Learning Foreign Languages

Learning a
foreign language at any level is helpful. First and most broadly, it helps to understand other
cultures and other people, and helps talking with people sometimes. Then there are the cogntive
benefits of keeping separate languages straight in your head and being able to think in another
language than one's primary language. In my own experience, I never did serious study of any
foreign languages until college, and I knew by then I was unlikely to become fluent in any one.
But I got conversational abilities in three, and learned to read those and three more, and
osmtimes for fun, I pick up language grammars and work through them. Sometimes I run into people
who know one of these and it helps as a conversation starter. It has opened doors, too: I had a
desk job at the library in grad school, and was recruited into foreign language cataloging.
Overall, though, the best reason is probably the first one: to understand the world around us
and the other people who inhabit it.