There are many benefits to learning a language: speaking and interacting with the culture and people of someone entirely different from you, and being able to understand fully the meaning behind what a native speaker says, without the subtleties lost in translation.

However, I am not at that point.

The first language that I ever gave a serious attempt at learning is dead, the other I have only just started. However, in all my experience trying, I have learned more about not only the language and English, but also the difficult process of learning and developing any kind of skill.

Now, it’s no secret that practice makes perfect and nothing good every comes easily, but there is something in particular about you could say, more skills like learning a language, that carries a certain level of difficultly and mastery. I would make the comparison to learning how to play music. You can sit at a piano and look at the sheet music, but it is only after practice and understanding of the music that you can play it at its full extent.

It is also at the point when you can play the music properly that there can be the best judgment for the music. Whether or not you enjoy it, at least by that point you can understand it.

Learning a language works in the same way. Before tackling any sort of grammar or vocabulary, you must at least have some understanding of how things are in English before attempting to learn another language. I have heard multiple times from fellow students that they have learned more about the grammar and details of English in their foreign language classes than in their actual English class, even when those classes were teaching the form.

That is proof that the skill of learning a language is rigorous and requires a lot of mental thought to confirm what is and is not correct. Especially in another language, there is not any room for error in speaking or translating because otherwise the whole meaning changes in a big or small way.

Skills like learning a language or playing an instrument are essentially advertised to make you smarter, but the key part about that is not through just doing the task and suddenly gaining wisdom, but I think through the conscious effort required to really understand what is happening and how to execute it correctly.

It certainly helps that both of these are, in a way, performed in front of others.

A language can open many doors to a whole different part of the world and way of life, but to me and my experience, it is a way of coming to terms with my own work ethic and desire to not only accomplish something, but why it’s important to me at all.

Trying to learn a language helps focus my priorities.