If you have any links to articles that discuss how language learning can help TBI, I would be interested in reading them. From my own experience, language learning has helped revitalize my language and memories.
Mainly for career prospects. I would like to study at Carleton university in Ottawa, Canada and they have the best program for international relations. As a competitive program, they are very selective in whom they choose so if I can stand out with language skills, then that will significantly boost my chances.
Correction: “Jag skulle vilja förbättra min svenska. Min (mor → (morderspråk)) språket är ryska, jag kan hjälpa dig med det om du vill”. ←
Full Correction: “Jag skulle vilja förbättra min svenska. Mitt morderspråk är ryska, jag kan hjälpa dig med det om du vill”
Låter bra :). Jag kan hjälpa dig med :).
Ress, if you help me with Russian. I’ll help you with Swedish :). By the way I checked out your profile information and we seem to have same intrests. I go to Technology programme in college and I’m going to work as a programmer when I grow up. And I play electric guitar :).
But if we want to help each other out with each others languages. I need to have you as a friend on any social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, KIK etc. If that’s okay? 
I remember a story of someone who was asked why he climbed the mountain, and he simply reply “Because it was there.”
I mean there is not obligatory reason to learn a language. Just the pleasure, something irrational.
For me, it’s a way to virtualy travel in a period where I don’t have so much opportunity.
On top of that, I have a strong feeling that it will pay off someday. Perhaps if I’ll retire in a english spoken country…
There does not seem to be much, although I do remember having seen something at the brain injury support website. If I find it, I will get back to you.
Me too
I’m with you I have been in love with Spanish for 21 years and I really started learning for real last December and I have learn so much from my love of the language.
Why I am learning Spanish is because my family thought that because I listen to so much Spanish music that I should understand what they were saying.
Have you had a look at Norman Doidge’s “The Brain’s Way of Healing”? I have just bought it, but not yet read it.
I think the most rational way to respond is “it makes me happy.” Pursuing happiness and being in the state of happiness is pretty logical and rational for a human!
Will check it out, thanks Sanne !
Yeah, I heard this line “Because the mountain is there” many many times.
It is like an urban legend (alpine legend?), haha.
I guess the language learner can say “Because the language is there!” too - is that cool or what.
To me learning an L is a conquest of a large stretch of geographical space, intellectual content, and masses of new potential friends and partners. In other words a good part of the world map that always tortures me that is no longer a very foreign zone, but has been unlocked for completely confident and enjoyable independent travel.
Also I feel no matter what you do, I find there will be at least 3 hours of dead time in your day if not more, that is time where you can listen to audio or have a quick look at something, but not really do any dedicated task.
L learning, together with audiobooks, podcasts/lectures is one of the few productive things you can use that time except for maybe mindfulness meditation.
So while other people listen to music, watch dumb yt videos, do too much facebooking, are being fed buzzy junk-information by buzzfeed etc. the likes of us may spend that time on the more purposeful and smart things I mentioned.
These are I think the most important intelligent reasons, why the likes of us learn them Ls.
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Expansion of the mind / more understanding of the world and humanity
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Immediate intellectual stimulation of our juicy above average brains (well channeled nerd energy) by the linguistic/code cracking aspect
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Better appreciation of specific cultural content (literature, film)
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Considerably improved travel experience
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Connection to members of the opposite or same sex of more appealing mentality and/or physical appearance (ie enlarge range of social and sexual opportunities)
For me certainly all those reasons apply (with the opposite sex option of 5. :P) more or less depending on the L.
Of course the average working bee around the world may learn out of necessity (immigrants, business dealings) and hope of better job opportunities (fallacy?).
Actually my original ‘reason’ for getting into Ls was nr. 2. I never was a full-on nerd, but in my mid-teens I was certainly a middle-man somewhere between the real nerds and the normal dumbasses: P. Many a boring lesson I spent passing notes with the nerds written in any script from greek to elvish, or developing our own cryptography and trying to decipher each other’s.
Gladly somewhere around 16 I woke up, moved away from the path to complete nerddom and chose an intelligent but more normal, real world lifestyle and decided to channel those 30% nerd of my personality away from video games, excessive fiction and dressing up as elves (wasn’t going to do that either way:P) and other useless nerd masturbation and towards potentially applicable stuff such as real languages, non-fiction reading and some coding.
I know for myself if I hadn’t gotten into real languages I might be messing with Elvish, Klingon and Esperanto right now. 
But as I said, my current reasons for LL are all the five listed, with varying weight depending on the L and the overarching idea of unlocking the world map of languages.
Thanks for such an awesome answer. I passed cryptography notes in high school. Haha! Wish I had learned earlier in life that language learning can be an intellectual puzzle and open up the world. Now I know.
Hello!
I know most Koreans will probably ask Korean learners why are you learning Korean. don’t they?
I am learning English, Chinese, German, and Spanish. My focus is German at the moment. I don’t have any good reason to learn languages. I really hated to learn English language until 2 years ago. I speak Korean(native) and Japanese(near native). But English was really really hard and had different grammars( I would say it was impossible for me). It was so hard to understand the way you guys speak ( since you are learning Korean, I am sure you know what i mean =)…for example why should i use subjects( I, you, she, it …) every time? …). However, now, I am fine with English even though my spoken and written English are not at high level. Reading and listening are okay.
So, I realised that learning language is the main key to understand other cultures and communicate people who use that language. If I talk with Japanese in English, it’s okay but if i talk with Japanese in Japanese, I will be able to speak with them about more things the way they think.
Many English speakers asked me why I am learning English.=) Oh… Because even though my schools taught me(tried to teach me? maybe… i didn’t listen to them at all ) English a long time, I had no idea at all(Most of my friends cannot communicate in English). I was curious that if it’s really impossible to learn it without living in English speaking countries? I haven’t been to outside of Asia yet…T_T maybe I could say it was my intellectual curiosity. But now solved=) when you get at least upper intermediate level of Korean and you understand Korean dramas it will be more clear I think?
So true. I always hear people say they don’t have time to learn any language, but we need to quit making excuses and actually make the time for it. I get up at 4:30 a.m. and go for my morning run at 4:40, eat, then study my university work and languages for an hour and a half before heading to university at 7:30 a.m. Just requires grit.
Exactly. My elderly parents still ask me why I’m bothering to learn anything, as I’m “too old to get a job”, quote, unquote.
How about, “Because I really like Chinese people?”, “Japanese is such a beautiful language!”, and “because I want to befriend immigrants & refugees to Australia”, etc.
It’s definitely not always about the money.
Four things I immediately loved about Korean.
- Don’t need to say the subject in every sentence.
- Don’t need plurals.
- Don’t have articles. (a, an, the)
- Hangul (plus the logical link between spelling and pronunciation)
I have met many Koreans who are nervous about trying to use English because they can’t speak perfectly. Even with my beginner Korean and my friend’s somewhat bad English, we have still managed to be pen pals for a year. I can see beyond the imperfect language to understand what he is trying to say. We have learned so much about each other’s culture and life from these emails. I wish more Koreans were brave enough to try to communicate, even if imperfectly.
Because I want to share my in-laws secret language! We bought an apartment in Gdansk and I plan to stay holidays among polish people. The idea of walking on Gdansk’s streets and attending plays in Polish and local market is surreal. It is a new world. After all, learning a new language is acquiring a new way of being.
“…with English even though my spoken and written English are not at a high level.” ??? [Raises her eyebrows and smiles]