To me the biggest benefit of knowing several languages, especially very different ones, is that it forces one to acknowledge how much of one’s thinking depends of small details that would be different in another language, where things are categorized differently.
In French, we use the same word for “city” and “town”; for “politics” and “policy”; so necessarily the way we speak about those will be different. In Chinese, there are different words for brothers and sisters depending on whether they are younger or older, and for cousins depending (among others) of whether they share your surname.
It’s a good habit to try to imagine what some arguments would sound like in another language; some depend on etymology and can’t even be translated (“how can you call a twelve year old a teenager?”; “Well Democracy comes from the Greek …”); some work but sound much more awkward (Germany philosophy?).
To me the biggest benefit of knowing several languages, especially very different ones, is that it forces one to acknowledge how much of one’s thinking depends of small details that would be different in another language, where things are categorized differently.
In French, we use the same word for “city” and “town”; for “politics” and “policy”; so necessarily the way we speak about those will be different. In Chinese, there are different words for brothers and sisters depending on whether they are younger or older, and for cousins depending (among others) of whether they share your surname.
It’s a good habit to try to imagine what some arguments would sound like in another language; some depend on etymology and can’t even be translated (“how can you call a twelve year old a teenager?”; “Well Democracy comes from the Greek …”); some work but sound much more awkward (Germany philosophy?).