[tatrajim]

Learning foreign languages as an adult is valuable for facilitating thinking about the world in very different ways.

In my case, learning Korean in my 20s helped me understand group dynamics and hierarchies (they are built into the verbs themselves) in a way my English-language background never could. Classical Chinese gave me conceptual gifts, such as "principle" 理 vs. "material force" 氣 , and Japanese (very similar to Korean, but with important differences in nuance) the power of understatement and indirection.