Picking up a foreign language (Spanish) was easier because my heritage language is not alphabet based and I would treat the new language without English “prejudice”. I could pronounce words better (closer to what it should be) than English speakers. It opened up my eyes on how people could view the same event differently based on how they grow up. I have noticed far east Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) tend to share similar sentiment (i.e. how they treat elders) and made it easy to connect.
