One morning late last autumn, I took off from London’s Heathrow Airport, my base as a Boeing 787 pilot, and landed the next morning at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. By early afternoon I was walking under the turning foliage of Rikugien, one of my favorite gardens, where I paused by a wooden sign at the edge of a stream. Despite having studied Japanese for years, the text on the sign — something about slippery stones ahead — included several characters I didn’t recognize, so I fired up an app I’d recently discovered. It scanned and translated all of them instantly.
Such tools — and others that can translate speech — are astonishing. But with this magic at our fingertips, is the study of foreign languages now pointless?
Not at all. In fact, foreign languages are more rewarding than ever, in part because technology has made them easier than ever to learn.
My love of languages began in childhood. Growing up in rural Western Massachusetts, foreign languages were inseparable from the wonder I associated with globes and maps, and with the graceful airliners I dreamed of someday flying to distant places. I learned some French and Dutch from my Belgian father and studied Spanish in high school. The language I really fell for, though, is Japanese, which I first studied during a summer homestay in Kanazawa.
The world has changed a lot since the summer of 1991. But there are still reasons for us to invest in foreign language studies. Despite the global pre-eminence of English and the growing sophistication of translation tools, U.S. businesses and government agencies have an unmet need for language skills. Yet as of 2017, only about one in five K-12 students study a foreign language, and enrollment in U.S. college foreign language classes dropped by almost one-third between 2009 and 2021. These gaps mean that career opportunities are plentiful for language learners, both at home and abroad.
It’s true that many English speakers don’t need language skills to travel these days, especially with smartphones that can translate a menu (or even what a waiter is saying) in real time. But few people would argue that the existence of calculators means we needn’t study math. Language learning is associated with enhanced memory, creativity and concentration. It boosts overall academic performance and may also delay neurological decline as you age. For all of us, language learning is a gym for the brain.
For me, the benefits of learning a language go beyond chatting with customers on my flights to Tokyo, or more easily navigating the world’s largest metropolis after touchdown. Wherever I am in the world, Japanese is a reliable and seemingly endless source of fascination and fun.
I love, for example, its counters. English has words like “sheet,” which we use to count various flat, thin items like paper, pastry or metal. But Japanese has hundreds of these words, including hon for long, thin things such as pencils, rivers and flights, and rin for flowers and attached — as opposed to unattached — wheels. Before studying Japanese, had I ever compared the shapes of flowers and wheels? I love, too, Japanese onomatopoeia. A Japanese speaker might describe snowflakes, for example, as falling hara hara — twirling down like petals — or shin shin — steadily on a cold night. Had I ever before considered the different ways snow might fall? Wonders like these are obscured by translation tools, which can’t easily convey the marvelous subtleties through which meaning is formed.
Every language is also a doorway to new worlds of stories, poems and songs. And, when you take a new language on the road, it reliably brightens your journey and deepens your experiences. As more of us focus on traveling with awareness and sensitivity, the offering of a few words, however mangled, is an easy courtesy.
Last month, for example, my partner and I traveled around Lithuania. While I won’t be dipping into a Lithuanian novel anytime soon, I’ll never forget the word for thank you — ačiū, best remembered as “achoo” — which we deployed each time we stopped for kibinai, or traditionally savory pastries. After a vacation, such far-born words are often among my favorite souvenirs.
The challenge, of course, is getting started. Luckily, new digital tools help us fit language learning into daily life. I’m hooked on Wanikani, a web-based tool that uses targeted repetition and irreverent mnemonics to teach kanji, the logographic characters of the sort that puzzled me on the sign in that Tokyo garden. (How to recall shitsu, a reading of the character that means “room”? Imagine a tiny dog. “The shih tzu likes to come into your room and pee everywhere.”) I’m also a fan of Pimsleur and JapanesePod101, which offer short lessons I can do anywhere — instead of scrolling the news or social media.
Most usefully, I found a tutor on Preply, a start-up founded in 2012 by three Ukrainian friends to seamlessly connect language learners and instructors across the world. Akiko-sensei, my teacher, is a Japanese native who lives in Toronto; I often sign into our video lessons from hotels in the dozens of cities I fly to for work. (The first topic is invariably the weather wherever I happen to be.)
It’s possible to shape an entire journey around language learning. The group that ran my homestay, The Experiment in International Living, arranges similar programs today, while other organizations offer language-based travel for people of all ages. Alternatively, ask a tour guide on your next trip for an hour of language practice — a welcome break, perhaps, from busy sightseeing — over coffee or a local dish. And why not seek out conversation partners in your own community? Or try one of the many free online conversation exchange websites, which offer the satisfaction of sharing the intricacies of English with a potential friend on the far side of your world.
My love of languages has fostered enduring connections. My friendship with my college buddy Jamie, for example, was forged in our grueling first-year Japanese classes. Thirty-two years after we first struggled to master the Japanese particle wa — which spotlights the topic but not necessarily the subject of a sentence — or to conjugate adjectives into their past tense, or to deploy the humble versions of everyday verbs, I asked him what those early efforts mean to him now. In response, he likened learning a language to reading fiction. Both, Jamie said, expand our horizons by compelling us to consider the minds of others. In this way, he explained, learning a new language “is an exercise in empathy.”
I couldn’t agree more. And there’s never been better time to take the plunge. This summer, pick a language and dive in.
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