Why Senior Citizens Should Learn Spanish

Have you ever considered why senior citizens should learn Spanish? As a senior citizen myself with some extra time on my hands, it is a thought that keeps surfacing for me lately. At first I thought it was just coincidental. I had ridden with someone on public transportation who spoke Spanish and I could hear but not understand her conversation. I saw a recipe in Spanish that caught my eye but I couldn't connect with comprehension. I turned the channel and found myself in the middle of a favorite movie not on any other channel at the moment but unfortunately being shown,you guessed it, in Spanish. These and other events made me return to the idea that perhaps something was missing from my life. My thinking led me to believe that there really are some very good reasons why senior citizens should learn Spanish.

I guess the most obvious reason why senior citizens should learn Spanish is that doctors repeatedly will tell you that learning something new is often good medicine for your brain. Locked in our own daily way of living can really stunt our growth as senior citizens. Forcing yourself to learn new grammar, vocabulary and syntax or even think about those things has to be more stimulating for your brain and thus for you than just stewing in your own comfortable language.

As you learn the language it seems likely that your eyes will start to come wide open to the existence of a whole different culture. Food, music,geography of foreign countries, politics of other parts of the world all take on new meaning when you discover them in their own language. Even travel posters to exotic Hispanic locations can be provocative when you understand the language. Getting inside another culture and feeling a new connection is a great reason for senior citizens, who often feel left out or kicked to the curb, to learn Spanish.

But, come to think of it, you don't even have to go so far as a totally different country to make a new and fun connection. Learning Spanish connects you immediately with a large and growing minority of Spanish speaking Americans. English speaking seniors can feel out of touch with or even annoyed with Spanish speaking neighbors because of their "foreign ways". By learning Spanish, senior citizens learn how to speak at least in a simple way with their own neighbors, people they meet at the grocery store, the man driving them in a taxi. What's more your efforts to learn the language are likely to be rewarded by the respect and appreciation of the Hispanics who know just how difficult it can be to speak another language.

Once you have the tool to connect with people who are thinking and for the most part living in Spanish you will find that you are much more capable of assisting those people to move in our English dominated society. It is amazing how many senior citizens have both the time and the inclination to do volunteer work. But as the number of Spanish speaking residents of our country increases the need for Spanish speaking outreach also increases. If you want to help others as a senior citizen, a good place to begin is by learning Spanish.

But it's not just Hispanics that you will be serving if as a senior citizen you attempt to learn Spanish. What you are doing will be a wonderful example for your children and grandchildren. If your grandchildren are studying a foreign language in school they will be impressed but more important inspired by the efforts of a senior citizen who is putting in the time to get to know others better. If your grandchild is studying Spanish by chance you have just found a new and fun way to connect with him or her, learning together.

Taken together these reasons why senior citizens should learn Spanish really boil down to one basic concept. By learning Spanish you do what we all want to do, you broaden your perspectives and your future possibilities. And most of all you broaden yourself as a caring and open minded person.