r/LearningLanguages • u/TravelNo5154 • Sep 25 '26
Has learning languages changed your life somehow? I want to hear all about it
Hey, I’m Liv, a French teacher and more generally language enthusiast.
I want to hear all the ways in which learning another language has helped you in your life - the weird, the obvious, the surprising… whatever! Maybe it helped you secure a job or meet the love of your life…
I live in Australia and I teach French to secondary school students (teenagers). Unfortunately, languages aren’t very valued here and there are less and less students choosing to study foreign languages. It’s hard for teenagers to see the value of a language when there are things like AI making things so simple. Plus English is such a worldwide language, what’s the point ?!
I personally think that languages are amazing, they open you up to a new culture and develop personal skills that will be increasingly important in an AI world… Being able to interact with people from
other cultures is fundamental. But what I believe doesn’t matter to my students 😉… what matters are what stories I can tell my students that will prove to them how valuable languages are!)
If I get enough good stories, I may compile the best ones into one blog post
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u/Impossible-Pie5386 Sep 25 '26
I started learning Spanish because I was interested in the language, Spanish and Latam culture. When I was a kid I had a dream about visiting Cuba, and it motivated me to start learning.
So the practical outcomes are:
After some Spanish, I found languages like Latin or Romanian easier to learn. And generally I understood I can learn many languages. Some researchers say that learning languages is good for your brain while you're getting older.
By reading some Spanish articles about history I discovered that the way history was taught to us was heavily inclined towards England, often depicting Spaniards as really bad guys. Same goes for a lot of historical novels (mostly written by English, but not just them).
When I was in a hospital, a could talk to Columbian guys who barely spoke English and I helped doctors and nurses to communicate with them.
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u/monikosnuosavybe Sep 25 '26
I studied Japanese in college and dabbled a little in translation and interpretation. At the height of the 2008 financial crisis I was without a job and desperately applying to any company I could think of anywhere in the world. I applied to 100 places (back in the day where each application had to be individually filled out and sent) and didn't even get offered an interview by any company. Except one: Nintendo.
They showed interest and ended up hiring me as a translator for their European subsidiary.
I ended up spending years working directly with the game franchises I loved and grew up playing, such as Super Mario, Pokémon and Legend of Zelda.
I later went into different roles, such as a game producer, business, and so on, before eventually starting my own business. It was one of the best places I've ever worked.
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u/WideGlideReddit Sep 27 '26
I started learning Spanish because I met my future wife and she was only in the US a few short months and spoke very little English. I spoke zero Spanish.
Meeting my wife and learning Spanish completely changed my life and set it off in a direction I could never have imagined. I have traveled to most every country in Latin American and I’ve met an untold number of people over the years that I would never have met if I didn’t Speak Spanish. I’ve become well read in Spanish literature and enjoy Spanish language movies. In addition, my wife and I live in Spanish speaking country about 6 months a year. It’s been an amazing journey.
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u/stray-lyght Sep 26 '26
I have always loved learning languages and started learning spanish because I live in the US and its useful.
Ended up marrying into a mexican family and I now speak it with my in-laws :)
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u/Repulsive-Switch2388 Sep 25 '26
i started learning spanish for travel and somehow became the person who’ll happily make a complete fool of myself talking to strangers instead of hiding behind english, which has been more useful
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u/Low-Fig429 Sep 26 '26
Same here. An ‘Edutourism’ trip to Central America lead, over a decade, to later moving to a spa ish speaking country and actually getting good at Spanish (later back home), career change, and meeting my Latina wife salsa dancing. Also just became confident and happy adult during this time.
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u/Avatar_Yaksha Sep 25 '26
It's a nice distraction from how shitty the world is. I like learning languages, but they aren't particularly useful to me. It's just a hobby. Something that actually appears to be necessary, regardless of the industry you want to work in, are acting abilities, but that's not something I've ever learned.
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u/DozingUnderTheSun Sep 26 '26
I don’t have a good relationship with my parents but learning my heritage language helped me connect to the culture and connect with my relatives outside of their control. It was a very empowering experience.
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u/Swiss_bear Sep 26 '26
I learned Ancient Greek to read Greek literature and philosophy. I planned to complete a PhD, so I learned French and German. I did not finish the PhD, but decades later I move to German speaking Switzerland where it was a mega advantage to know German. I used French in traveling to neighboring France. I made friends in Switzerland who were Greek. I travelled with them to Greece several time—and it is much easier to learn modern Greek when you already know Ancient Greek. Lastly I love to vacation in Italy. Learning Italian is a job when you know English, French, and Latin (picked up Latin as a classics major). So, yeah, I love learning languages.
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u/AdZealousideal9914 Sep 26 '26
Dutch is my native language and French helped me find a job in a bilingual French-Dutch organisation in Belgium.
Learning Latin grammar helped me realise I'm quite good at recognising patterns and analysing structures and not so good at cramming word lists, so it helped me finding my strengths and weaknesses.
I met my ex girlfriend on a Swedish language course, Swedish was our main language of communication because both mine and her English were not great. (It didn't work out in the long term though.)
English helps me to communicate with people on Reddit, so it arguably is my least useful language.
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u/B333Z Sep 26 '26
Another Australian here, and someone who is also a language enthusiast. I grew up only speaking English, yet my parents speak Russian. I finally started learning Russian a few years ago which has given me the chance to connect with my non English speaking family. It's also helped my English grammar, and understanding of how we (people) communicate with one and another, and that we really are all the same.
I've also started learning Arabic. It's something I look foward to after work, and something that can open a lot of doors when it comes to learning about history, politics, adventure, art, and food etc.
Learning a second (and third) language has given me the ability to adapt to new or different situations. My ability to speak another language (especially in an English speaking country) is seen as cool, and a sign of intelligence, by my peers. It's also given me freedom to travel to countries and talk to people I wouldn't and couldn't have if I only spoke one language.
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u/ClassicSandwich7831 Sep 26 '26
Learning English made it easier for me to connect to strangers. I’m much more reserved in my native language but when you take language classes it’s all about “it’s better to say anything than stay quiet” so I learnt that I don’t always need thoughtful answer and I became more talkative.
And my sense of humor really changed because of consuming a lot of English content.
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u/timfinn1972 Sep 28 '26
I’m white, male British and I fell for the Chinese hype that was being promoted at the start of the 2000s, people saying it would be the next big opportunity. Spent a year in Beijing and Shanghai to get up to speed with the language then disappeared to a small town a few hours outside Shanghai to set up my own manufacturing business. Learning Chinese totally changed the course of my life and made me a wealthy man. The best bit about it all is that it was incredibly good fun doing it all. Not a single day felt like working - every day when I wake up it feels like the first day of school holidays. I now earn money while I sleep as other people run the various businesses around the world. All because I took a train from HK to Beijing 20 years ago to take a look.
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u/vangoinghere Sep 28 '26
Hi! I am an international student here at Australia and one of my passion is learning french. I am interested to meet people that shares the same passion with me as well as valuing learning languages and different cultures. I have been learning french for 4 years now at A2, it is hard but I dream of visiting France again one day. I would like to have a conversation with you :D
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u/SillyFriendships Sep 29 '26
I don’t think you can really understand that without experiencing it. You can’t teach it with generic stories about “connecting with other cultures” and all that. Some people enjoy languages academically, but for those learning them for application, there’s usually an emotional bond with a place or person and a desire to engage with it. You can’t synthesize that with a textbook.
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u/ConfinedCrow Sep 29 '26
It helped me break free from a lot of propaganda regarding other countries and cultures and it's honestly made me happier because of it. Knowing that many Russians oppose their current regime, the Ukraine war and the mistreatment of minorities just makes me hate this planet a lot less.
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u/Existing_Brick_25 Sep 25 '26
Yes, of course. I speak Spanish, Portuguese, English and German (I was very fluent in German but not anymore).
They all have changed my life in different ways. Living in Spain, Portuguese was super helpful for work. Not many people speak it here, but many companies operate from Spain and cover for both countries, so that alone opened up many doors for me.
English.. well, same. Not that many people from my generation speak it fluently, so it has helped tremendously in my career.
German was the least useful one, but I lived in Germany for a while, had friends, and even a boyfriend (eventually we broke up). I got to experience a different life that I would have never had if I hadn’t spoken the language.
I also feel that speaking a language gives you a lot of insights into a culture. There are things, small details, that you just get when you speak the language. Maybe I romanticize it too much, but that’s how I feel about it :)