image credit: the world is made up of different cultures, via flickr

Knowing how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes is important in many areas of life, but a recent study has shown that feeling empathy for other cultures also makes it easier to learn a language. According to  a study by the University of Haifa which was recently published in the International Journal of Bilingualism, “The more empathy one has for another, the lighter the accent will be when speaking in a second language.”

This study was carried out among a group of university students who were divided into three groups: native speakers of Hebrew, those who learned Hebrew between the ages of 7 and 8 and those who began to study Hebrew after the age of 13.

The authors of the study explained that “Israel is a perfect lab location for testing the topic of second languages, because of the complex composition of its population. This population is made up of immigrants who learn Hebrew at an advanced age; an ethnic minority of Arabs, some of whom learn Hebrew from an early age, and others who learn the language as mature adults; and a majority group of native Hebrew speakers.”

This social and personal reasoning seems to be directly related to the pronunciation of a second language, although speaking a second language with an accent is generally explained away by ” the difficulties of pronouncing sounds in a different linguistic system.”

While we believe there are many diverse linguistically based reasons why second language learners and even some bilingual children tend to speak with an accent, this study does raise an interesting issue for bilingual families. Whatever languages we decide to teach our children, we should also try to teach them about the cultures of the people who speak these languages. It’s important to bear this in mind , since by teaching our children about the cultures associated with each new language we are helping them to feel more emotionally connected with those languages.