How Learning Languages Helps You Shape Your Brain

Understanding multiple languages is a unique gift. It opens up doors to new exciting worlds for us, makes us more open to new thoughts and ideas. Learning a new language can set a different side of our personalities free and helps us explore and understand cultures at a deeper level. Beyond social and cultural advantages, bilingualism benefits the brain on a biological level too. It can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Today, these benefits are proven and widely known, however, it wasn’t always the case.

Bilingualism among children used to be a concern

Children absorbs new languages like their brains were sponges is a prevalent mantra everyone have heard before. Children with bilingual skills incline to have more advanced lingual adequacy. It was commonly believed that taking in languages will stunt the children’s intelligence. They were likewise cautioned about confusing the children and that they consequently will suffer from schizophrenia or get two distinct characters. A study came into view in the 1962 by Elizabeth Peal and Wallace Lambert at McGill University in Montreal, that the capacity to speak two languages does not stunt the general improvement. Instead, it was found that bilingual speakers in truth outperformed monolingual speakers in 15 verbal and nonverbal tests.

“Bilingualism is quite an extraordinary microscope into the human brain,” says cognitive neuroscientist Laura Ann Petitto of Gallaudet University in her study. Even though many studies have showed that numerous advantages comes along with bilingualism, it was not until recently that it was brought to the public’s attention.

With language comes culture

Knowing more than your mother tongue opens your eyes for a diversity of possibilities and giving you the understanding of where people emanate from, their different behaviors and habits. Multilingual people learn early on to be more open minded towards others. This comes as an advantage when moving to a place with completely different culture. Local customs may seem sometimes surprising and exciting for the one who is not familiar with the cultural context. There are endless customs we have never even heard about in other countries. Here are 5 examples:

• Be careful not to put down the chopsticks straight into the rice bowl in China, as it is associated with death and contingency.
• Skip the salt in Egypt — It is insulting to your host to sprinkle salt on your food. If you have to season your plate, it means that you find the meal’s taste repulsive.
• Do not show up on time in Venezuela — A watch is not necessary. Being early or on time is viewed as being rude. In Venezuela, if you are invited over to someone’s home for a meal, it is recommended that you arrive 10 to 15 later than the requested time. Early or on time guests are viewed as being too eager, even greedy.
• Avoid giving certain flowers in Russia — Be careful when presenting flowers to a friend or a business partner. Yellow blooms signify deceit or breaking the relationship. Avoid red carnations, too. Traditionally, red carnations are placed on the graves of the dead.
• Stick to the sauna in Finland — Do not be perplexed. Say, yes! Saunas are a preferred way to relax and socialize with family and friends. Do not be surprised if your business meeting is followed up with an invitation to let off some steam in a local sauna.

When living in a multicultural society there are various customs and traditions that one must learn and respect. It will be an advantage to have the knowledge about the country’s culture and why concrete custom exists when learning a language. It is about understanding and venerating, which comes in through linguistic enlightenment.

Learn more — keep the brain healthy

When learning a language the brain has to work very hard to understand. To be able to understand a language is one of the hardest things a brain does. Based on a three-month period of intensive study at the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy, two groups compared their brain’s capacity by given MRI scans. The brain structure of the group who did not learn languages remained unchanged, while specific brain parts grew of the language learning group. A deep-lying brain structure that is involved in learning new tasks and spatial navigation, which is called the hippo campus, together with three areas in the cerebral cortex developed in size.

Making the brain exercise is not only by actions we have heard before for instance brushing your teeth with your hand you are not habituated to. Contrasted with individuals that speaks one language, grown-ups who are multilingual will probably:

• Switch between tasks instantly
• Have higher general knowledge
• Have an advantage in listening skills
• Understand the perspective of others
• Be more proficiently adept planning, prioritizing and decision making

Paula Rubio-Fernandez and Sam Glucksberg, psychologists at Princeton University, found that bilinguals are more proficiently adept at putting themselves in other people’s point of view to understand their side of a situation. This is because they can more facilely block out what they already ken and focus on the other viewpoint.

Dementia delayed in bilingual brains

Learning a foreign language has been proved to benefit our capacity when it comes to intelligence, memory as well as concentration. These benefits avail lower the risk of brain maladies associated with Alzheimer’s and dementia. “One school of thought says that any cognitive reserve — education, multilingualism, even playing Sudoku puzzles — strengthens the brain and helps it resists disease,” explains psychologist Ellen Bialystok of Toronto’s York University to TIME. “The other says that the brains of multilingual’s experience the same level of disease as those of monolinguals, but they cope with it better. They function at a higher level than they would otherwise be able to function.”

Become multilingual

“Even if we cannot compare three months of intensive language study with a lifetime of being bilingual, there is a lot to suggest that learning languages is a good way to keep the brain in shape,” says Johan Mårtensson at the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy. Our brains needs to get in shape as our bodies. When one of the reasons is to exercise the brain and at the same time learn one of the approximately 7,000 spoken languages in the world, how can it not be a reason enough to become a multilingual?

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