Your World Grows Bigger
Have you ever been to a library in a foreign country, where your language isn't the one everyone speaks?
I like it a lot. There's usually at least an English section, and the selection there sometimes lets you into what the locals like, or how the international community is in the area. But, mostly, I like looking at foreign books: editions I've never seen of books I know well or I've heard of, intriguing covers that make me discover books actually available in my language (or at least in English), and then books that I won't find elsewhere and wouldn't understand either if I tried to buy them and read them. Every single time I go to Japan I get lost in their libraries, and every time I wonder to myself: "If only I could read this..."
Learning a new language suddenly unlocks so many possibilities, and that's why most of the world learns English as a second one. But if you go by the list of the most spoken languages in the world, you could increase your range drastically by learning Mandarin Chinese. And I'm just thinking about books now, but of course everything counts: books, videogames, movies, theatre, opera, people1.
In a sense, any new experience teaches you a bit more "language" about the world around you: you wouldn't understand a thing about painting if you didn't at least try to know about it, or talk with someone who does. You find words you didn't know existed, sometimes describing what you felt was there but didn't quite get still, and your world grows bigger.
Yeah, I know I write about this often. But it's my blog, and I do as I damn well please!↩