<p>“According to my IB Psychology teacher, people who know more than one language score higher on intelligence tests. :P”</p>
<p>OK, this is correlation, not causation. Learning languages doesn’t make you smarter.</p>
<p>Studying Spanish grammatical structure has actually given me more knowledge as to the structure of my own sentences in English with indirect objects, subjunctive mood, and whatnot…</p>
<p>And hey, Chinese has some utility! I wouldn’t have studied it for 11 years if I didn’t believe it wouldn’t come in handy.</p>
<p>Studying a foreign language really begins to pay off when you can genuinely communicate in that language. I studied Russian for six years in a weak secondary school program, and never got to the point where I could hold a conversation in the language. After three years of college Chinese, and a year living in Taiwan, I got to a point where I could have meaningful conversations in Chinese. My life has been greatly enriched by the experience.</p>
<p>This is one of those experiences where you’ll just have to take the word of people who have “been there and done that.” You can’t experience the pay-off until you have made a really significant investment of time.</p>
<p>I remember hearing one of my professors say that raising children was one of the most profound experiences one could have in life. Another fourteen years passed before I experienced it first-hand, but he was absolutely right.</p>
<p>I know three languages to some degree. But as an int’l student, I’ll have to learn another one because both my other languages are not offered. Haha, its okay, I always wanted to learn Spanish.</p>
<p>^ That sucks. I like my college’s policy for international students: If you submitted TOEFL scores for admission, you are exempt from the foreign language requirement. They recognize that there are more languages in the world than the 8 or so that are taught on campus.</p>
<p>Honestly, there is no need to know any other language besides English in the lifetimes of those currently living. You can be succeed, gain status and wealth and never need to bother knowing about other cultures, the world, life, or anything. The road to big money doesn’t need a lot of skills, just a lot of luck and high skill level in a few attributes (networking, manipulation, realpolitik, etc.).</p>
<p>However, if you want to have a life that actually has worth and meaning to it, learning another language allows you to begin to see through the same lens as your fellow humans on this Earth do, and combined with cultural knowledge and all the other pursuits, allows you to actually make something worthwhile of your life rather than just simply being born, existing, and then dying as so many people do.</p>