4 reasons to learn a new language | John McWhorter 

My favourite is when a language has a word for something that doesn't exist in your native tongue.

Video Summary: Learn a new language because: 1. Everyone is learning english so if we don't learn a new language they will all but disappear 2. helps to prevent dementia 3. makes you a good multi-tasker 4. it's fun end

Speak to someone in their second language and you speak to their brain, speak to them in their mother tongue and you speak to their heart Édit: this was 3 years ago and I had forgotten about this comment, but yes, these are not my words and it is not a correct quote. My guess is that at the time I remembered it vaguely and thought the sentiment fit with the video.

Me: *learning Japanese* Why? To watch animes without sub.

My native language is Spanish, and took me a lot of time to be good at English. I can understand how hard can be to learn a new language, but also I know how wonderful is to become a bilingual person. The feelings you have when you are finally understanding and speaking another language are great. All the time I spent studying English was worth. Also, I'd like to learn French, Japanese, and Korean.

A new language teaches you culture, and often the experience of learning a language does change one's personality enough to be quite noticeable... I have different personalities in both my native languages. I've seen more than a few outspoken Americans live in Japan for a few years and come back speaking softer, more pleasant (my personal opinion) English... at times, learning another language teaches you concepts you've never thought about in your own language; therefore, making you realize your ignorance. In turn, you become a little more humble and open-minded. Learning a language does change how one sees and feels the world.

I'm Korean, and I learn English to speaking in English. I read English newspaper and see CNN news before I sleep. And from now on, ted is great for speaking in English. because I can listen to the English, and learn something from many people in ted. TED is so great program that I see for twelve years(I'm twelve years old)

I learn languages because I enjoy meeting people and understanding their culture. Now on my eighth language - although it's been really difficult to get to this stage I've enjoyed every minute spent learning a new language (((:

And he missed one of the primary reasons for being bilingual or more. It has been conclusively shown that it increases brain plasticity. And that has larger implications than just fighting dementia and Alzheimer's. It has implications for learning new things and being able to look outside of rigid mindsets. Math is a language for example. Chemistry is another one. And cultural languages gives you a bunch of new tools to interpret the world. They all do. I would argue that being multilingual makes you more able to tackle the worlds problems. Seeing more options.

Hello everyone! l would happily encourage you to learn Arabic. We , Arabs, have a famous proverb that says: if you learn a new language , you'll be safe from the deception of its speakers !

I teach foreign language. I understand that there are “shortcuts” like translators and so forth. But learning a language extends your first one. Learning a language helps people better understand the struggles of someone learning English. Learning a language is a means of expression and a way to delve into a new culture.

The reasons are in: 1 4:26 2 6:04 3 6:28 4 8:23

I see many people stating the number of languages they speak. I always find those statements somewhat difficult or misleading, because it could mean several things. 1. You know a few sentences in 5 languages(doesn't count in any way, but I really have spoken people who thought it did) 2. You can survive if you had to live in an environment where you had to speak one of those languages on a day to day basis. (usually with bad grammar, sentence structure and accent, but could get your point across to others) 3. You can have a reasonable conversation in 5 languages. 4. You are fluent in them. If I take myself as an example: I am completely fluent in 2 languages, I am reasonably conversational in 1 and could survive in another 1. How many languages do I speak? When can you say you speak a language? Is that point 2 or point 3? I myself think it's 3, but I could be too strict. I am curious what others think.

My favorite word in my second language, Portuguese, is “camaraoes,” the plural of “shrimp.” It sounds so beautiful! Having learned Portuguese, eventually passing my proficiency exam graded by a Yale University professor, has opened the doors to many friendships and cultural understanding. Most importantly, being in the right place at the right time, I was able to translate for two adopted Brazilian boys (formerly living on the streets in Brazil) who were being seriously abused in the home. The adoptive father ended up in prison for what he did. In the Police car, the lady Officer asked me to ask the boys what was the thing they liked best about living in the USA. The 9 year-old replied these haunting words: “in America, when someone beats us, there are people to make them stop.”

I’m fluent in German and have a pretty high level of speaking English for my age (I’m 14) but I’m a native German speaker. I also learn Spanish, I’m not that good but I definitely wanna improve! Speaking different languages is SO fun. Simply just understanding and answering comments, or songs or understanding movies in English makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something😂

Like si sabes español

44 years old and I started learning German 2 weeks ago, as it's something I've been wanting to do for years, but keep putting it off. My goal is to be able to speak it fluently within a year's time. Wish me luck.

“No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby, so helpless and so ridiculous.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

This guy is one of my favorite linguists. I watched his entire video series on language and cognition and linguistics from the early 2000's. I highly recommend it though I don't remember the name.

Guys I'm 16 and I speak 13 languages. Notice me guys. Guys? *Insecurity intensifies*

My mother tongue is Bengali. Now I'm try to learn Spanish.

Learning any new language has always been very useful. It gives you new job opportunities, one feels fulfilled , cultures and idioms are learned. Speaking English is already an official language in many parts of the world and allows you to communicate with different people

Spanish, French and English. Hopefully will get back to German, but currently teaching myself Korean. And I agree, it's incredibly fun!

I speak Czech (native), English and currently learning Korean, Spanish and a little Mandarin through RU-vid or Memrise. I always get so excited when I'm watching something in one of those languages and understand something (once I heard someone say 갑시다 - gapsida - let's go and nearly fell of my bed 'cause I was so excited that I understood it haha)😁

I want to be trilingual , but getting from intermediate to fluent always seems so out of grasp . *sigh*

"here's the reason why you should learn languages" ... "and here are some of the most off putting examples to get you fired up for your journey"

I started learning Esperanto about two weeks ago, and I'm enjoying it! Learning a new language is like opening a chest that contains a new perspective of reality, a new point of view. I'm definitely going to learn as much languages as possible.

I speak German, Polish and English and about to learn Spanish

Very well spoken, just remember you can’t really become fluent in a new language without being fully Immersed.

I really liked your presentation since you are very right, English is a universal language which will open the doors to various types of situations, whether in work, education or daily life. In these times learning another language is no longer a thing of another world, it can be learned from home, with a cell phone or a laptop, it only requires will.

Learning more languages has increased my brain power. It’s hard to explain how, but I can solve puzzles and things like that much easier. I was able to participate in Hispanic culture. Also, my mother has dementia and Alzheimer’s

I love learning languages! My native language is English, but I’m studying Spanish and I am working towards a minor in the language. I hope to learn Korean and many more languages in the future but for now I’m dedicated to learning Spanish and becoming more fluent. Being able to understand the Spanish that I do has already opened so many doors with me in terms of friendship, education, and simply being able to help people. I love it 🥰

I´ve been following you for some time now and I absolutely like the way you present the language learning process. Your enthusiasm is so contagious! I recommend your videos to my students. Thank you for being such a great asset to the community of lifelong learners all over the world. :)

I live learning languages for a rather naive and simple reason: because you can! People are capable of speaking so many languages and why not?!!!

What the Sr. mentions is very true, since English is the most indispensable language today, in every profession it is already very necessary; mainly if it is traveling, doing business, sales or in order to teach someone else.

I do speak English, Spanish, Italian, French. I am learning, German, Portugese, Swedish and Dutch

I really like the fact that the idea is shared that motivation is an important factor in being able to learn new languages ​​every day, and that it also opens the doors to worlds that we did not know.

I'm learning Mandarin and Korean and I freaking love these languages. They are so beautiful.

I'm teaching myself Arabic. And I speak Urdu and English with fluency! I learned French in school, but I'm basically forgetting it. But I want to learn Farsi and Turkish and so many other languages in this one, short lifetime...

Lets learn German

I want to learn telepathy

새로운 언어를 공부해야할 4가지 이유 1. 문화를 진정으로 이해하기 위해. 영어 문화권 = 영어 세계관 2. 치매 발생 가능성이 적고, 멀티태스킹을 더 잘할 수 있다. 이중 언어는 건강하다. 3. 재미있다. 4. 다른 어순을 가지고 있다. (반대편길로 운전하는 느낌을 평생 가지게 된다.) 지금보다 언어를 쉽게 학습할 수 있는 시대는 없었다. 역사상 이걸 하기에 더 나은 시대는 없었다.

My first language is French but I am more fluent in English (which is sad) so I'm working on my fluency in French. I'm also trying to learn Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Yoruba.

Lithuanian, English and Japanese. A mix you'd never expect hehe ^^

I love German language as well as Russian.They sound wonderful but they are so hard to learn for whatever reasons.

I love Spanish language

Even before I saw this lecture, I always thought I had to learn a language other than my native language. I also think that language is a means of communication and the best way to learn the culture of the country directly. I want to be good at English, but I don't think I can. Haha. In the past, my parents used to go to an academy to learn English, but I didn't understand it at that time. But now I feel that I have to learn, and after seeing this talk, I decided to learn a language again. I think the effect of learning a language is very great. Nowadays, it is worth as much as I think that language is important enough to become a qualification for a job. By learning the language, I think the effect of the language is great, not only the culture of the country, but also people's relationships, other jobs, and thinking of it as a spec. As it takes a long time to learn a language, I think I should definitely learn it. I am taking an English class at school. When I do it by myself, I can't do it well, but I hope I can get closer to English through this lesson.

His translation for "She writes" is wrong! it is not the same as "He writes"=Yaktub ; in fact "She writes"=Taktub. And the passive="Kuteba" which is certainly different than he presented. Now, these mistakes may sound subtle for someone who doesn't speak Arabic, but believe me they are different and they mean different things. I'd expect a bit more fact checking and a bit more preparation from a TED talker.

Learning another language helps us a lot to socialize with other people, likewise when we are given the opportunity to visit other places where they speak English we will understand what they are speaking to us. Likewise speaking English will give us many opportunities to improve ourselves.

I am from Peru and I speak Spanish, for a few months I set myself the goal of being able to speak English fluently to meet professional goals, watching this video has completely changed my goal of learning this language and continuing to learn others too. I found the health benefits you can get from learning and speaking two or more languages very interesting. Finally, it also seemed so important to me that the fact of learning another language involves learning and understanding about the different cultures of other people. This is my favorite phrase from the video (The language channels the culture).

I speak Spanish and English as a 2nd, now Im learning French and german, and it's amazing how also the languages are related to the way people behave.. As he says.. The culture, thats amazing.. And being able to pronounce french and german correctly its just so fun!!

If everyone spoke the same language it would be pretty boring, you wouldn't be able to talk secretly about something else without anyone understanding

It's nice to put a face to the voice! I've been listening to his podcast for a couple of months and have just stumbled across his Ted talk! :)

I agree with this guy, but his argument was actually so dumb and bad. Why can’t we have an intelligent person speak to this?

stunning!!!!! definitely one of the best talks I've ever heard. John said in the video that if you speak 2 lenguages dementia was less likely to set in, pretty interesting, I'm probably gonna be searching for more information abaut that. after whatching this video i end up seeing like 10 more related to this topic. I'm a native spanish speaker, and if i had never learned english, I'm sure i would have been five times less smarter than I am today, being able to speak english had led me to masive amounts of information (like this video) that if i had never known English, i wouldn't be able to understand. no wonder this video has been seen by 1.7 millions of people, its fantastic. thanks to the person who uploaded this to the internet.

TO ANYONE WHOS SCHOOL ASSIGNMENT IS TO ANSWER WHAT 4 REASONS HE USES TO LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE HERE YOU GO: 1. To become apart of a culture 2. Speaking two languages has shown it is less likely to have dementia set in, and you are probably a better multi tasker. 3 Languages are fun to learn 4. you can learn any language wherever you want rather than being in a classroom for set time.

Learning another language helps us a lot to socialize with other people, likewise when we are given the opportunity to visit other places where they speak English we will understand what they are speaking to us. Likewise speaking English will give us many opportunities to improve ourselves.

i'm native in spanish particulary chilean spanish, a complex and rare derivation of spanish, with a lot of new words and new ways to speak them, different meaning for same word, depends the tone that you use when you speak can be a nice word or a word to start to fight. now i'm trying to learn new languajes, i can read and write in english (i think) but try to speak in a country where the people don't try to learn new languajes. it's dificult to put in practise and this is the principal problem to learn new languajes in LATAM for example. i think that the best way to test your skills is in a travel and live 24 hours using the languaje skills that your learned in this new languaje i think that it's give's you a lot of confidence and fluence in a short time. regards to all!

I love he mentioned Arabic, I'm looking forward to learning Spanish and Arabic at the same time, as my third language.. But learning a new language need a continuous courage and motivation to be a consistent learner until reaching fluency

Guys, you notice that the maiorty of people who is watching thia vídeos are a bilingual person?

The benefits to me from learning, even to a limited extent, a second language and studying a few others have been innumerable. I have understood cultures, philosophies and overall human development in ways that would not have been possible had I stayed mono-lingual.

I'm saudi. I am interested in learning English I think it's a little bit tricky since we don't have English environment . Learning any language require some patience, strong willing and determination. My Allah help me to be a professional translator in the future.

Здравствуйте носители русского языка!))

Language can change the way you look at the world based on what your linguistic background and what new language you’re getting into. I think there is something “fraught” with his reasoning and he’s employing confirmation bias.

Também por estas razões que gosto de aprender novos idiomas.

Does anyone here knows how to speak Korean?👀🇰🇷 Just curious

my native language is portuguese so I love learn Korean and english languages so much and I finally found someone who understands how it is so good to learn a new language in the morning sitting on your couch and drinking a coffee

I’m from Chile and I love English language since I can remember. I was really annoying so my mom made me watch movies like “Grease” over and over in English and without subtitle (I was a 3 years old kid so I wasn’t able to read 😅); and my dad loves music so I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Madonna, The Beatles, Queen, Aerosmith, etc, etc. So when I was in school that language was always easy for me. It is everywhere. I think people want to learn it to have more job opportunities nowadays. For me is because I always loved it and made me fell in love with others languages and want to learn them because I want to experience what John said at the end: blow my mind.

I can actually say this speech is amazing, because its a very impacted speech to people like me and also, the time was too quick when i was listening is speech. Good video of good speech.... Btw im from South Korea ;)

C'est très difficile de apprendre Français quand vous êtes vieille. C'est mon troisième langue et j'aime ouvrir mon connaissance du monde ! (Pardon pour mon petit Français, je suis un élève).

I speak German, English, Turkish and a bit Spanish, but I am not done with Spanish. I really want to learn Mandarin, French and Japanese too.

I like to learn another language because I might soak up another culture and meet new people

So... i would have to disagree with him saying: "all languages will converge to one", which is the English language. That won´t happen because we tend to cultivate culture, instead of erasing it. It´s impossible for me to imagine a world where we all speak the same language, UNLESS, we speak with our minds instead.

I've never heard it explained that way when it comes to fully taking in and understanding a culture. Very good stuff

I'm 17 and I speak 5 languages ^^

John is so great. Listen to his Great Courses lectures on The Story of Human Language or Language A-Z. He's funny, engaging and shows a true desire to help people understand each other. I have had such a great time learning by Dr. McWhorter's ideas. I would recommend it to anyone.

His speech reminds me of the premise of Metal Gear Solid V....take away a person's language = remove culture, beliefs and overall identity

I genuiely can't explain enough how amazing it is to know more than one language! most of the time I just forget about it (and I'm sure almost every bilingual does) till you see someone's reaction WOAH! YOU SPEAK ENGLISH PRETTY WELL! it feels nice to have more than one source to get information, to explore a new culture, to understand almost everything without asking for help, also the confidence that comes with it. there's many many benefits of learning a new langauge.

its cute how western Europeans say we speak 3 or 4 different languages where they are very similar they could be dialects . try something challenging like Chinese or Arabic and I would be impressed

I'm currently learning Chinese. After 2 weeks I'm having random conversations in public. Very brief and basic like How are you? What's your name? My name is Dan etc...So much fun.

Do programming languages count?lol

"Bilinguilism is healthy" :-) I like it, it makes me optimistic

I speak two languages but I've never really "learned" a language before, I acquired both and I'm on my way to learn my first language so wish me luck lol

The BIG reason for many of us: access to the literature and to the past records/history of other cultures. Nothing is so terrifying as the limited minds of Americans who have no concept at all, much less subtle exposure to the nuances, of other cultures--and of history--because they are monolingual. Notice all the cheesy fantasies, from The Librarian to National Treasure to (yes) Harry Potter, in which the magic is in knowing other languages and facts of history. All the magic words in Harry Potter are, no accident, Latin--the repository of all the original ideas, events, and institutions underlying western culture.

I learned Japanese thanks to anime and I love the way Japanese language sounds (it sounds so pretty to me, almost like a melody), I continued learning Japanese and I love writing in their language, now I’m not the best at speaking it but it is still fun. I’m also learning Hawaiian and I find it very similar to some degrees to Japanese where Hawaiian also sounds beautiful to hear.

I'm native in spanish and as someone else coment before it's that one of the best things that learning another language has is learning other words that don't exist in yours like English that they can turn anything in a verb for example wuju that it would be wujuing, i love that we are able to do this 😂

I speak English as my native language. I'm fluent in French, having been born in Brussels and lived there for 18 years. I am native level in Spanish, because I have lived in Spain for 25 years and my wife is Spanish. I have self taught myself Polish, and I am now learning Japanese. Language learning is one of the best things a human being can do for himself. It's hard, it takes a lot of time, but if you enjoy the process it can be so much fun!

Technology in recent years has had exponential growth, a couple of years ago we would not have imagined that we could have a meeting in real time with different people sitting in different countries. This help has been given by technology in different areas, also in learning, today there are platforms, applications, videos and documents where access to information is instantaneous, easy and accessible that a few years ago, without this technological advance we would remain based in old models such as the teacher teaching in a classroom.

I'm ethiopian ,and i can speak Amharic ,english,Chinese and now am learning French.

This is a great video, because give reasons more different than the typical reason which an could answer when other people ask us about “What is the reason to learn a new language?”, for example My friend said “I was learning a new language, because I could have more opportunities from job”. It is True, but John McWhorter who is a linguistic teacher told us that learn a new language channeled your throughts, So I think in the journey to learn a new language you must change to way as your brain is doing the setences and use the grammar, I believe learn a new language is a excellent exercise to your brain and have a lot of benefit, I have never thinked that other benefit is learn about the culture of other countries.

I'm a native Arabic speaker and I can assure you that that's not how these words should be pronounced lol

3 minutes in and it turned into gender related and about world views.

I am Cambodian I was shock when you mention about Cambodian in there . Thanks for your mentioning

Learning different languages are less important nowadays, due to the vast creation of translation apps and the use of English almost in every single country. Me myself only knows 2 languages, English and Chinese, where Chinese is my main language and English took me 4 years to get used to.

Leave it to Professor McWhorter to be the most relaxed TED speaker I've ever seen...and I've seen many many TED talks!

Indeed a language is another way to know a culture because each language tells the story of what happens in the region in which that language is spoken since there are unique words in each culture so each language has its own phonetics and meaning giving life to foods, places, experiences, beliefs and experiences that only exist in that specific place.

why are people so eager to show off how many languages they speak in the comment section?...

I really like watching the TED's videos because they help me to improve my English skills, by listening to these speeches i get a lot of vocabulary that can help me to speak fluently ❤❤

I learn myself through learning foreign languages. (I can speak 3 foreign languages) I think It's the most important reason. This is a very exciting activity. I think If you have very strong motivation It doesn't matter which language to learn in our time of Inernet. It's so much easier than before. Good luck to you all!

Oh good…my ability to speak English and Afrikaans means I’m less likely to develop dementia! I agree that my Latin lessons had a positive effect on my life.