You should learn a second language
I'm going to France to learn what twelve years of French class couldn't teach me.
Happy Saturday and welcome back to the Tangent Factory!
Something big is happening this week!
On Wednesday, I’ll be hopping on a plane to go to France for two months, by the end of which time I will hopefully be a little closer to fluency (in both language and wine).
In honour of this Great Adventure™, (and my lack of research for a longer post this week), I’m instead offering up my list of reasons why I think you should learn a second language.
1. You lived four years in a francophone city but never learned to speak like the locals.
Shame is a powerful tool. I learned that in Quebec.
There’s nothing quite as humbling as standing in the grocery line, asking for a shopping bag (in French) only for the cashier to give you a vague sneer and say “Here you go” (in English). The one time I made a real effort to learn French in college, the professor handed back our first tests and announced that we all needed to get better quickly because she only had one red pen and we were on track to empty its ink by the end of the semester. Fear of failure helped me through it, but I still don’t speak French.
2. You should get something for twelve years worth of grueling language lessons
If you’re like most Canadians, you probably took at least five years of French classes in your educational career, more if you were a freak (like me, who took twelve). I’ve always found a bit embarrassing how Europeans can take two years of English and be fluent, but we struggle through years of grammar lessons and have nothing to show for it. It flies in the face of the sunk cost fallacy1, but I feel like if you’ve made it this far, you may as well follow through.
3. More languages = more friends
Occasionally, when I am out and about in the world, I’ll see someone with a great sweater and think, damn, I should tell them that’s a great sweater (and ask where they got it). Except sometimes, these people are speaking French, and I realize my communication skills are utterly lacking. If you speak another language, you can give double the compliments to strangers, and potentially gain double the friends2.
4. Health, career, understanding another culture, etc.
I’m truncating the obvious ones here because you can find them in some other listicle.
Hopefully these reasons make you think long and hard about your monolingualism (and if you’re already multi-lingual, well aren’t you special - kidding, that’s great for you.) As for me, when you hear from me next week I will hopefully be up to my neck in baguettes and perfecting my guttural R.
À la prochaine!
The Sunk Cost Fallacy is our tendency to follow through on something that we’ve already invested heavily in (be it time, money, effort, emotional energy, etc.), even when giving up is clearly a better idea.
This one is oddly specific but I promise it happened