of American society and really watch it. I became more objective about my home country’s strengths and weaknesses. I have a richer understanding for my home.
Learning any foreign language will open areas of your mind so far untouched. It enriches your life unimaginably.
Foreign language opens the world.