Why you should study languages

Good morning.
Afternoon.
Something.

Today I want to talk to you about languages. That is because I spent the weekend listening to Portuguese and not understanding it. Though there was always someone translating, because almost no one else there understood Portuguese either.
So I thought I'd talk to you about why you should study languages.
As you know, during my life I have studied a total of six languages at school. Of those six I speak two fluently. That's Finnish and English. And that annoys me. I also understand some Swedish and French, but can't really say I'd be actually able to speak them even if I had to. And then there's Italian and Latin that I've studied a total of four years, that I only understand a couple of words here and there if I ever happen to hear the, which I don't. Either way, no matter how bad I suck in all those languages, having studied Latin, Italian and French gives me a pretty good ground to start learning any of the Latin-based mid-European languages. Though French would be the easiest.
And because of capoeira, I decided I want to learn Portuguese, because that I actually hear not only ever, unlike any of the other languages, but actually a couple of times a week, and I might actually have use for it in the future if I keep training capoeira. Which I hope I will.

Anyway.
What I wanted to talk about was why to study languages in general, not why I want to study Portuguese. So here my top 7 reasons why to study languages.

1. Practicality. You understand a language you've studied. (Well, you should.) If you ever travel to a country where they speak the language, life is a lot easier if you speak it too. Or if you for some other reason have to use or hear that language often. Of course if you don't ever need it, then it doesn't really hold much practical value.

2. You can read books in that language. If you like that kind of thing. I'm the kind of person who likes to read books in the original language if it's in any way possible. It's a good thing I mostly only read fantasy, because that means most books I would ever read are originally in English. Though I'm sure there are fantasy books in almost all other languages too. The world just doesn't hear about it, because the English-speaking world is kind of dominant on this planet.

3. Speaking a language opens up a whole new world for you. Having to do with the last point. If I spoke some other language than English, I would be suddenly able to find all the things in the world that are in the language other than English.
Or, if you want to think about it through a practical example: Imagine not speaking a word of English. Imagine all the things in the world you wouldn't have any idea about, if you didn't understand English, meaning you probably wouldn't have any idea of anything in the world that is in English. You would just know of the things that are in Finnish or someone has bothered to translate.
Even though there is a lot of content in the Internet (and the rest of the world) in English, I somehow fail to see how there wouldn't be a ton of stuff out there in other major languages too, like Spanish and French and Portuguese and I was going to say Chinese, but I'm not actually sure there is that much Internet in Chinese. But I'm not going to get into that now. The point is, there must be so much great stuff in the world we simply have no idea about because we only speak English and Finnish.

4. Speaking a language helps you think differently. I've been talking about this before, for example when I said that Russian doesn't actually have a word for freedom as we understand it. A language is always developed around what the people speaking the language have thought is important. The things that are different in their way of seeing the world have different words. Someone just explained to me about an African (I think) language, which has twenty or so words for different shades of green, because distinguishing between different shades of green is important when living where ever they lived. The people speaking the language could not however separate blue from orange, because they'd always called them with the same word, because who cares about blue and orange.
So I guess speaking different languages literally makes you see the world differently, just by giving you words for things you never noticed existed.

5. Also helps you understand other people. Just kind of an addition to the previous point, but still seemed like a separate one. When you speak a language someone else speaks, you can understand their way of thinking and seeing things a lot clearer than if you only speak your own language.

6. Studying a language is good for you. I think. I'm too lazy to actually dig out a study or even a Wikipedia article to back this one up. But your brain generally likes exercise and stimulating, and I'm pretty sure learning a language is a great way to keep your brain from getting all lazy and sloppy.
Yeah, I have no idea if this is actually true. But I'm refusing to believe studying languages doesn't have any positive effects on mental capacity or health or something. 

7. Speaking different languages is cool. Sure, studying grammar and vocabulary is a pain and a lot of unpleasant hard work, but I wish now that I had tried a little harder on my French lessons simply so that I would now speak three languages instead of two. Though it is really hard to learn a language you don't ever use or need outside a classroom. That's why I hope I'll do better with Portuguese.

I'm gonna go flip through the Portuguese textbook I bought today (that's how serious I'm about learning it).
I'll hear from you on Friday.

~matu

PS. I also bought Aatu a copy of The Hobbit today, because for some reason we were in the bookshop with him a month or two ago (were you there too?) and I asked him if he'd read it if I bought it for him and he said yes. At the time I didn't trust that answer, but in time I decided it's worth the shot. Because books are cool.
So not we'll just have to see how long it takes until he finishes it. If he finishes it.