5 Reasons Learning a New Language Can Help Your Career & Finances

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Guidance counselors, college admissions experts, and teachers continuously urge you to learn a foreign language. They say that knowing more than one language will make you “well-rounded” and is “the polite thing to do.”

That advice is solid, but such platitudes aren’t as valuable and motivating as hard facts. Here are five compelling reasons why learning another language can help your career and finances.

A note from the Fluent in 3 Months team before we get started: You can chat away with a native speaker for at least 15 minutes with the “Fluent in 3 Months” method. All it takes is 90 days. Tap this link to find out more.

1. Learning a Second Language Can Help You Get Hired or Promoted

A second language can strengthen a job application when the role actually calls for it. The value depends on the language, market and responsibilities, so it is best treated as a role-specific skill rather than a guaranteed shortcut to promotion.

Speaking another language lets prospective employers know several important things about you. It demonstrates curiosity about other people and cultures, as well as the ability to work hard to communicate with them effectively. It shows a flexible perspective and, perhaps most importantly, that you can commit to a demanding, complex, long-term task and finish it.

Plus, you open up your employer’s opportunities to reach new markets and customers because you can communicate with customers in different countries. CNN Money reports that knowing more than one language is one of the hottest skills for job seekers.

Some employers pay more for language skills that are central to a role, while others do not. There is no universal bilingual pay premium: compensation depends on the job, location, language and demand.

Language skills can also matter for promotion when they help someone communicate with colleagues, customers or partners. They are one part of a wider case that includes performance, experience and the needs of the role.

2. Speaking a Second Language is Good For Your Brain

Learning and using another language is a demanding cognitive activity, but research does not support promising that it will make someone smarter or prevent dementia. Reviews of prospective studies have found no clear reduction in dementia risk, while evidence about a later onset of symptoms remains mixed. Treat language learning as an enriching skill, not a medical intervention.

That skill can still help at work when it improves communication, gives you access to useful information or helps you understand a customer or colleague more clearly.

3. It Lets You Read Industry Journals Published Outside Your Country

If you want to really get ahead in your career, no matter what industry you work in, reading the journals of your area of expertise is a prerequisite for that success. Industry journals keep you up to date on the most important trends, newest developments, and market positioning of the key technologies, practices, and players in your field. You can’t call yourself an expert without staying ahead of these changes.

Every go-getter in your office and industry will be reading the major industry and trade journals. Doing the same just keeps you on par with your closest competition, unless you’re reading the journals they’re not.

Learning a new language gives you access to industry journals published in that language, which means you’re likely to be the only one in your office to see certain things coming, and among just a handful of people in your trade to do so.

If you’d like to learn a new language but aren’t sure which one, you can use this fact as a way to decide. Research which foreign-language journals in your industry have the best reputation or are the slowest to get translated into English, then learn the language in which most of them are written.

4. It Opens Up More Side Gigs to You

The popular term “side gig” refers to second jobs with more flexibility than working part-time for a second employer. They remain one of the better ways to get a handle on your finances by pumping extra money into your life each week. You could drive for Uber or Postmates or start a dog-walking or house-cleaning service, but if you know a second language, a whole new set of doors open for you. Some examples include:

• Editing translated documents
• Tutoring speakers of one of your languages who wish to learn the other
• Doing live phone translations for medical and legal conversations
• Translating documents and speeches
• Providing online customer service in multiple languages
• Writing closed-captioning in your new language
• Freelance writing in either language

In fact, Benny Lewis, who created the Fluent in 3 Months blog, previously worked as a freelance translator, and he explains how you can do it too here. There are lots of opportunities out there!

These gigs can create extra income when your language level matches the work and you meet any professional requirements. Pay and working conditions vary widely.

Even if your primary employer never learns to appreciate, reward, or value your second language skills, you can still make them pay off by exploring opportunities to make extra money on the side.

5. It Makes International Job Transfers Easier

Some industries offer international exchanges, short-term assignments or permanent transfers. An assignment may come with different compensation or career opportunities, but the terms vary by employer and location. For some people, the experience of living overseas is reward enough.

Whatever the case for your company or industry, learning a new language helps you here in three ways. First, it makes you more likely to receive such an assignment. Few employers, choosing between candidates with otherwise similar qualifications, will select somebody who doesn’t speak the native language of an assignment location over somebody who does.

Second, when you arrive in your new country, you’ll be better able to perform your job functions if you speak the local language. It lets you communicate better with your co-workers and vendors and usually puts you in higher regard in the community. Even if you’re still only passable with the language, most cultures give you credit for having the courtesy to try.

Finally, it helps you adapt to life in your new home. Easier communication at the grocery store, with your utility company, and on the street makes the whole process less stressful. You’ll enjoy the trip more and be generally more successful.

According to research by Mercer, you should especially consider this if you work in any of the following industries, in which more than 60% of companies are prioritizing expatriate assignments: insurance, retail, energy, technology, health care, and consumer goods. But opportunities outside these industries also exist, and they’re growing ever more common as the world becomes a smaller place.

Final Thoughts

There’s one more data-driven fact you should keep in mind when considering learning a new language. Conventional wisdom holds that adults can’t learn languages as quickly or effectively as children. Lifestyle design and effectiveness guru Tim Ferriss dove deep into the research and discovered that “wisdom” is entirely untrue.

According to Ferriss’s article, it’s not that children learn languages more easily than adults. Rather, it’s that adults lack the time to practice languages the way children can. That’s why language learning programs optimized for quick learning and retention, which you can use in the course of your normal life, are so valuable. They let you, as an adult, learn as quickly and retain as much as a school-age child.

You have five good reasons to get started today, and no good reasons to put it off. Now’s the best time to start.