How Learning Languages Changed My World View 

I have just moved to Hamburg from the UK and I'd say wondering around like a toddler is accurate! It's so easy to stay in your apartment all day but I know I will feel hollow if I do 😅 Big fan of your vids, not just because they were Germany themed but because of the ideas you generated within them. Vielen Dank! ❤

It took me 17 years of living there for me to gain a rudimentary use of Hungarian. I was never interested in learning languages either. But my children all speak at least 2 or 3 languages. I hope they find it valuable. But they don’t know what it’s like to be ‘stuck’ with only one.

Wow! Was looking forward to this post so much and as usual its wisdoms surpassed all expectations. In Africa there is a saying in French "Every time an old man dies, a whole library is burnt down" This made me deeply consider memory & recall matters of languages. Thank you as always und Liebe Grüße ❤

Thanks for this video. It certainly has triggered some memories! I went through all the struggles with the Chinese language a couple of dacades earlier, when there was no internet, no language learning apps, and only huge printed dictionaries to look up unknown characters and words. Nowadays you just point your smart phone's camera at something, and get an instant translation - albeit not always correct. After spending a year studying and traveling in China in 1987/88, I had a hard decision to make: Persue a career related to China and Chinese? In hindsight, especially with current political developments, I am glad to deciding against that, although I often regret to have spent so many years of my life learning Chinese and Japanese. But in the end, it's not wasted time, and I would be a different person, had I not come out of my comfort zone and spent that time in China. At almost 60, languages are still a passion and an exciting hobby for me. At the moment I am exploring Norwegian with the help of the little green owl, and I thoroughly enjoy it.

I grew up bilingual and remember the joy (at 4) of finding out that I could sometimes speak "in code" to my mother so that others would not understand what I was saying. Not too long after the excitement at decifring the letters on shops and books and magazines and lyrics of songs opened the pandora box. Learning 4 other languages later on in life was always like " figuring out the code" for me, an adventure! (I had so much fun about 7 years ago when I tried to learn the georgian alphabet before a two week trip to Georgia and then in Tiflis tried reading the signs. ) Then there is the language of poetry, a source of emotional riddles. We chose to raise our child bilingual so that she would have no problem speaking to all family members on both sides. When she learned a third language at school it was easier for her, and now with all the internet applications it helps her keep up with what sh learned. PS noticed the name change of your vlog.

Currently I learn French. I learned it at School. I like to Spende time in France. You are absolutley right when you say , to learn or perfect a language is Ehen you practise it in the correspodnding country. I try to do. Ich bewundere Sie für Ihre guten Deutschkentnnisse als auch ihre Kenntnisse in Mandarin. Ihnen einen schönen Sonntag ☀️

Thankyou very much for such an interesting video!!! I can't imagine what topics you will talk about in your future videos. This one is interesting and deep. I am going to listen again... there is a lot in it. What great thought you have put into it! It is 9.3O pm in New Zealand. Thanks Brother.

Morning all. Have you found that learning a language changes the way you see the world or is it just me?

Thanks so much for this video - as ALWAYS a great experience! I moved from the US to Germany a good two years ago, and with OK German, I thought I should start in on refreshing the French that I learned (and forgot) almost 40 years ago. Wrong choice at the time, and wanting to focus on German, I put my French efforts on hold for a while. it paid off, and I believe the time is right to dig out the language course I purchased and get serious about truly acquiring French. Thanks so much for inspiration, Ben: as always, your thoughts gave me a something to think about!

Linguistic Relativity is absolutely a thing. When speaking / writing / thinking English, I absolutely am almost a different Person - same with Spanish - from my baseline German Personality in many ways.

I have taken up studying German, only because after tracing my family tree, I found I had a German ancestor in my direct line. I remember saying years ago that I would never be interested in the German language. It is an incredibly vocabulary rich language and I do like the cases.

Linguistic relativity: I guess, it is a thing for some people (e.g. Feli from Germany feels this way), but I don't feel different when I'm speaking another language. Learning a second language: You need to have an intrinsic motivation. When I was a child, I wanted to learn English because I had two American friends my age who visited their grandparents (one were neighbors the other was a coworker of my father and his wife) every other year in the summer. They spoke almost no German and I started out with no English but gradually over the years, my English became better. My husband was obsessed with English because of the music he listened to. My sons grew up with American friends visiting regularly and whereas the two daughters spoke decent to perfect German because of visiting a German school their parents had more difficulties as they both worked at the base or with families in the Army/Airforce respectively. They did their shopping mainly on base and didn't have too much contact with Germans besides our family. So my kids understood at a young age that language is key to communication. They both are very good at English, one is even better than my husband and I. He is very interested in Japanese because of anime and has been studying on his own (incl. writing kanji, katakana, and hiragana) for the past eight years. Recently he started corresponding with a Japanese friend of my in-laws in Japanese to improve his skills. TLDR: If you've got a goal, you'll be successful in language learning.

Interesting video. Thanks for this. I did German O Level and French A level at school. Funnily enough I did not have that much interest in German. I have now lived in Germany for nearly 3 years and my German is fluent. I do think it is different learning a language as an adult because your general knowledge is better and you want to be able to talk about more complex topics. In that respect I have progressed much faster because I have been more motivated to talk to native speakers about other things.

Thank you Benjamin. Sharing your detailed, in depth, personal insights is a gift you possess.

Good Morning ! I m in my forties and startet learning french again, although i ve no talent. :) But I saw so many things I don’t understand in France. I agree that you feel a bit like a toddler without a proper amount of language. Its hilarious. Allways stay curious !:)

I like this essayistic, sincere questioning of different phenomena of life and the philantropic twinkle in your approach. And the 'outsourcing of brainpower' is a really accurate term of what is happening right now when we prefer DeepL or Chat GPT doing the wording processes for us. Very convenient but maybe also reducing the experience of deeper and multi-faceted understanding ...

Your German is pretty good. Keep your video up mate, i really enjoy it and wish you all the best.

Excellent contemplative video - I agree with everything you say. I reckon you've left out a few things though: 1. Your Chinese mates (or in my case wife), mock your early efforts mercilessly, and it's actually quite discouraging. 2. The real test is when you start dreaming in your new language, no? 3. Not being cynical, but once you've mastered it you realise that some things are universal so a cab driver in Chongqing has pretty much the same on his mind as his London counterpart. That was quite the letdown for me....but you are definitely right, some languages do re-wire your brain. Most of the time in a good way.

As an ex-linguist and language teacher, I have a bit of a different perspective on language learning. First, the genuine interest or lack thereof in school. It _is_ on the teachers. I don't think I've ever seen a child who was genuinely interested in the process and mechanics of learning a language. I mean, it's theoretically possible, but I've never seen it. So expecting children to just be interested in learning a language is BS. However, what children _can_ be interested in is something that can be expressed in a language. Films, comics, video games, etc. It wouldn't kill school teachers to add a purpose to the lessons. And make it something age appropriate and interesting for the class instead of "but it's a classic". When, already being a teacher, I remembered things like my 6th grade English teacher making us read _The Great Gatsby_ or, on the opposite side, a 9th grade English teacher making us, a group of teens in the middle of I'm-so-adult stage, sing children's songs, honestly, I wanted to strangle them. Granted, there's no guarantee your students would be interested even if you do everything you can, but it wouldn't kill the teachers to at least try. It's also the same problem with other subjects, especially math. Second, I have a problem with the toddler metaphor, especially when certain people build their entire "methodology" around it. When literal toddlers learn their first language, they don't have much background knowledge or any kind of pre-existing language structure in their head. They are building their worldview _and_ the way language lives in their heads from scratch at the same time as they're learning the language. Adults, and even older children, who are learning a second language already have a number of complex systems in their heads as well as a crapload of background knowledge. Pretending they're learning a new language the same way as young children is the same as taking a pre-existing picture and starting to draft on top of it, or building an extra floor onto a building while pretending that the roof and lower floors do not exist and ignoring all of the piping and other pre-existing infrastructure. I do get that a learner might _feel_ like a toddler at some points, but the metaphor becomes problematic when the teachers start using it literally, and some do.

Thanks for not bashing us teachers. 🤣 We aren't perfect and just people, but most of us do our best. Personally, I love my "Landeskunde" classes, in which people are just curious how everything works and why Germans do this and that. And first time you'll have them put down their phone and tell them to write the information from the board rather than taking a picture, most pupils are shocked as hell, if I'm serious. Yes Digga, I am (and no, not 100 yrs old), because "Durch die Hand in den Kopf" and also those copyright laws and such. And the second shock, when you explain "well, I kind of understand what you mean, because I do speak English, but no we don't say it like that." Followed up by "How many languages do you speak?" (Well, "fluently" two, "getting by" 2 more, took 2 more in school/uni and forgot most of them, structural linguistic class like an analysis of 3 more. Just writing an essay on one.) and the awkward stare starts. 🤣

I'm close to 1000 days into learning Japanese, "just for fun". It's eye opening and explains so much about the social contracts of their culture. Not learning to write the chinese characters aka japanese kanji 漢字 actually took a big load of this challenging language. I'm fine with using IME to write, invest the saved time into speaking, grammar and vocabulary. The technology is here, let's make use of it. お疲れ様でした、また次に動画ですね ;)

With English it is easy. I learned it for 8 years at school and needed it all the time for hobby und job (reading and writing, now hearing). But I rarely speak it and so I'm not so good at it. I learned French for 4 years but was really bad with it. I know enough grammatic and can speak understandable but I'm lacking the vocabulary. Each time before visiting France I hear some audio language course to get into it again. I even tried Japanese for 2 semester at the VHS, but with little effort. Only some months after that I had forgotton nearly everything.

Very good. Speaking several languages will build up a cognition reserve to get dementia later in life, than those that just speak their mother tongue. Yes practising a second language, you'll get a different perspective on things, given you even care. As always use it, or loose it, eg handwriting. How aweful to unfold paper maps, when Google is so much convenient or navigation devices to get around.

Great content as usual!

😂 When at school more than 45 years ago English was mandatory from 5th to 9th grade. I was not interested at all. My argument was that I was born in Germany, being raised in Germany and that I have no plan to leave Germany and since German was the language spoken there is no need for me to learn any other language (yeah - I was lazy 🤫). But live had different plan for me. At the age of 21 I was send by the companies worked for to render mechanical services for machinery in the USA. That was scheduled to be just one year but I was almost 2 consecutive years there and many times on and off later for days or weeks. Learned most of my basic English skills then at work and watching TV. Over the years I gradually learned more reading technical and later contracts, at some time started reading books in English as well. It was a gradual process of emerging into the language and even though I am living in Germany I still take advantage of understanding English by reading different newspapers and magazines in English on daily / weekly base from different countries. I also lived almost 5 years in China but besides basic skills to tell the taxi where to go and get something to eat and drink I did not succeed in learning more. But I like the Chinese culture and food so much that even now I crave for authentic Chinese food 😂. Another language I learned is Spanish and it all started by falling love with a South American girl. My wife for 27 years is not the one I initially fell in love with but at 22 years old back than I simply was not grown up enough but more than a decade later things fell in place. But, and this I have to admit, I have not managed to manage Spanish to the level that I did for English. But it is as I said - I am lazy and since South America is not where I travel for business (or to be precise only ever other year at most) the natural encounter with the language is limited mainly to family, friends, casual talks but not politics nor contracts or technical / contract language. However, each and every bit of any foreign language that I manage to remember helps me getting a smile on peoples faces and makes my experiences in different countries to be overwhelmingly on the pleasant side.

Wittgenstein said: The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world..language opens doors...everywhere..in my opinion

Really motivating! Grüße aus Frankfurt :D

Do you have any recommendations on how to find work in a new country where you don't speak the language? I tried moving to Sweden but it was very difficult to find work. I'm happy to learn the language but I can't afford to live on savings until I'm fluent

Personally I think it's a mistake to practice writing, not only was this inefficient and time consuming just to learn a single vocabulary, it will also burn you out. Since you're already an expert on learning a language, prioritize what you need to learn, such as sentence structure (i.e verb position with adverbs, preposition and everything else), I always find that most important and that is my weakest area in learning a language, and to supplement this, listen to something like youtube traveling videos in Chinese such as 阿星探店 or whatever for input. Since virtually every video has subtitles in Chinese, you can also read the characters when you're not sure about it. This way you probably don't even need to learn tones. Do the writing stuff when you are fluent, and you can try to practice some characters you can already recognise from earlier inputs. Or simply just copy a short story from a text or newspaper like what you did in the video.

The better you speak German, the less hair you have😊