The importance of languages

We live in a multilingual world that is becoming increasingly globalized so it's very important to know more than one language.
There are three main reasons for this:

• an additional language can help you in your career;
• you gain an awareness of other cultures;
• it helps increase your knowledge of your language.

More and more job ads are now specifying that they want a second, a third and sometimes a fourth language too, because knowing more than one language opens up your prospects in an important way.
The second reason that it's important to know more than one language is that it increases cultural awareness and allows you to communicate with different people. Many countries with high immigration levels have trouble with a lack of integration and this is often because of the language barrier, so people end up being segregated, staying in communities where their own language is spoken.
Finally, people should learn an additional language to better know their own language and because that's good for the brain. Some people believe that learning more languages leads to confusion, but it isn't true because if you learn languages with similar roots, learning one helps you learn the others, take Italian, Spanish and French, for example. Overall there can be no denying that learning languages is wholly positive for everyone. If more people were multilingual, the world would be a more prosperous place.