How to Learn a Foreign Language

It’s not easy to learn a foreign language, but it can be a neat party trick or marketable skill.

How much would your life change if you could just learn a foreign language in a few months?

Imagine the places you could travel to, the people you could converse with, and even the jobs you could have just by being fluent in a language other than your own.

Most people will tell you that it’s not easy to learn a foreign language. Well, unless you’re a child, then learning a new language is easy. If you’re an adult, then yes, it can be incredibly hard to learn a new language.

But there are a lot of people who try anyway. Maybe they’re in a job where they need to be a person skilled in foreign languages. Maybe they’re about to travel somewhere and want to learn the local language. It could be any number of reasons that could drive a person to try learning a foreign language at an older age.

So, how long does it take to learn a foreign language? It can vary from person to person, but 10,000 hours is a figure that a lot of supposed experts like to throw around to master a skill. But is there any way to make it easier?

Is there any way to speed up the process? And are there even any benefits to learning a foreign language? What are the pros and cons of learning a foreign language?

Upsides When You Learn a Foreign Language

Well, there are plenty of advantages to learning a second (or third or fourth) language. The first is professional. Having a foreign language in your CV can help it stand out to employers. Not to mention that it’s a skill that can lead directly to employment in fields like translating or teaching.

Occupations for Linguists

Foreign language skills are a requirement in many fields and are a bonus skill in many others.

Among the jobs and fields that require, or encourage, foreign language skills are:

1. Translator/interpreter - Now, this is the most obvious job that requires knowing another language. Translators are there to translate one language to another so as to be understood by their employers.

Translators/interpreters also work with foreigners, not just to translate, but as general cultural guides, such as interpreters who worked with Coalition forces in the Middle East.

Translators also interpret media for foreign consumption. For example, many best-selling novels are translated into foreign languages for international markets and this is because of the work of translators. They also write scripts for dubbing and subtitling for motion pictures.

2. Diplomat - Possibly the second most obvious profession that requires at least dynamic bilingualism, diplomats often have to be conversationally fluent in multiple languages. This is because they have to deal with people from other countries.

That said, many diplomats still make use of interpreters because there are only so many languages a person can speak.

It’s also a power play as speaking another country’s language can be seen as being subservient to that country whereas speaking their own native tongues and being translated is politically neutral.

3. Intelligence officers - Intelligence officers often monitor external threats to their countries. This requires them to be able to understand the language of the regions to which they’re assigned.

4. Customs officers - Customs officers monitor the importation of goods into a country. They also inform foreign travelers coming into the country of the local laws. Both of these tasks require foreign language skills.

5. Journalist - Journalists who want international assignments will need to have foreign language skills in order to get those assignments. A media conglomerate is unlikely to send someone to their French subsidiary if they can’t speak French, for example. It can happen, but international assignments are more likely to go to those with language skills.

6. Teacher - People who can speak a foreign language and are certified in it can find work teaching it to others. But that’s not the only way in which a bilingual or multilingual person can market their skill.

They can also go to foreign countries and teach languages there. Like how people who can speak both Mandarin and English can find work teaching English in China. Same deal with Spain and some other countries.

7. Brokers - Whether it’s high-end real estate, vintage wine, handmade Swiss timepieces, art, or other luxury goods, people who broker their sales often have to speak multiple languages because their buyers and sellers can come from all over the world. Not being multilingual is basically leaving money on the table for a lot of people in the field.

8. Hospitality industry - The very nature of the hospitality industry means needing to deal with tourists. Some of these tourists are international and may not speak the local language, so it’ll be up to the people in the field to translate for them.

This is especially important for a concierge. What does a concierge do? They make the stay enjoyable for the guest by performing things like getting them restaurant reservations, tickets to whatever they want, and arranging other activities for them. This requires a great deal of communication, so multilingualism is going to be key to the job.

In the same vein, flight attendants will also have to have foreign languages for travelers from a wide range of countries.

9. Healthcare - Speaking of hospitality, people who work in healthcare will often see a diverse array of patients, particularly if they work in a major metropolitan area. Foreign languages can come in handy.

For example, a nurse or doctor working in a hospital in the United States will likely treat a number of Latino patients who only speak Spanish or have limited English because of the region’s high Latino population.

Being able to speak Spanish will help expedite treatment since the patient will be able to better tell them what’s wrong or what happened to them or their family’s medical history.

10. Bankers/investors/venture capitalists - In a similar vein as the above, there are many people in finance who have to know more than one language because they deal in international markets. For example, someone who trades on the Japanese stock exchange should probably understand Japanese for expediency.

11. Immigration attorney - Immigration attorneys deal with immigrants, many of whom do not speak a language outside of their own native tongue.

For this reason, immigration attorneys often need to be fluent in whatever languages their clients speak. That, or they need to have a good working relationship with a translator.

Knowing a second language can also help with neurological function. To learn a foreign language does not simply mean learning new words and what they mean, it also means learning a new set of grammatical rules, idioms, and sentence structure. This can help the brain with cognitive function and problem solving.

But that’s not the only way that being bilingual can help the brain. The brain is a muscle and the more it’s used, the stronger it is. Because learning a new language can be complicated, it’s essentially a workout for the brain. Bilingual people tend to have sharper memories and are better able to remember directions and shopping lists.

Learning a language will require a lot of studying.

This improved memory can also delay the onset of neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s.

Bilingual people also have to switch between one language and another. This means switching between two different sets of grammatical rules, speech, and structure. One study showed that this linguistic juggling made people better at multitasking.

It also makes travelling easier since being able to converse in the local language can make it easier to move about in the country.

Plus, being multilingual is a desirable trait. A lot of women love it when a man knows how to speak more than one language.

Downsides When You Learn a Foreign Language

You know the benefits of language learning, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There are a few disadvantages to learning a new language. The most prominent of which is the sheer amount of time it takes to learn. Some people can put in the aforementioned ten thousand hours and still be scratching the surface of fluency. It could potentially take years just to become conversational.

There’s also the cost. Between tutors, modules, and classes, learning another language can be prohibitively expensive. There’s also exam fees for certifications if you’re learning for professional purposes. Language learning isn’t cheap.

One of the most important ways to become fluent in a foreign language is through practice. But it can be incredibly difficult to find practice partners, that is, people who are fluent in the language you’re trying to learn. Not to mention that it can be easy to forget what you learn.

Degree Difficulty

Not all foreign languages are the same. Some languages are easier to learn for monolingual speakers of American English than others and they’re divided into categories based on difficulty.

Category I - These languages are the easiest to learn and can take around 6 to 7 months to learn. Some of these languages are Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Latin American and Continental Spanish, and Swedish.

Category II - These are slightly more difficult and can take around 8 months to reach professional fluency. These languages include German, Haitian Creole, Indonesian, Malay, and Swahili.

Category III - These languages are more difficult and can require up to 11 months to learn. Part of their difficulty is that they don’t use the Latin Alphabet that’s used in English. These languages include many Slavic languages like Russian, Estonian, Czech, Turkic languages such as Azerbaijaini and Turkish, Austroasiatic languages such as Khmer, Indo-Aryan languages like Urdu, and the Kurdish languages.

Category IV - These are the hardest languages to learn because of how nuanced and tonal they are - the wrong intonation can change the dictionary definition of the word. These languages include Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean. They can take up to 22 months of dedicated study to master.

Tips for Learning

With all that said, how does one learn a foreign language? What does one have to do to become fluent in another tongue?

• Quality of quantity - You can study for years and not be fluent. Conversely, you could also study for a few months and pass for a native speaker. How does this work? Because the quality of your study matters a lot more than the quality.

  Good classes under a competent instructor count for a lot more than mediocre classes under an instructor that doesn’t know what they’re doing. So make sure to seek out high-quality classes so as not to waste your time.

  If you really want to get bang for your buck, then hire a private tutor to teach you. Classes can sometimes move at a glacial pace since they’re only as fast as the slowest student.

  If you want to learn a foreign language straightaway, try learning one that is similar to your native tongue.

• Pick one related to yours - If you don’t care what language you’re learning and just want a second one, then pick one that’s in the same linguistic family tree to the one that you already speak.

  For example, if you’re a Spanish speaker, then pick Italian, French, or Portuguese. If you speak English, one of the other Germanic languages like German or Dutch might be easier for you to grasp than a language like Mandarin.

• Download an app - There are a number of apps available that can help you learn languages.

  Some of them are free, but the paid versions have a few features that the free ones don’t. Regardless, downloading and then using an app can be a great way to augment what you learn in the classroom or with your tutor.

• Overcome subtitles - It’s important to be exposed to the language you’re trying to learn. This can entail speaking the language with people who are already fluent in it, but that may prove difficult.

  But there is another way to expose yourself to your language of choice. That would be by consuming media - ideally, movies or television programmes - that are in the language you want to learn.

• Travel and spend time abroad - Whether or not you believe in learning by osmosis, often the quickest way to truly learn a language is by living abroad. Language isn’t just made up of words. It’s cultural, and that includes verbal cues, intonation, and understanding what’s not being said.

  You can spend months or even years trying to learn from a book. But unless you hear and speak it constantly in its native setting, you will find it difficult to achieve fluency.

  If you are up for it, you can always sign up for a master’s program abroad, or go backpacking for a year or two. If your primary goal is to get good at a language, there is no better way than to go where that language is spoken, spend time there just to practice.

• Set goals for yourself - You’re not going to become fluent right away. It may even take you longer than a few months or years. You may start to feel like you’re not making progress. But dedicated study will make progress, you just have to learn to realistically measure it.

  How do you measure progress and what sort of goals should you set? You could try a goal like being able to say hello and goodbye or order food at a restaurant. Or you could go more ambitious and set a goal of watching a movie without needing to use subtitles.

It’s not exactly quick or easy to learn a foreign language. But with time, dedication, and the right materials and mentoring, learning a foreign language at an older age is entirely possible.