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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about…
BEING BILINGUAL
Specifically, I’m going to be discussing some of the things in the book The Bilingual Brain by Albert Costa, narrated by Luis Soto, which I listened to recently. The author comes from a bilingual family, hence the scientific interest, and quotes many studies, other than the ones they’ve been involved in. There’s a tonne more information than I’m going to mention here, this is just a brief skim through some of the points, and I’ll leave a link to the audiobook on Spotify, which is where I listened to it. There is a link to a pdf for the diagrams, but you don’t see that on all Spotify formats.
So, the book starts off with the statement that the author considers second language acquisition to only be partially achievable as an adult, for many people. Adults have difficulty with accent, building sentences and appreciating subtleties of the language. This, I think I’m safe in saying, most of us will understand and agree with, at least in part, having learnt languages ourselves, or having tried to. Those difficulties are real. But, is it different if you are a bilingual baby?
Apparently, babies manage to collect a lot of language information even before speaking. Such as recognising breaks between words, specific sounds and differentiating the ones in each language (often a function of having parents speaking different languages). You can apparently see this happening by the baby’s attention changing. If you’re in a bilingual household with a baby, look out for that!
One thing I did already know was the fact that it’s much easier for very young children to acquire the different sounds made in languages, the ones we find that much more difficult as adults. Apparently, this ability declines as early as 12 months old. Although, I’m sure a book I read a while back, that I don’t remember the name of, said that some people do retain this ability. So far, I’ve not had too much trouble with sounds. Yes, they’re difficult to start with because you have to work them out, and the languages I’m learning aren’t that far from my own. In fact, the one that’s physically closest, Welsh, probably has the most different sounds. Maybe, if I’d chosen Japanese, for example, I’d be having more trouble.
Finding out about how bilingualism actually works in the brain, though, is difficult. There is often a chicken and egg situation, as in did bilingualism cause this, or was this the reason someone became bilingual? I have to say, some of the studies carried out with babies and very young children are quite ingenious in the way they’re constructed. However, some of the research in adults requires the participation of those who have experienced brain damage through accident, or illness, often in later life.
But, bearing all that in mind, what are the problems with speaking second languages? It seems that it’s difficult for us to control the brain precisely to produce another language, unless we practice a lot. Ah, practice. I knew it would come down to that. This is, however, much easier for people who have spoken two languages from birth. The process is that you have to deliberately inhibit one language to use the other, or rather, your executive control system does. I’m now imagining a little cartoon executive in my brain. But this makes so much sense. When I’m learning my languages, or consuming content, I deliberately change from one to another straightaway to try to minimise issues. I mean, I didn’t precisely know it was this I was trying to minimise, just the confusion. I’m also relearning French from Italian. I wonder what that does to all these processes? I’m putting two languages, that are not my first language, against each other. Tests have also been done to see if bilingualism affects the executive control system capabilities for other tasks, but results are mixed.
What about changes in the brain from learning languages? Again, a lot of this is inconclusive. One study shows one thing, another study shows another, but one area that seems clear is that bilinguals know fewer words in each of their languages than monolinguals and that bilinguals take longer to retrieve less frequently used words, in either language. However, there are many bilingual people who have bigger vocabularies and many monoliguals who have smaller vocabularies, so it’s swings and roundabouts. I think general education and life circumstances must have a big effect on this, as well. I didn’t start learning a second language till I was eleven, so maybe I managed to get a lot of English vocabulary in before confusing things with another language.
There is also evidence that bilingualism does change areas of the brain, by increasing the density of grey matter, but interestingly, in different areas for children and adults, in terms of when they first learnt the language. It can also increase white matter. It also seems that there may be a connection between bilingualism and the speed at which cognitive decline occurs, compared to when the brain starts deteriorating. In other words, the brain is still declining (shrinking, becoming less plastic, losing grey and white matter), but a thing called cognitive reserve holds back cognitive decline for several years, but not forever. I really hope this one is true, and that the effect of learning more than one other language makes this decline even slower.
Another thing that may be of interest is that it seems that when we make decisions that relate to an emotional situation, using a language that isn’t our first language, when we haven’t been exposed to it from birth, it’s possible to make better decisions. Why is this? It’s because in a second language our emotional response to situations is dampened. Of course, you’d probably have to be living in a country other than your own for this to be of relevance, or be living in a bilingual family. Plus, more research needs to be done for this to be conclusive. I wonder if a couple who speak different languages and often have to make decisions notice this, or if, as the author found, he changed languages when something became too emotional. Also, and I know this isn’t decision making, but I do find I can quite easily have emotional responses to things that happen in a novel in a foreign language. So, is that an indicator that I might have emotional responses to making emotional decisions in a foreign language, because not all of the respondents were unemotional, obviously?
This is interesting stuff! As I said earlier, if you want to find out more, and discover how the studies are devised to determine the likelihood of these things, there’s a link in the description.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, hwyl and bye for now.
Here's the link to the audiobook on Spotify: The Bilingual Brain Audiobook Link