Many people are surprised when I tell them that I know six languages: English, Japanese, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Bengali, and Swahili. (I’m also working on my seventh, Korean.) This is especially so since none of my languages are in the same language family (like Spanish, French, and Italian would be). Plus, they’re some of the hardest languages to learn for native English speakers, according to the US government’s Foreign Service Institute! There’s no doubt that these languages were generally not easy to learn, but learning Japanese as my first foreign language helped me learn different languages. Actually, the more languages you learn, the easier it is to learn…
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