As a matter of fact, yes. I agree completely. And I base my opinion on the following:

[insert generic “evolution of languages” lesson, where we discuss about Indo-European languages, Romanic and Germanic etc.]

Each branch of languages presents about the same structure, from a grammar pov. But also from a spelling pov.

When you grow up having a Romanic language as mother tongue (Italian, Spanish, Romanian etc) you tend to see language as a math formula. The prerequisite is you MASTER the language – otherwise you will just sound silly 🙂

If you grow up with a Germanic language (German, English, some Nordic ones etc.) you will see language as an incomplete math formula but with many “sums”.

Let me explain: Germanic languages use complex words that are formed by 2 or more simple words, such as “butterfly” (in English) or Schmetterling (in German). You see, Germans thought that these flies eat milk/butter/cream. For real! this is why they called the creatures like this….. the point is: this is a word composed from 2 other words. This explains the “sums”. As for the “incomplete formula” – Germanic languages, such as English, only have one set of pronouns. Unlike Romanian (which is a Romanic language), which uses several types of pronouns: personal, reflexive, reinforcing, possessive, demonstrative, indecisive, interrogative, relative, negative.

Ok, after this not so short intro —> once you grow up having to keep in mind all the grammar rules and all the spellings and everything, your mind gets mapped a certain way. Your syntax reflects a structured mind. Because of the variety of words, you are always faced with MANY possibilities, therefore your mind starts to see many ways of solving issues – just as an example, your perspective widens a lot.

The moment you start mastering multiple languages, your mind starts thinking in ALL of these languages. You will start having thoughts that start in English but end up, properly structured, in German or Dutch or Hindi. Sky is the limit.

As for reflecting the “you”: as long as YOU are flexible to learn new things, it means you are also flexible to understand different cultures and your mind opens, suddenly. Your racism diminishes, your misconceptions are deleted one by one etc.

Obviously, this is the ideal case – you might as well NOT learn anything new and just use the languages to.. call a cab.