Research from the University of Washington suggests that babies lose their bilingual ability as early as their first birthday if they are not exposed to different sounds.
The study suggests that introducing two languages before the child can speak seems to be the best way to raise bilingual babies. By around a year old, the monolingual babies in the study appeared to only respond to an English distinguishing sound, whereas bilingual babies still responded to both the English and Spanish sounds.
“This difference in development suggests that the bilingual babies “may have a different timetable for neurally committing to a language” compared with monolingual babies, said lead author Adrian Garcia-Sierra.
“When the brain is exposed to two languages rather than only one, the most adaptive response is to stay open longer before showing the perceptual narrowing that monolingual infants typically show at the end of the first year of life,” Garcia-Sierra said.” (Source: Wired)
The answer is yes, according to a new study at Newcastle University, England.
Bilingual people think differently to monolingual people, according to researchers, with language use making the difference rather than proficiency. The study looked at Japanese and English speakers and tested their colour perception – useful because of the variation in ways different languages place colours on the spectrum. In Japanese there are additional ways of describing light blue (mizuiro) and dark blue (ao) that English does not have. Results found that bilingual Japanese-English speakers identified colours differently than single language speakers, depending on which language they used more often.
“As well as learning vocabulary and grammar you’re also unconsciously learning a whole new way of seeing the world,” said Dr Athanasopoulos. “There’s an inextricable link between language, culture and cognition.
“If you’re learning language in a classroom you are trying to achieve something specific, but when you’re immersed in the culture and speaking it, you’re thinking in a completely different way.” (Source: Science Daily)
Dr Athanasopoulos says this can also give you an edge when dealing with international business clients as it gives you an insight into their culture and how they think.
I was sent a link to this presentation by Patricia Kuhl intriguingly titled “The linguistic genius of babies”.
Kuhl is co-director of the Institute of Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington, and researches early language and brain development. Her talk:
shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another — by listening to the humans around them and “taking statistics” on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world. (Source: TED.com)
Here’s the video of the presentation:
The issue of a “critical period” is an interesting one which has been picked up in the comments on the video. It’s often said that children are “better” at learning languages than adults and this is used as an excuse for not learning another language. The critical period is something that could be used as another excuse for why people “aren’t any good” at learning a new language.
New research has shown that bilingual people find it easier to learn a third language, according to Science Daily.
The study was conducted at the University of Haifa, and aimed to find out what, if any, benefits there were in being bilingual when learning another language. The researchers found it was easier for bilingual people to learn a third language as they generally had a better aptitude for languages.
Two groups were involved in the study; the participants in one group spoke Hebrew only (with some English learned in school) and in the other group the mother tongue was Russian, but participants were also fluent in Hebrew. From the article:
This team of scholars also noted that the fact that the Russian speakers had better Hebrew skills than the Hebrew speakers themselves indicates that acquiring a mother tongue and preserving that language in a bilingual environment does not come at the expense of learning a second language — Hebrew in this case. In fact, the opposite is true: fluency and skills in one language assist in the language acquisition of a second language, and possessing skills in two languages can boost the learning process of a third language.
“Gaining command of a number of languages improves proficiency in native languages,” Prof. Abu-Rabia explained. “This is because languages reinforce one another, and provide tools to strengthen phonologic, morphologic and syntactic skills. These skills provide the necessary basis for learning to read. Our study has also shown that applying language skills from one language to another is a critical cognitive function that makes it easier for an individual to go through the learning process successfully. Hence, it is clear that tri-lingual education would be most successful when started at a young age and when it is provided with highly structured and substantive practice,” he concluded. (Source: Science Daily)
So, what are you waiting for? Start learning your second, third, fourth or more language now!
