I actually have learnt more about English than about Japanese while I’ve been studying it. But that’s mostly because my Japanese friends ask me about thing they have trouble with, so I usually end up looking it up haha;;;
But then again, my English vocabulary has also suffered from learning Japanese. Sometimes I can only think of the Japanese word for something… ><

I think the concept of Japanese particles alone really lends itself to helping with your grammar, no matter what language you speak. From the beginning, it forces you to know the most basic parts of a sentence. Where do you mark the subject? It makes me think harder on my grammar when I write papers in English, Japanese aside.

I speak two languages fluently, German (native) and English, and had some French and Japanese lessons. In a lot of cases in daily life I start thinking in English, just because it fits my needs better. One being in programming, probably mainly because most of the reference materials and conversations with other developers are in English and the code itself is built around the English language, but there are also other areas where I benefit from taking the English/American point of view and ways to describe something. 
Just like @michishigekaito:disqus said it’s hard to recall a specific example, but I’d definitely agree that there’s more value in foreign languages than just speaking them.
Being able to have an outside look from the vantage point of a different culture on your own country makes a big difference in how you perceive it. You get a fresh look at the better and worse things it has to offer and also gain the ability to compare the two countries.

Language does indeed change people. I know there are studies out there that suggest that poly-linguals actually shift personalities based on the language they are speaking.

I always quote theories when I come on to comment like such a  nerd. :D. The last time I told you why I think your Irish because of hedging. I think what you are talking about here are the pricipals of linguistic determinism V Relativity. It is a debate which speaks to whether the language you speak defines your personality or whether it simply  impacts it. For example in Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge) we greet each other saying Dia Dhuit (Literally God to You) and m*********** is called féin tráiliú literally self polution. It shows the influence of the Church on the language or possibly the language on people’s religious beliefs.

In France where I am no people are known for being more direct. They use the imperative ie GIVE ME THAT! far  more than we could in Irish english. They also say Tu vas me donner la réponse (You will give me the answer) instead of asking for the answer with a please or even a will as we would in English. Japanese has its politeness encoded in its language also. 

While I know you could say that it is the culture of the speakers who make the language but if you look at speakers of créoles in Papa New Guinea when given colour charts they can only distinguish three seperate colours Black, Red and White (I think Germans have less colours than we do too). This is because their language only alows them to label three colours. So maybe there is a chance that with learning a new language you will learn a new way of thinking.  (I hope this was interesting. If not apologies :D)

In Japan, saying “yes, mmm,”… when somebody is talking to you is extremely common and even has its own term: 相槌 (aiduchi).

It seems that the concept of aiduchi varies a lot from place to place. It seems that Japan and the US have opposite views about that. In Japan, it is expected and not saying anything at all while the other person talks gives the feeling that you are not interested or not following. In the US it’s the opposite, aiduchi can give the impression that you want the other person to end faster.

I’m not sure if this topic has come up on Tofugu, because I heard that this is a big source of misunderstanding between Japanese and American people (what one side sees as good the other sees as bad and vice-versa).

It was interesting, thank you! I’m always really happy when somebody comments with more information or corrections to my post. I learn a lot that way :D

I’m a little familiar with the concepts of determinism versus relativity, but only in the context of environmental determinism (i.e. how geography affects culture/behaviors).

Do you have any recommendations for reading on linguistic determinism/relativity? I’d love to learn more about it.

The numbers in English are more confusing then it is in Japanese. After ten is eleven, twelve, thirteen. You’re more focused on remembering the way it’s spelled then the actually number. Japanese numbers are much easier. After ten is Juu-ichi, Juu-ni, Juu-san… Then up to twenty it repeats. ni-juu, nijuuichi, nijuuni… Makes perfect sense.

So because a few words like eleven, twelve and thirteen don’t follow the regular pattern of other numbers, English speakers have lower math scores? Japanese has its exceptions too: shi OR yon, nana OR shichi, and counters change the pronunciation of many numbers..

My Japanese teach keeps telling us we need to turn our “Japanese brains” on :D I think it’s a good indication of the at which you are by monitoring how much you think in that language rather than your own. I’ve noticed I still do a lot of thinking in English, and the time it takes up hearing Japanese, translating it in your head, thinking of a response, translating back to Japanese… it is a huge barrier to language learning if you can’t get out of that mindframe!! 

 The part about the colors and Germans is wrong. I live in Germany and can assure you that we have names for every color, even though most people just use the regular ones like red, green, blue etc.for wide ranges of hues, instead of using more specific names – but we have those, too. But usually nobody bothers to be this exact, just like most people in other countries :)

The spacing was a lot easier to read before clicking the ‘post’ button. D: 
I promise.

Is it really that learning another language broadens the mind?

Perhaps people who learn more languages already have a pretty diverse and skilled brain, and as such they make a choice to learn another language to challenge themselves or learn something new.

I would say Language Learning is more of a symptom of a person’s willingness to learn and be open minded about others. It indicates the person is cool but its not why they’re cool.

I lived in France for a while with people who were all English and worked and lived in France and were adamant they’d never learn the language, and so everything in France was to them an inconvenience. They weren’t interested in the language, the culture, the people, it was a just a place to live, it could have been Grimsby or Scunthorpe or anywhere.

They made a choice not to improve or expand their minds. Not learning a language was just an outcome of not wanting to engage with the world around them, or perhaps wanting to only engage on their terms.

As for language learning improving a person, it certainly does, but so does learning anything new, new ideas and perspectives are always useful, there are plenty of ways to find new ideas and perspectives, and it doesn’t have to be through a new language. Perhaps a new language is easier to learn / identify new ideas as it all seems new, and your brain has to actually think, but its quite possible to train your mind to look for new things, and ideas and to learn from other things, as long as you have the will to do so.

“Well for one, learning Japanese can make you better at math.”

That absolutely makes sense. I’ve been studying Japanese grammar and syntax for about three years now. Well, over the past six months I’ve been getting A’s in my math classes- something I thought was impossible before. 

 Hm, intersting. But no worries, I don’t feel insulted or anything. Did he tell which clour we aren’t supposed to have a word for? I honestly cannot think of anything. At least not when I thinking about the regular colors like red, blue, green blue, yellow, orange, black and so forth. Maybe there are some obscure color descriptions in the English language  that we actually don’t use, but I assure you that there are quite some fancy color names that only designers or fashin fans would use in a normal conversation ;)

Maybe “tangerine” would be an example… I don’t know an equivalent German word for it, we would propably call it “dark orange” or something like that. But I’m neither a desinger, nor a fashin fan nor do I work with colors in any professional way so I can’t exclude the possibility that there is a German word for tangerine that is just don’t know of.

But using such highly specific words as an example for “Germans do not have a word for a color which we have a word for” seems a bit far fetched, since I could propably find sich a German color name that has no direct English translation ;)

Maybe you could ask him what he meant exactly? I’m interested ^^ (and maybe there actually is a color I’ve never heard about before ;D )

Oh we were talking about obscure colours definitely. I’m actually not on campus now so I can’t ask him. 

There as another example of a tribe in Brazil tht only has words for one two and many. Studies have proven they are much less more likely to distinguish between amounts of objects. 

As a native English and Chinese speaker/writer, and also have learned Korean and Japanese for several years now, I can say English is by far the most boring language.
I totally agree with Hashi in saying that Asia in general have a better grasp with numbers due to the Chinese counting system.
As a matter of fact I was attending grade 1 when I was 4 years old and I remember doing multiplication up to 7 or 8 digits (since once you get the basic rules of multiplying it doesn’t matter how many numbers you have). But when I moved to Canada and learned English when I was 6 I didn’t grasp the “ten-thousand” idea until grade 5. Until one day, I always thought that million was 10000. My mom explained to me that the English system went up by 1000′s and the Asian way went by 100′s.
The only reason I would think Japanese/Koreans have it harder is because they both have another set of numbers native to the country (ichi=hito, ni=futa, san=mi…il=hana, i=dul, sam=set…) and that their numbers have more than one syablle (where as the original Chinese numbers have one).
Another fundamental part of learning math, the times table. I never found it hard to mutiply long equations without calculators since I memorised the times table like every other Chinese student would. Since Chinese numbers are all one syablle, we could put all numbers from 1- 9 and makes one extrememly long poem-thing to recited. Direct translation would be: one one gets one, one two gets two…two one gets two…three four ten-two(twelve)…three seven two-ten-one…five six three-ten…eight eight six-ten-four..etc. If you ask anyone who has been in the Chinese education system they would have this imbedded in their brain.

The one thing I’ve learned with learning both Spanish and Japanese is that it changed how I expressed my feelings towards certain things. You can’t just translate from one language to another, you have to interpret to truly understand it. Because I’ve learned to interpret those languages rather than translate it (Spanish more so than Japanese), it completely changed the way I think and say things in English.

 One concept in regarding learning/knowing a different language I want to know is; if you speak in another language do your thoughts become different? Do you ‘change’ into another person logic-wise? Personality changes? This has got me interested. 

I’m a german native speaker.
As well as the englisch language, we have different tenses (things like simple present and so on) with very difficult names. Strangest one is called “Plusquamperfekt”.
In fact I first learned to differ between the german tenses, when we had the corresponding englisch tenses in school.
I still find englisch tenses much more easier than german ones.

But studying another language also helped me, to understand, how (european) languages work in general; what they have in common, what words are influenced by other countries and it also teached me, how other people think. Sometimes it’s really strange, e.g.: “mustn’t” means “you aren’t allowed”, but in my ears “mustn’t” sounds like “musst nicht”, what “you can, but you don’t have to” means.
Or “gift” sounds like the german word for “poison”; “become” sounds like “bekommen”, what means “get”.
So these things led to really funny lessons in school ;-)