Why You Should Learn a Second Language (Even If You're Bad at It)

I am, by any reasonable metric, terrible at Spanish. I've been "learning" it for about three years now, and my conversational ability hovers somewhere between "toddler" and "enthusiastic golden retriever." I can order food, ask where the bathroom is, and tell someone they have a beautiful house. Beyond that, I mostly smile and nod while my brain short-circuits trying to remember whether "embarrassed" translates to "embarazado" (it doesn't -- that means pregnant, and yes, I learned this the hard way in a restaurant in Mexico City, and no, I don't want to talk about it in more detail than that).

Despite being objectively bad at this, learning Spanish has been one of the best things I've done in my thirties. Not because I've achieved any kind of mastery -- I haven't -- but because the process of trying to learn a language does things to your brain, your confidence, and your relationship with the world that nothing else quite replicates.

Here's the case for why you should start, even if you're already convinced you'll be terrible at it. Especially if you're convinced you'll be terrible at it.

Your Brain on Languages: It's Basically a Workout

I'm going to hit you with some science first because it's genuinely wild.

Learning a second language physically changes your brain. Not in a vague, hand-wavy "you'll be smarter" way -- in a measurable, visible-on-brain-scans way. Studies have shown that bilingual people (and even people actively learning a second language) have denser gray matter in the areas of the brain associated with memory, attention, and executive function. Their brains show increased connectivity between regions. They perform better on multitasking tests. They even show signs of delayed cognitive decline as they age.

This isn't just for people who grew up bilingual. Adults who start learning a language later in life show the same structural brain changes. Your brain doesn't care that you're 32 and can barely conjugate "to be." It's still getting the workout.

I think of it like this: going to the gym doesn't stop being useful just because you can't bench 315. The benefit comes from the effort, not the achievement. Same with language learning. You don't need to be fluent for your brain to benefit. You just need to show up and struggle. And you will struggle. Gloriously.

The Humiliation Is Actually the Point

Here's something nobody tells you about learning a language as an adult: you're going to humiliate yourself regularly, and that humiliation is secretly one of the most valuable parts of the experience.

When was the last time you were genuinely bad at something in front of other people? Like, not "I'm bad at cooking" bad where you burned the chicken but still ate dinner. I mean "I just told a pharmacist in Barcelona that I need medicine for my grandmother when I meant to say I have a headache" bad. The kind of bad where you can see the other person's face trying very hard not to laugh.

Being an adult beginner at anything is humbling, and most of us avoid it. We stick to things we're already good at. We surround ourselves with competence. We build lives where we rarely feel stupid.

Language learning obliterates all of that. You will feel stupid. Daily. And here's the beautiful part -- once you get comfortable with feeling stupid, everything else in your life gets easier. Public speaking? Less scary when you've already butchered a verb tense in front of a street vendor. Trying a new sport? Easy when your baseline for embarrassment is already rock bottom. Asking someone out? Almost relaxing when you've already accidentally told a waiter you're pregnant.

My buddy Marcus started learning Japanese because he likes anime and wanted to watch it without subtitles. He has not achieved that goal. He can barely order at a Japanese restaurant. But he told me last month that language learning broke something loose in him -- a fear of looking dumb that he'd been carrying around for years without realizing it. Now he signs up for stuff he'd never have tried before. He took a pottery class. He joined a volleyball league. He asked a woman at a bookstore for her number. None of these things are related to Japanese. All of them happened because Japanese taught him that being bad at something isn't a reason not to do it.

Travel Goes from Tourism to Actual Experience

I used to travel the way most Americans travel. Show up in a country. Stay in tourist areas. Point at menus. Speak English loudly. See the major sights. Leave feeling like I'd basically watched a documentary in person.

Even my garbage-level Spanish changed this completely.

Last year I spent a week in Oaxaca, Mexico, and because I could stumble through basic conversations, everything opened up. The guy at the mezcal distillery who barely spoke English spent twenty minutes explaining the difference between espadin and tobala to me -- in Spanish, slowly, with hand gestures and a patience I did not deserve. A woman at a market taught me how to pick the best mole negro and then, when she found out I was from the States, spent ten minutes telling me about her cousin in Houston. A taxi driver recommended a restaurant that wasn't in any guidebook, and it turned out to be the best meal of the trip.

None of that happens if you only speak English. Not because people are unfriendly to English speakers -- they're usually not -- but because speaking even broken local language signals something. It says "I'm trying." It says "I respect this enough to embarrass myself." And people respond to that. They open up. They share things. They treat you like a guest instead of a tourist.

You don't need fluency for this. You need about 200 words, the present tense, and a willingness to look like an idiot. That's it. That's the threshold between tourist and traveler.

The Apps Are Actually Good Now (But They're Not Enough)

Let's talk logistics. How do you actually start?

Duolingo is fine. I know, it's become a meme, and the owl will passive-aggressively shame you if you miss a day, but as a starting point, it's genuinely effective. It'll get you the basic vocabulary and sentence structure you need to build on. I did Duolingo for about three months before I felt confident enough to try anything else.

The problem with Duolingo -- and every app, really -- is that it trains you to translate in your head. You see "the cat is on the table," you translate it to "el gato esta en la mesa," and you feel like you've accomplished something. But real conversation doesn't work like that. Real conversation moves too fast for translation. Someone asks you a question, and you need to understand and respond before they lose interest and switch to English.

To bridge that gap, you need actual conversation practice. Here are the things that worked for me:

Language exchange apps like Tandem or HelloTalk connect you with native speakers who want to practice English. You spend half the time speaking their language, half the time speaking yours. It's free, it's effective, and you'll meet some genuinely interesting people. I had a language partner in Colombia who taught me slang that Duolingo would never touch and who, in exchange, wanted to understand American sports metaphors. Fair trade.

Podcasts and YouTube channels for learners are incredible because they let you hear the language at a speed you can actually process. I listen to a Spanish podcast on walks that uses simplified news stories, and it's done more for my comprehension than any textbook.

Changing your phone's language is a sneaky one. I switched my phone to Spanish for a month and it was deeply annoying but also deeply effective. You learn real vocabulary because you're forced to navigate menus, read notifications, and figure out what buttons do in a language you barely understand. It's immersion-lite.

Taking a class is old-school but works. Community colleges offer language courses for cheap. Night classes exist. If you prefer structure and accountability -- if you know yourself well enough to know that apps alone won't cut it -- a class with an actual teacher and actual homework is the move.

Which Language Should You Learn?

This depends on your life, your interests, and where you want to travel. But here's a general framework:

Spanish is the most practical choice for Americans, full stop. Over 40 million native Spanish speakers live in the US. It's spoken in 20 countries. The grammar is relatively straightforward compared to other languages. And you can practice it almost anywhere in America without getting on a plane.

French is useful if you travel to Europe or Africa, sounds impressive at dinner parties, and has a lot of vocabulary overlap with English. It's harder to pronounce than Spanish but easier than most people think.

Japanese, Korean, or Mandarin are harder for English speakers -- different writing systems, different grammar structures, different everything -- but if you're interested in the culture, the payoff is enormous. Even basic Japanese unlocks a completely different Japan experience than the English-only tourist track.

Portuguese is a sleeper pick. Brazil is massive, Lisbon is one of the best cities in Europe, and Portuguese sounds beautiful. It's also close enough to Spanish that you get partial credit if you already speak one.

German is useful if you work in engineering, science, or automotive industries. It's also easier for English speakers than you'd expect, since English is basically German's weird cousin who moved to America and forgot where it came from.

My honest advice? Pick the language that excites you, not the one that seems most "practical." You're going to spend hundreds of hours with this language. If you don't genuinely care about it, you'll quit after two weeks. If you think Italian sounds beautiful and you dream about eating pasta in Rome, learn Italian. Passion beats practicality when it comes to sustained effort.

The Real Reason to Do This

I've talked about brain benefits, travel, humility, and practical skills. All of those are real. But the actual reason I'd tell any guy to learn a second language is simpler than all of that.

It makes you a more interesting person.

Not in a "put it on your dating profile" way (though it doesn't hurt). In a genuine, internal, "I have more to think about and talk about" way. You start noticing language everywhere -- how English is weird, how other cultures express ideas differently, how a word in one language might not have an equivalent in another. You develop opinions about grammar, which sounds boring but somehow isn't. You have a thing you're working on that has nothing to do with your job or your responsibilities, a skill that exists purely because you decided to build it.

When I started reading again after years of doom-scrolling my phone into oblivion, it felt like I'd unlocked a part of my brain that had been asleep. Language learning did the same thing but bigger. It gave me something to be bad at, something to improve at, something to think about on walks and in the shower and during boring meetings.

And if you're the kind of person who likes systems and structures for getting things done, language learning fits perfectly into that framework. Daily practice, measurable progress, clear milestones. It scratches the same itch as leveling up in a video game, except the character you're leveling up is yourself.

Start today. Download an app. Be terrible. Tell someone you're pregnant when you mean you're embarrassed. It's worth it. I promise.