Language Learning from a Spiritual Perspective

From a spiritual perspective, language learning can be seen as a journey of expanding your consciousness, fostering empathy and understanding of other cultures, and being able to connect people around the world. Whether you learn languages for business or leisure, language learning is great for personal growth, self-awareness and expanding the mind.

Embracing new perspectives

Learning a new language pushes you to step outside your comfort zone - linguistically, culturally and even physically, opening up your mind to different ways of thinking, doing things, understanding and perceptions of the world.

Personal Growth

The process of learning a language can be a deeply personal journey that requires a lot of patience, perseverance, determination and a willingness to embrace challenges and problem-solve, leading to an increase in your self-awareness and personal growth.   

Cultural Awareness 

Language is a powerful tool for communication, and learning a new language allows you to connect with people from different cultures and backgrounds, fostering empathy and understanding. Languages show us the rich diversity the world has to offer, both linguistically and culturally.

Being in the Present Moment

Learning something new like a foreign language requires focused attention and presence, which, from a spiritual perspective can be seen as a spiritual discipline that cultivates mindfulness and awareness. It is also a very humbling experience learning a language from the very beginning because it requires you to acknowledge your own limitations, being open to learning from others, but also understanding that everyone else is in the same boat at you and you're all learning at your own pace.

Deepening Spiritual Connections

Some may believe that language learning can be a form of prayer or meditation as it requires a deep connection with the language and its speakers. Others may believe it connects them to their ancestors, ancestral homeland or the country they live in.

Ways to Practice Language Learning

As part of learning a language through lessons (whether it be in formal education, evening classes or online) there are some things you can do to bring mindfulness into your daily/weekly learning. Try out journalling in your target language, or listening to music and singing along to the lyrics. This also helps with repetition, memorising words and knowing how to pronounce them.

My Experience with Language Learning

Ever since I was a child at school, I learnt Welsh because I grew up in Wales and Dutch when I spent 2 years living abroad due to my dad's job in the Netherlands. This is where my love of languages started, and I have since gone on to learn basic French and Italian and then spent more than a decade learning German and working in both Germany and Austria. This also allowed me to travel across German-speaking countries and work with German-speaking businesses.

I still learn German to an advanced level but I am also taking Icelandic lessons. I first fell in love with Icelandic when I visited Iceland in 2019. Since then I've learnt it mostly by listening to songs - my interest in Old Norse songs helped with the pronunciation - and now I am currently taking online Icelandic lessons taught in German. For me, being able to speak Icelandic isn't just so I can travel there again in the future. It challenges me and my brain again just like learning German did over a decade ago, it gives me the chance to enhance my German too as lessons are taught in German, not English, but it also allows me to connect with my ancestors and the Norse Pagan practice in a way. Knowing where we come from and who our ancestors were can help us to feel more connected to ourselves and might even give us a better understanding as to why we feel a certain pull to certain countries.

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