I bet you’ve been asked so many times, you can automatically trot out a familiar list of reasons:
Why are you so interested in learning a foreign language?
下面这个问题，我打赌你已经被问了很多次了，不用思考就能自动给出一串众所周知的原因：
为什么你对学习外语这么感兴趣呢？
Perhaps you patiently explain how a second language is so important for standing-out amongst the ever-increasing number of fellow graduates? Or maybe you touch on your desire to travel and the ease with which speaking the local lingo will help you get about?
也许你会耐心地解释：随着大学生人数的增长，掌握一门二外对于能否从众多竞争者中脱颖而出起着举足轻重的作用；或者是想去旅行，而学会说当地的语言会让旅途更加轻松。
You might mention the importance of second-languages for academic opportunities abroad? Or for the advantage it gives you in business communications in established or emerging markets.
又或许你会提到二外在去国外进修时的重要性？还是在拓展新市场时能助你一臂之力？
And so on and so forth.
诸如此类，等等等等。
Of course, all of these justifications are perfectly reasonable. But we’re not interested in ‘reasonable’ in this article.
当然，所有的这些原因全部合情合理，可是，今天在这篇文章里，我想要讨论的是那些“不合理”的原因。
To celebrate International Student’s Day (Thursday, November 17), we’re going to focus on some of the lesser-known, more unusual and even completely inadvertent advantages of becoming proficient in a second language.
为了庆祝国际学生日（11月7日星期四），我会专注于那些不为人所知的，非比寻常的，甚至完全出人意料的掌握一门二外的益处。
So, forget about career advancement, academic opportunities and the ability to ask for directions in a foreign country, this is about those life-changing benefits which you didn’t even know existed.
所以，忘了什么职业发展，国外进修，出国问路等等，我要讨论的是那些在完全无意识的情况下改变人生的益处。
It protects the brain in later life
在晚年保护大脑
We all accept that staying physically active is the best way of maintaining our heart, lungs and other vital organs as we get older. Not to mention the benefits of gentle exercise on our joints and muscles.
众所周知，随着年龄的增长，坚持锻炼是保持心脏，肺和其他重要器官活力的最好的方法，更不用说比较柔的锻炼对关节和肌肉的好处了。
But who puts the same amount of effort into maintaining their mind? Languages learners, that’s who.
但是，有没有人会花相同的精力在大脑锻炼上？语言学习者会。
Researchers at York University, Toronto, found that learning a second language can delay the onset of alzheimer’s and dementia by as much as three to four years when compared to patients who were only monolingual.
多伦多约克大学的研究人员发现和单语言者相比，学习外语的人阿尔茨海默和痴呆的发病时间能延后三到四年。
Although the maximum benefits were derived from lifelong second-language speakers, overall fluency, frequency of use, levels of literacy and grammatical accuracy all contributed to making bilingual brains stronger and more resilient in later life.
这点在终身使用二外的人身上体现得最明显，语言的总体流利程度，使用频率，读写水平和语法准确性，都有助于让双语者的大脑肌肉在晚年的时候更强更有弹性。
It creates a whole ‘new you’
创造一个全新的自我
A bit of a weird one this.
这点听上去有些奇怪。
How many of ‘you’ are there? Well, some researchers believe that fluency in a foreign language does something a bit odd to our personality. It kinda’ creates a new
one.
你的身体里到底有几个自己？有些研究人员相信，流利说一门外语会给我们的性格“加点料”，甚至能创造出一个全新的自己。
Many second language speakers have reported that their attitudes, outlooks and general demeanour change as they switch from one language to another. And there’s some research which seems to back this up.
许多说二外的人宣称，当从一门语言转换到另一门语言时，他们的态度，人生观和言行都会相应的有所变化。并且有些研究也证实了这一说法。
In 1998, a researcher at the University of Illinois spent a year-and-a-half conducting studies with Parisians whose parents had emigrated from Portugal, but who spoke both French and Portuguese fluently.
1998年，伊利诺伊州立大学的一名研究人员花了一年半时间跟踪研究了一些巴黎人，他们的父母来自葡萄牙，能说一口流利的葡萄牙语和法语。
The researcher found that the participants switched from one persona to another as they were asked to complete various tasks in their dual languages. Sometimes the changes were striking - from “angry, hip suburbanite” in French, to “patient” and “well-mannered” when speaking Portuguese.
在这期间，参与者参需要用两种不同语言完成各种任务，而当他们使用不同语言时，其个性也发生了改变，有时这些变化相当惊人：当说法语时，某人可能是“易怒时髦的郊区人民”；而说葡萄牙语时他摇身一变，变得彬彬有礼又非常有耐心。
Other anecdotal evidence has suggested that many speakers of two languages find it easier to display certain desired characteristics by altering the language they are using at the time.
还有些证据也表明，很多双语者表示切换语言有助于他们表现出某些需要的个性。
It improves seemingly-unrelated skills
提升某些看似无关的技能
You’ve probably said something similar yourself at some point: “I’m not really a [insert common academic subject here]-kind-of-person”.
你是不是曾经这么形容过自己：“我不是一个擅长（某些常见科目）的人”。
But research suggests that thinking of ourselves as limited to a specific skill-set - verbal or mathematical, problem-solving or creative - is completely misunderstanding the nature of the brain.
但研究表明，把自己限制于某一个特定的技能，无论是文字表达，数学，解决问题或者创造力，都是对大脑特性的彻底误解。
Researchers at Washington University tested both monolingual and bilingual study-participants on their abilities to solve arithmetic problems. They found that although both groups solved ‘familiar’ problems with the same levels of accuracy, bilinguals beat their one-language-using peers on questions which contained a ‘novel’ component.
华盛顿大学的研究人员测试了单语和双语的人士的解决算术问题的能力。他们发现，虽然在解决“常见”的问题时，两组都表现出了相同水平的准确性，但是在对大脑某一“新发现的”部分的使用上，双语者遥遥领先单语者。
With the use of fMRI scans, the scientists determined that the basal ganglia, a region of the brain which takes information and prioritises it before passing it onto the prefrontal cortex, had been made more efficient in the brains of those who had learnt a second language.
在使用核磁共振扫描脑部后，科学家们发现双语者大脑的基底神经节更加高效，这一区域会在将信息传递到前额叶层前，预先对它们进行处理，挑选出其中重点。
In other words, learning a new language had unforeseen benefits in processing information (in this case mathematical equations) which had seemed completely unrelated.
换句话说，学习一门新语言在处理信息时（比如上面例子里的数学方程式）有不可预见的好处，而这看看上去语言学习完全无关。
It lets you see the world in an entirely new way
用全新的视角看世界
Different languages use different structures to express similar ideas. This should be of no surprise for anyone reading an italki.com article.
不同的语言用不同的结构诠释相似的观点。对于italki的用户来说，这点毫不奇怪。
But the implications of this are in fact very surprising.
但是，这会对我们产生非常惊奇的暗示作用。
A psycholinguist at Lancaster University, UK, tested study participants who were fluent in either English or German to see whether using the respective languages altered the way they perceived events portrayed on short video clips.
英国兰开斯特大学的一名语言心理学家测试了能流利说英语或者德语的人，研究使用不同语言是否会改变他们对视频剪辑的理解。
The differences in the languages, the study hypothesised, would lead participants to either favour an interpretation based on whether the action was ambiguous or goal-oriented.
研究假设，语言的差异导致参与者在对某一行为的偏爱程度上，用该行为是模棱两可的还是目标清晰的来决定。
And this was indeed the case. However, when the participants were fluent in both languages, their perceptions of the events on screen could be altered by having them focus on just one of the languages at a time (by asking them to repeat long strings of numbers in one or the other language).
而事实确实如此。可是，对于那些精通这两门语言的参与者，在要求他们只专注于其中的一门语言时（要求他们用某一种语言重复长串数字），他们对屏幕上播放的同一事件的看法会产生改变。
Bilingual participants, therefore, had the ability to switch between two different perspectives on events just by focusing on the use of one of their languages.
因此，通过改变使用的语言，双语者们有能力在两个不同视角间切换。
Hero image by Unsplash (CC 0)
