Learning to speak one or more languages other than your mother tongue can give you not only a wider worldview and a more fulfilling intellectual and social life but a more powerful and better-functioning brain as well.
In “For a Better Brain, Learn Another Language,” an article that came out in the October 17, 2014 issue of
The Atlantic Magazine, Paris-based writer and historian Cody C. Delistraty reports that according to recent studies in cognitive science and linguistics, multilingualism can give people a whole slew of incredible side effects, among them (a) tending to score better on standardized tests, especially in math, reading, and vocabulary; (b) doing better at remembering lists or sequences, likely from learning grammatical rules and vocabulary; and (c) becoming more perceptive to their surroundings and therefore better at focusing on important information and weeding out misleading ones.
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These are on top of what George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, told Delistraty are these more well-known benefits, advantages, and pleasures of multilingualism: “Speaking different languages means you get different frames, different metaphors, and also you’re learning the culture of the language so you get not only different words, but different types of words.”
But perhaps even more important than these, Delistraty reports, are recent research findings that people who learn a second language—even in adulthood—can better avoid cognitive decline in old age, and that bilinguals who come down with dementia and Alzheimer’s do so about four-and-a-half years later than monolinguals.
“Just having the basics of those linguistic connections can delay dementia,” Dr. Thomas Bak told Delistraty in an interview about his research findings. Bak, a lecturer in the philosophy, psychology, and language sciences department at the University of Edinburgh, found that when it came to delaying cognitive decline, the individual’s level of education and intelligence mattered less than having learned a second language. “It’s not the good memory that bilinguals have that is delaying cognitive decline, it’s their attention mechanism. Their ability to focus in on the details of language.”
Read Cody C. Delistraty’s “For a Better Brain, Learn Another Language” in TheAtlantic.com now!OTHER INTERESTING READINGS:In “Why Don’t Men Read Romance Novels?”, an article that came out in the October 23, 2014 issue of the
Pacific Standard, Noah Berlatsky argues that while scholarly studies have shown that women love reading romance novels because of the compensatory fantasies they provide, a lot of men just don’t because even if they initially do, their structural misogyny drives them away from the genre. Berlatsky observes that things associated with women are denigrated and seen as unmanly or unworthy, and he quotes this explanation for that from a female American associate professor of English: “Because romance novels are so equated with women and femininity, and because we train boys and men to avoid as much as possible being associated at all with femininity, romance novels become something that is completely off limits. It just falls outside the realm of what is accepted.”
Read Noah Berlatsky’s “Why Don’t Men Read Romance Novels?” in the Pacific Standard now!
