The Bilingual brain

Knowing two or more languages may mean that your brain may look and function differently than those of your monolingual friends, which is in addition to making traveling and watching movies without subtitles easier.

Language proficiency is typically assessed using two active components, speaking and writing, and two passive components, listening and reading. So what does it mean to truly know a language? While a balanced bilingual has roughly equal abilities in both languages across the board, the majority of bilinguals worldwide know and use their languages to varying degrees. They can be divided into three main categories based on their circumstances and the method by which they learned each language. Consider Gabriella, whose family relocates to the US when she is two years old from Peru. Racheal is a compound bilingual who learns both English and Spanish as she starts to understand the world around her. She develops two linguistic codes at the same time, with a single set of concepts. While learning English in school, her teenage brother may be a coordinated bilingual, using two different sets of concepts while continuing to speak Spanish at home and with friends. Finally, Racheal's parents are probably subordinate bilinguals who pick up a second language by sifting it through their native tongue. A casual observer might not be able to tell the difference because all types of bilingual people, regardless of accent or pronunciation, can become fully proficient in a language. Neurolinguists now have a better understanding of how particular aspects of language learning affect the bilingual brain thanks to recent developments in brain imaging technology.

Although this is a matter of degree rather than an absolute split, it is well known that the left hemisphere of the brain is more dominant and analytical in logical processes, while the right hemisphere is more active in emotional and social ones. The critical period hypothesis was motivated by the observation that language uses both types of functions while lateralization grows gradually with age. According to this theory, children learn languages more quickly because their developing brains are plastic enough to allow them to use both hemispheres for language learning, whereas in most adults, language is lateralized to one hemisphere, typically the left. If this is the case, learning a language when you're young might help you understand its social and emotional contexts more thoroughly. On the other hand, recent studies revealed that people who picked up a second language as adults approach problems in the second language rather than their mother tongue with less emotional bias. But regardless of when you pick up new languages, being multilingual has some remarkable benefits for your brain. Some of these effects are even obvious, like a higher density of the grey matter, which houses the majority of your brain's neurons and synapses, and increased activity in particular areas when speaking a second language.

A bilingual brain gets a more intense workout throughout life, which may help prevent the onset of diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia by as much as five years. The notion that bilingualism has significant cognitive advantages may seem obvious to us now, but it would have surprised earlier experts. Before the 1960s, bilingualism was viewed as a disability that hindered a child's development by requiring them to expend excessive energy differentiating between languages. This perception was largely based on invalid research. And while a more recent study did demonstrate that some bilingual students' reaction times and errors increase during cross-language tests, it also demonstrated that the effort and focus required to switch between languages increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and may have even strengthened it.

This region of the brain is important for problem solving, switching between tasks, and maintaining focus while weeding out unimportant information. Even if you didn't have the good fortune of learning a second language as a child, it's never too late to do yourself a favor and make the linguistic leap from "Hello" to "Hola," "Bonjour," or "'s," because when it comes to our brains, a little exercise can go a long way. Therefore, bilingualism may not necessarily make you smarter, but it does make your brain more healthy, complex, and actively engaged.