Week in Insights: The Rewards of Learning for Its Own Sake (1)

Here at The Exchange, we have a tradition of going on language journeys, and I recently began one of my own. After years immersing myself in Korean TV shows, music, and culture, I started taking introductory language classes.

As someone who’s monolingual (I can put together simple sentences in Spanish, but that’s about it), I’m humbled every time I speak, open my notes, or try to remember vocabulary. Learning a new language is hard—especially when you’re an adult, and especially when the alphabet and grammar are so different from what you know.

So why put effort into a language ...