Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016)

There's a linguistic-philosophical debate over this topic: Linguistic Relativity (or Sapir-Whorf) vs Universal Grammar (generally attributed to Chomsky). Though both theories are plausible, I find the Universal Grammar theory more convincing. There are good arguments on both sides.

This has been exactly my experience (with Korean first, then Spanish)

I think many people, even multilingual ones, fail to truly consider what they mean by 'multilingual'. Words and grammar are only the bare surface of what you need to learn- what actually happens is that you grow a different model of mindset and culture, one where the words of the new language have meaning. This only happens over a lifetime of immersion and exposure to the prosaic realities of the language in question.

As a bit of an aside, because of the sentence order and cognates, when speaking Korean, I often first go from English to Japanese and finally can stumble out some broken sentence.

Japanese to Korean is almost a one to one mapping when speaking simple sentences, based on both languages being agglutinative and having SOV ordering.

Somewhat ironically in the context of wasted associations, the article is in Spanish. But this is one link: https://www.psicologosonline.cl/articulos/para-decidir-con-f...

> ¿Hablas español? Parlez-vous français? 你会说中文吗？

> If you answered, "sí," "oui," or "会" and you're watching this in English, chances are you belong to the world's bilingual and multilingual majority. And besides having an easier time traveling or watching movies without subtitles, knowing two or more languages means that your brain may actually look and work differently than those of your monolingual friends.

> So what does it really mean to know a language? Language ability is typically measured in two active parts, speaking and writing, and two passive parts, listening and reading. While a balanced bilingual has near equal abilities across the board in two languages, most bilinguals around the world know and use their languages in varying proportions. And depending on their situation and how they acquired each language, they can be classified into three general types.

> For example, let's take Gabriella, whose family immigrates to the US from Peru when she's two-years old. As a compound bilingual, Gabriella develops two linguistic codes simultaneously, with a single set of concepts, learning both English and Spanish as she begins to process the world around her. Her teenage brother, on the other hand, might be a coordinate bilingual, working with two sets of concepts, learning English in school, while continuing to speak Spanish at home and with friends. Finally, Gabriella's parents are likely to be subordinate bilinguals who learn a secondary language by filtering it through their primary language.

> Because all types of bilingual people can become fully proficient in a language regardless of accent or pronunciation, the difference may not be apparent to a casual observer. But recent advances in brain imaging technology have given neurolinguists a glimpse into how specific aspects of language learning affect the bilingual brain. It's well known that the brain's left hemisphere is more dominant and analytical in logical processes, while the right hemisphere is more active in emotional and social ones, though this is a matter of degree, not an absolute split.

> The fact that language involves both types of functions while lateralization develops gradually with age, has lead to the critical period hypothesis. According to this theory, children learn languages more easily because the plasticity of their developing brains lets them use both hemispheres in language acquisition, while in most adults, language is lateralized to one hemisphere, usually the left. If this is true, learning a language in childhood may give you a more holistic grasp of its social and emotional contexts. Conversely, recent research showed that people who learned a second language in adulthood exhibit less emotional bias and a more rational approach when confronting problems in the second language than in their native one.

> But regardless of when you acquire additional languages, being multilingual gives your brain some remarkable advantages. Some of these are even visible, such as higher density of the grey matter that contains most of your brain's neurons and synapses, and more activity in certain regions when engaging a second language. The heightened workout a bilingual brain receives throughout its life can also help delay the onset of diseases, like Alzheimer's and dementia by as much as five years.

> The idea of major cognitive benefits to bilingualism may seem intuitive now, but it would have surprised earlier experts. Before the 1960s, bilingualism was considered a handicap that slowed a child's development by forcing them to spend too much energy distinguishing between languages, a view based largely on flawed studies. And while a more recent study did show that reaction times and errors increase for some bilingual students in cross-language tests, it also showed that the effort and attention needed to switch between languages triggered more activity in, and potentially strengthened, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that plays a large role in executive function, problem solving, switching between tasks, and focusing while filtering out irrelevant information.

> So, while bilingualism may not necessarily make you smarter, it does make your brain more healthy, complex and actively engaged, and 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 "你好’s" because when it comes to our brains a little exercise can go a long way.

At lot better to have dreams and plans and goals than "We've done nothing and we're out of ideas" which is the mentality in a few countries lately.

Jokes aside, I'd assume the context switching would be psychologically rather similar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_effects_of_multiling... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-bilingual/20190... https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/bilingual-... https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/the-batt... https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Relationship-of-Bi... https://psyarxiv.com/gjh95/

I 'learned' 2 languages in school and by far the most important part is knowing as many words as possible, and actually speaking it with natives. Other than that, you wont get too much out of written exercises or duolingo or even books. Just stick to those two things.

However, the best way to learn random words is to play a game or read a book, and then google / dictionary search any word you don't know.

It should be easy to find people who can speak the language with you, but if you can't find anyone, well... why learn it?

1) take an intensive course first

2) then live in a country where the main language was the one I learned

Granted, point 2 isn't easy, but nothing can beat it. The most important point is to use the language on a regular basis. If you don't, you'll forget it quickly.

[edited: formatting]

More important than the method, though, is that you never miss a day of practice

Which 3?