I LOVE languages! I can speak French, English, Spanish, some Japanese and I used to speak German but forgot most of it. As soon as I am satified with my level of Japanese I want to start studying Russian.
Pavel, I find that learning languages teaches me a lot. Not only about other people and other cultures, obviously, but also about myself. For example when I started studying Japanese (the only foreign language I know that doesn't use the latin alphabet) I realized how everything in my mother language -and my culture- was pure convention (I taught myself to read when I was 4 or 5 so this came as quite a revelation)
Also, studying kanji (chinese caracters) involved a learning process verry different from what I had ever used before.
Finally, I think the structure of a language influences the thoughts themselves. If I think (or dream) in a foreign language, it sometimes leads me to different conclusions than if I had followed a think pattern in French!
I have a question for you multilingual people : how many languages can you handle at once? I found out that 3 is my limit. I found myself in a situation where I was studying Japanese in the US, while still working with French people, and it worked just fine, but when my friends found out I spoke Spanish and wanted to talk in Spanish with me, it became impossible.  |