A different language is a different vision of Life Federico Fellini

Monica Barnes a écrit: Learning a language can change our life completely and open doors to a completely new way of life.

In a globalized working world applicants with a diversity of languages are in great demand and are more likely to climb the job ladder. The companies are internationally oriented and expect their employees to communicate with their clients in their native language. But speaking another language does not only imply knowing its grammar and vocabulary, but also thinking in a different way. This seems a bit difficult at first, however with time, motivation and practice it can be achieved by every language learner.

For some time now, I have been empowering my language coachees to master their Spanish&Catalan and before that I was an English, German, French and Italian language learner myself. From my personal learning point of view, I believe I truly mastered my first target language when I internalized the new language and I let this process transform me into the new person I am now.

By internalize, I mean that as a language learner I first strongly and consistently provoked the thought process of connecting and associating my target language to my native language (as we coaches do in the NeuroLanguage Coaching* process) and after that I started creating my new mental schemes. Learning a language involved becoming confident. Being aware of my own mental processes helped my brain to have certainty and develop and create new cognitive connections.

For me it was not just the language or the thought, but culture also played a role in the way I perceived things and the strong relationship between the language, the culture and the thoughts. Initially it was thought that languages labelled the objects around us. Now it is considered that when we speak different languages, we perceive the world differently and identify things for which there are only words in our language. Therefore, inside every language there lies a great secret: each language has its own personality and distinctive way of expressing ideas. Varying grammar structures and concepts drive us to rethink how to articulate certain ideas. Words can have different etymologies that might even subconsciously affect the associations we have with them.

As a result an important part of language learning for me was embracing these personality changes and being comfortable with them. That is why I only felt “fluent” when I adopted the mentality of a speaker of the language I was learning. This in return helped me to improve not only my communication, grammar and pronunciation, but also my confidence towards my target language.

Learning a new language broadened my horizon. As Marcel Proust once said "A language we do not know is a fortress sealed". If you feel you would like to unseal your fortress as I did, and take your Spanish&Catalan up a notch, do feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.

Mònica Barnés - LEARN WITH PASSION - www.monica-barnes.com