Improve Your English by Learning Foreign Languages

Counter-intuitive? Yes— but you’ll thank me for it

I can still remember the world as it used to be, back when it was in only one language.

Since the age of 14, when I first fell in love with a foreign language (Dutch), I’ve been pushing myself to learn more, and more, and more. And my world just opened up.

Since then, I’ve also taken on languages like German, Italian, and Portuguese (as well as minor flirtations with Spanish, French, Catalan, Russian, Romanian, Swedish… the list of my failures goes on almost indefinitely).

While all of my languages need improvement — more than a few are just plain rusty — there’s one language I speak which, as a result of my years of dedication to languages, I’m really very good at.

That language is English.

Foreign languages make you talk (and write) good

By “talk good” or “write good”, what do I mean? (Other than, obviously, “speak fluently” or “write eloquently”.)

After all, there is no one way to “talk good”, surely? The purpose of language is to understand each other, so it shouldn’t matter whether you’re from the Canadian tundra, the velds of South Africa, or the outskirts of Birmingham, England: English is English is English.

I wish the world worked that way — honestly, I do. Linguists are adamant we should be descriptive about language, not prescriptive. We shouldn’t idolise (“prescribe”) one way of speaking (“Standard English”) over any other — we should merely try and understand all the different but equally-correct varieties of language out there.

But, in the real world, we are prescriptive. We do subconsciously judge how somebody uses a language we know well, for better or (more likely) for worse.

Imagine you’re at a job interview or giving a speech — you know, you just know, that you’ll be judged on a few things regardless of whatever information you’re trying to put forth about yourself.

Those things are: your grammar, your pronunciation, and your choice of words.

If you care about this sort of thing — how to put yourself across as best you can, how to write well, or how to succeed in interview — you can improve all of these three aspects of English with one simple trick: study a new language.

Improve your grammar

English is a weird language.

If you’re a monolingual Anglophone (as I was, and still am to some extent as I’ve never truly reached and maintained “fluency”), you probably don’t appreciate just how weird it is grammatically.

Do you speak English?

For example, have you ever realised that we use the words “do/does/did/done” in just about every context?

As questions (“Do you like it?”)
As emphasis (“I do like it!” vs “I like it!”)
As substitute verbs (“Did you read the book?” — “I did [read it].”)
As question tags (“You just went there, didn’t you?”)
As an auxiliary (helper) verb (“I didn’t see you there.”)
As a verb in itself, with a range of disparate meanings (“I’m just doing my hair.” — “I’m doing an article right now.” — “That’s enough; that’ll do.” — “It’s done.”)

This weird verb has no analogues in Germanic languages (like Dutch, Norwegian, German — the languages to which English is most closely related), nor in Romance languages (like Latin or French, to which English is also closely related, though less so).

Because mainland Britain is an island with complex geography and many close European neighbours, England (and English) has been constantly invaded for millennia. Each time, our language was re-hashed into a new form. The most common (but by no means universally accepted) theory of the words “do/does/did/done” is that they’re from a Celtic (e.g. Welsh, Gaelic) influence on English.

How does this relate to language learning and how you use English?

Because it demonstrates perfectly that English is a weird language with a complicated history and, as a result, a grammar that’s just all over the place.

Well, in that case…

If you’re familiar with German (a close relative of English) then you’ll know there are grammatical cases. These are, quite simply, the roles that a noun can play in a sentence. In German, there are 4 cases:

Nominative nouns are the subject — the central ‘character’ — of the sentence (“Adam eats an apple.”)
Accusative nouns are the object of the sentence — the thing that is being “[verb]-ed” (“An apple eats Adam”)
Genitive nouns are nouns that possess other nouns (“Adam’s apple.”)
Dative nouns are indirect objects — they’re still involved, but the verb doesn’t directly apply to them (“Henry gives a book to Adam.”)

In German, the noun (and the words for “the” or “a/an”, as well as any adjectives, that precede the noun) changes for each of these roles in the sentence.

English, however, only has two cases: one generalist case is used for almost everything (notice how the word “Adam” is the same in 3 of the above sentences), and the other case is the genitive (which is why “Adam” changes to “Adam’s” in the third sentence).

Knowing that this is a grammatical case with similar but specific endings in different situations, for example “dogs” (plural) versus “dog’s” (singular genitive) versus “dogs’” (plural genitive) is one key way to avoid some of the most common grammatical mistakes.

Understanding the genitive when it comes to contractions like “it’s” (a contraction for “it is” or even “it has”) versus “its” (genitive, e.g. “Its leg is broken.”) is another crucial way in which understanding the grammar of foreign languages — even just a little — can help you when it comes to eliminating those silly mistakes from your articles, job applications, or even just in your text messages.

Even if I were able to speak English, I wouldn’t.

A final example I’ll give is that of the subjunctive.

Most likely, if you’ve learnt any Romance language (like Spanish, French, Italian, or Portuguese) you’ll have come across the much-dreaded subjunctive.

If you haven’t studied any of these, then you’re missing out: the subjunctive is an incredibly-useful “voice” in a language that we use whenever we’re unsure, doubtful, talking about possibilities, future events, desires, or anything of that sort.

While I won’t go through all the grammar and the myriad of (sometimes confusing) ways in which the subjunctive is used, get this:

English has a subjunctive too.

Moreover, being able to use the subjunctive correctly in your writing will add just a pinch of refinement to your words.

Look at the subtitle above this section: “Even if I were able to speak English, I wouldn’t.”

Normally, when I’m talking about myself in the past tense, I use the phrase “I was”.

I was shopping
I was naked
But I was happy

Why, then, in the subtitle, do I say “Even if I were able to…”?

Because the subjunctive in English is very easily hidden, and because of this, it’s very often missed entirely. You most likely wouldn’t have looked twice if you’d seen the sentence “Even if I was able to speak English, I wouldn’t have.”

But if you’ve spent a lot of time around the English language, studied much linguistics, or, more to the point, learnt some Romance language (or any myriad of other languages with subjunctives) to just an intermediate level, then you’ll recognise the “poor” (by which I mean “nonstandard”) grammar of the sentence.

Are you willing to take the risk that your readers all are monolingual Anglophones with little grammatical knowledge? Or, if they are clued-up about the ins-and-outs of grammar, do you bet that they’re able to suppress their subconscious judgement — no matter how “wrong” it may be to judge the way one talks — for your benefit?

On both counts, I’m not.

Study foreign languages — moreover, study their grammar — and improve your own English as you do so.

Improve your spoken English

This might not be an obvious one — but learning a language does teach you key skills to communicate better with your otherwise-ungainly combination of lips, teeth, and tongue.

Listening

While this is something you all do anyway, when you’re used to a language you can almost listen without really listening.

You can put music or the TV on in the background, listen to a talk or a lecture, or engage in a little small-talk without ever really paying attention to the words that are said. Responses are automatic, like a linguistic muscle-memory, and therefore shallow and meaningless.

By learning another language, you’ve got to (at first) really focus on what’s going on. Your ears prick up, your brain works overtime, and you need to learn to pick up the little inflections or participles that bring with them all the meaning of your new language.

Simply re-learning what this frame of mind is like — after perhaps not having needed to listen carefully to somebody’s speech for many years — is a really vital part of your engagement with a language.

Not only listening, but also reading somebody’s language — whether English or not — closely is a skill that so many lack. Really picking apart a sentence, understanding the deeper meanings, and knowing why certain grammatical or stylistic choices were made over others gives you critical and analytical skills that the standard monolingual Anglophone just won’t have.

Speaking

Almost always, the first thing you do when you learn a new language is learn to pronounce a little. Your first-draft attempt at pronunciation will never be perfect — nor should you expect it to be — but you’ll be manoeuvring your brain and speech apparatus to point in roughly the right direction.

When you do this, you’ll most likely come across the IPA — International Phonetic Alphabet. This is a set of hundreds of unique symbols that represent every possible sound in every known human language. You’ll also see IPA as the second word of any Wikipedia page, like this:

Wikipedia (/ˌwɪkɪˈpiːdiə/)

That glut of symbols in the parentheses represents exactly and scientifically the standard way to pronounce “Wikipedia”, believe it or not.

If you know some IPA, and you’ve (more importantly) learnt a few new sounds or combinations of sounds in your target language, then you’re already on your way to acquiring the key skill of listening to how you sound and modifying it.

If you’re able to take your spoken language and mold it into different accents, voices, and produce novel sounds with it, then you’ve got the skills to start differentiating between your “home voice” (your accent when you’re with non-judgemental family or friends) and your “work voice” (which you might need when you’re interviewing for some job, giving a lecture or a speech, or otherwise trying to appear prim, proper and presentable).

Let me reiterate — there is nothing “wrong” with the way anybody speaks. So long as we all understand each other, we’re all speaking the same language — language being, after all, a relatively poorly defined concept.

However, it’s unavoidable and a sad truth that certain ways of speaking are economically and socially valued, and it may be worth your while to mimic.

Improve your vocabulary

Ah, vocabulary— the most important part of all.

If grammar and pronunciation are the bread and butter of a language, then vocabulary is the luscious filling of sauces, vegetables, [dairy-free] cheeses, and [substitute] meats.

Even if you have a strong accent associated with economically disadvantaged areas but you’re able to use the word “Floccinaucinihilipilification” (the estimation of something as worthless) in a sentence (correctly), you can be sure you’ve made an impression.

Learning foreign languages is absolutely the best way of learning new words in English that you wouldn’t otherwise have come across — or simply understanding why English words mean what they do. For example,

Amica (Latin, friend) — Amicable (English, friendly)
Sacerdote (Portuguese, priest) — Sacerdotal (English, relating to priests)
Schadenfreude (German, joy at the misfortune of others; same in English)
Vrijbuiter (Dutch, freebooter/pirate) — Filibustering (English, playing for time)
Gonzo (Italian, foolish) — Gonzo (English, crazy)
Plébiscite (French, referendum, from Latin plebs/plebis meaning common people) — Plebiscite (English, referendum concerning change in sovereignty)

These are just a very few examples — the list of English cognates from other languages is ridiculously long, as very few English words (except weird ones like “dog”) are purely English.

If you’re looking to add a little flavour to your written or spoken word, you can’t do anything better than learn a new language.

One last thing

If you’re going to be a writer (or a speaker), living off your words and ideas alone, then more power to you. I hope it works out. Being able to communicate in English as well as you possibly can is certainly a bonus for your chosen career path.

But there’s another.

If you don’t have any actual experience, what are you going to say to your audience?

Now, I’m not one of those travel-mad bloggers who advocate going anywhere or everywhere all the damn time with no money and no backpack, trying to “hustle” your way through life.

Instead, I say this: No matter what language you speak, at least 6 billion out of 7.5 billion people don’t speak that language. You’re never in the majority.

That means you’re never able to communicate with more than about 20% of the global population, so you simply cannot have about 20% of the experiences you otherwise could.

In short, learning a language doesn’t just improve your ability to communicate experiences in English — it gives you stories to talk about in the first place.

If you’re interested in hearing more about my upcoming e-book, The Traveller’s Guide to Learning Any Language in a Day, please fill in the form below!