Is Bilingualism a Superpower? | Otherwords
There was a time when psychologists thought growing up bilingual was harmful to brain development, but recent studies into bilingual children have turned that idea on its head!
Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and fınds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fıelds of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective on what it means to be human.
sources:
Janet Werker (2012). Perceptual foundations of bilingual acquisition in infancy
Nuria Sebastian-Galles and Chiara Santolin (2020) Bilingual Acquisition: The Early Steps
Erika Hoff (2017) Bilingual Development in Children of Immigrant Families
Ellen Bialystok and Fergus I. M. Craik (2010) Cognitive and Linguistic Processing in the
Bilingual Mind
Jonathan A. Berken, Vincent L. Graccob, Denise Kleina (2016) Early bilingualism, language attainment, and brain development
Maria M. Arredondo, Xiao-Su Hu, Teresa Satterfield, and Ioulia Kovelman (2016) Bilingualism alters children’s frontal lobe functioning for attentional control
Maria M. Arredondo, Richard N. Aslin, Janet F. Werker (2020) Bilingualism alters infants’ cortical organization for attentional orienting mechanisms
Maria M. Arredondo, Richard N. Aslin, Minyu Zhang, Janet F. Werker (2020) Attentional orienting abilities in bilinguals: Evidence from a large infant sample
Drew Weatherhead, Maria M. Arredondo, Loreto Nácar Garcia, and Janet F. Werker (2020) The Role of Audiovisual Speech in Fast-Mapping and Novel Word Retention in Monolingual and Bilingual 24-Month-Olds
Host: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
Creator/Director: Andrew Matthews & Katie Graham
Writer: Andrew Matthews
Producer: Katie Graham
Editor/Animation: Andrew Matthews
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
Fact Checker: Yvonne McGreevy
Special thanks to:
Maria M. Arredondo, Ph.D.
Lena Widen Dunsmoor
Beth Widen
Daniella Varela
Teddy Matthews
The Child's Lab at the University of Texas
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Associate Director of Programming for PBS: Niki Walker
Stock Images from Shutterstock
Music from APM Music
Otherwords is produced by Spotzen for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.
Apparently for sequential bilinguals it's easier to express their feeling in their second language, rather than their native one beause it feels less personal. An episode on that would be great!
I'm a sequential polyglot and I didn't think about this before, but you may be right... I find it preferable to go to therapy in English, even though my mother tongues are French and German. Huh... I don't know if it's because English is less personal, though. I think it may be because I went to university in English, and I have worked in English for most of my life. So I think I simply associate English with professionalism, maybe?
that's ... that would explain a lot. english is my second language and i thought that stuff like cursing or pouring my heart out came easier to me in english because i was consuming so much english media and communicating with a majority of my friends in english (thus being used to expressing myself in it). it feels more effortless and less awkward to talk about certain personal/emotional subjects in english. sometimes when writing with a fellow german/english bilingual i'll use an english word instead of the german one cause it makes it sound less awkward.
Huh, I do feel that way, too, but I always assumed it was because English has more words for emotions than my native language which is more precise about naming things rather than feeling
Wow, yes. I write stories. First in English, then in Spanish. I have to translate myself. Sometimes there isn't an expression in my language to say what I meant in English. 🤔
@@approachingetterath9959 And profanity just works differently, too. One general truth when acquiring a language is how readily profanity is acquired. Whether it's parents aghast at their young child "somehow" learned it or school-age individuals readily using it amongst their peer groups.
Regardless of whether it makes you smarter or not, it always nice to be able to connect with different people from different cultures
theres actuall evidence that it exposes you to different ways of thinking, like how some languages normalise different colour pallets
On the other hand, you never really feel part of either culture, always living between two worlds, in a way. Edit: I should have clarified. This only applies if you're bilingual due to migration.
@@jjkthebest hmm as bilingual I never feels such a thing. Or maybe I already feel it, but I just dont know if what i feel is what you already described. Lol
@@jjkthebest Not at all! Most the ppl in my country are bilingual or multilingual. We need to learn more than one languages to survive but at the end of the day there is a clear distinction to what ones mother tongue is and that will not change. I think maybe as an Indian it's easier for us because the country is divided in linguistic terms as 29 states means 29 different native languages.
@@jjkthebest nope.. in contrary it makes us closer to our culture by speaking our own native language, in my country everyone are bilingual or even polyglot they at least speak 2 language Bahasa (our lingua laca) and their own native language (we have more than 300 native language). The drawback is we don't have accent but it make us easier to learn another language.
I'm Chinese but I was born and grew up in the Philippines. My parents taught me Chinese at a young age, and I learned Filipino and English when I entered school at 4 years old. I don't even remember learning these 3 languages. I just grew up knowing all 3 and knowing when to switch languages when I need to. It's amazing! I think everybody should learn at least 2 languages. It really does open up a whole new world.
Thank you for sharing, I’m Italian leaving in Japan, my partner is Japanese, but since I’m not fluent we aro mostly use English between each others. I’ve been wondering if 3 languages would be to much to grasp for our future children.
as indonesian javanese, its just nature for us to have 2 languanges. one local and one national. ofc third one is english. its absolutely not gonna impact our IQ since we are lower than most ASEAN country. still. its fun when you can talk or understand multiple languanges. but without mandatory push to make us learn it, like forced by our parents or situation. it will be super hard to learn new language.
the people in the southern philippines (bisaya) are the most unique in the world when it comes to this topic. because they speak tagalog-bisaya-english all at the same time in one sentence.
The Filipino language is called tagalog .
@@miguelbravo1633 Our national language is Filipino not Tagalog. Tagalog is a language that is commonly used in central and southern Luzon, and it contributes a lot in the language corpus of Filipino.
As a Malaysian Chinese we learn 3 languages (Malay English Chinese) since primary school and usually pick up dialects like Cantonese and Hakka. Im also learning Japanese now and plan to keep picking up new languages. It really opens up the understanding of a culture to be able to think in its language.
Try to learn a romantic language next (originated from latin). Like Portuguese, Italian, French or Spanish. You'll see how different they r from what u r used to study. It's just amazing
Cantonese is not a dialect
Lol romantic language by western ears not asian. The bias is so strong
@@Bug-sg1li they are talking about Romance languages, as in languages descended from Rome, not languages about love.
Correction: Malay, manglish, mandarin 😂
It boggles my mind that anybody ever thought bilingualism was a handicap... I honestly can't wrap my head around that. I only speak one language fluently but have studied others, and I've always been in total awe of anyone who speaks another language fluently, it is absolutely a super power.
I imagine it's because at least simultaneous bilingualism is associated with immigrants and ethnic minorities and therefore suffered the same negative bias that these groups experience.
It can be in some cases. I know many people who speak more than one language, but none of them fluently. Their ability to express complex emotions is stunted in both or all of their languages.
I grew up in the US but moved at the age of 10 to Europe. My mom was French speaking, my dad Hungarian. So we spoke French at home and English at school. Unfortunately at the time, they thought kids would get confused, so my father spoke French to us and not Hungarian. Such a shame. But we then eventually moved to Italy, put in Italian schools, so we were all trilingual. I later learned Spanish, easy with French and Italian, my sister spoke Dutch, my brother moved to Brazil, so he also spoke Portuguese. I now speak 4 languages fluently, though my Spanish could use some freshening up, but also some Dutch, German and Portuguese. The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn more. We were very lucky to have moved around and all be at least trilingual. I live in Belgium now, always spoke English to my daughter and she went to school in French.
I've met a lot of bilingual people and I've noticed that they never have a complete mastery of English. They will make very small mistakes or will put a string of words together that are not wrong but sound off. It makes sense in a lot of ways. A language shapes the brain and if you have two languages shaping it there might be certain instances when they conflict.
@@happygolucky9004 hi. It depends on where they grew up and if parents were native speakers or not. English is a difficult language and many native speakers don’t speak it well either! There are so many regional variances in the US alone, and same for UK and Ireland. And no, there is no conflict. This video proves that the distinction in the brain will make it so there is no conflict. Those people you speak of may have learned their languages later in life.
I’m a simultaneous bilingual with English and Mandarin, and the code switching thing is so true. People would often ask me to translate things and it was hard for me to use both languages in my brain at the same time. Even if I spoke in a mix of English and Mandarin at the same time, I find that I usually stick with one language’s words/grammar and only switch out certain words or phrases with the other language depending on who I was speaking to.
I'm not great at Mandarin but the first time I walked into a Chinese Starbucks, I could barely order. This was in spite of me having been successfully ordering food for quite a few months. The issue was that I only ordered things at Starbucks in English, but I only order things in China in Mandarin. Between the Mandarin and the English, I could barely get enough words from either language out of my mouth to make my order. It was a really enlightening experience about just how it is that language works.
I can totally relate that too! Monolingual people I met usually thought we could do both at the same time for everything.
Same. It's very difficult to translate things.
That's what I call chinglish!
I agree translating is very hard haha
The part where the language is explained by rhythmic patterns including syllable cadence and tone was so good and retains true to me.
I learned Spanish while living in Chile. I would study Spanish every day and practice what I would learn with the native speakers. It all felt like memorization for months until one night I started dreaming in Spanish. Then when I spoke, I no longer had to translate in my head. The rhythm would just flow out of me and learning new words started becoming as easy as just hearing what the new word was and my brain would just accept it. What I'm getting at... is I find it fascinating that once my subconscious got invloved everything became much easier. Something deep in the brain "wants" to absorb the new language.
What about quadralinguals. We must be geniuses then 😂
What age are you here if i may ask?
Thank you for expressing this. It wasn’t in vain
Here in Norway we are taught English early in school, and having consumed English media for most of my life and continuing to do so daily, English is almost as natural to me as my native tongue at this point. I even think in English a lot.
Even in my country (Bangladesh) we learn English at very early age!
I noticed that I think in English after a few weeks on student exchange. It was about the same time when I started to consume more media in English. Now, if I think of something domestic, about my family, etc. I think in Lithuanian. If I think about work, I do it usually in English, because I work in international environment.
@@ausrejurke Same, for me if it is about family or social issue I think it with my native tongue Bengali or if it is about education I switch to English 🤘
It's my second language too but it's become my main language now. I feel kinda bad for not being super fluent in my first language 😅
@@spectre9340 What's your first language, sir?
Language proficiency should be taken into consideration. Some people even have difficulty expressing in their dominant language.
@@taylorfusher2997 I'm not familiar with that myth.
This is me I have difficulties expressing my self in my native language
Grew up with 5 languages and still have difficulty trying to communicate/express my thoughts in all languages (English being the dominant one)
Is it possible to be a “partially simultaneous” bilingual? My main language is English, but I grew up listening to my parents speak fluent Urdu. I’ve noticed that I’m capable of reading and understanding conversations in Urdu really well, but I’m not as good at speaking the language. When I try to speak Urdu, I stumble on the grammar and I have a really heavy English accent. Sometimes I wonder if I should actually consider myself bilingual, or maybe I’m just naturally bad at learning new languages.
My dominant language isn't even the first language I learnt! My first language is the one I am least proficient in out of the three I speak. I only lived in my native country untill I was 5 ...so it would be interesting to see if I'd become very proficient with the language if I went to live there now 🤔
I know that most people think that this is no big deal because they learned many languages in their culture in their childhood but it’s just not about the language but how the brain functions when we know all of these languages. It expands your mind in other ways you didn’t think because we’ve all learned to speak multi languages in a very young age. That’s the beauty of it. We’re all extremely special and we don’t even know it.
I grew up bilingual with Swiss German and Finnish, and I’m honestly really thankful to my parents for that, cause it has made it much easier for me to learn other languages, when compared to friends that were raised monolingual
weird that bilingualism was seen as bad for people when learning how to play an instrument has been long seen as a sign of intelligence. Reading complex music IS learning a language in a way
It absolutely is learning a language. Not a spoken one, but a language nonetheless. It's a different form of communication, more artistic in nature, sure, but with its own codes and meanings. I think that qualifies music as a language.
It had to be an American thing. What do you call a person that speaks three languages? A polyglot. What do you call a person that speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person that only speaks one language? American. They literally hate other languages, "hey, this is America, speak English." I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
@@adrianrocha49 that's a bit of an unfair generalization. I've met plenty of Brits who are just as bad, if not worse. Came across a Brit in my hometown in Germany and he was complaining that the meal names on his menu were in German... sir, you're in the German countryside - what were you expecting? One country that is stubbornly unilingual is Japan. I live here and teach English, but most don't want to learn because they think they'll never need it. They don't want to leave Japan. I think it's true that some Americans think their language matters most of all, but plenty of Americans are bilingual or polyglots. Many would also love to learn a foreign language, but don't have the means to. It's not immediately offered by their school curriculum most of the time... Other countries are so fortunate to have a curriculum that includes foreign languages. It's not always a given.
@@Nariasan Japan has its own issues other than that. They are one of the few countries that does not allow dual citizenship, so, saying Japan also has that problem is not much of a defense of the US.
@@Nariasan yeah but I think the case with the US is slightly different because it mostly comes from racism or a nationalistic view. I think the Japanese are just more secluded and comfortable enough to not leave the country.
I'm a sequential bilingual and found a book on this topic very interesting: The Bilingual Brain by Albert Costa (originally in Spanish, the writer studies Spanish/Catalan bilinguals primarily but the book covers studies from all sorts of bilingualism studies). The book comes to the conclusion that no, bilinguals aren't smarter, brains just work differently. What I also found interesting is that the inhibition of the other languages causes bilinguals to have a greater "tip of the tongue" delay when having to name words quickly under study conditions. Like it takes longer for bilinguals to reach the word because there's two vocabularies to work with.
I'm also a sequential polyglot and that's really helpful. I honestly thought I was dumb because I tend to "forget" some words in the active language when I'm trying to speak faster.
I've been trilingual since I've been able to speak. However, it took me ages to start speaking because of this. The tip of the tongue thing is so true: if someone asks me how to say a word in one of my 3 languages, I'll be able to think of the word in the two languages that aren't the target language. It's so incredibly frustrating! Especially when I have native fluency in all 3 languages... I feel like I look stupid and as though people doubt my ability to speak because of this frustrating hang up.
It's interesting how 2 languages that are so similar as Spanish and Catalan still have the same effect as 2 unrelated languages.
I'm both simultaneous (Greek and English) and sequential (Japanese). I think being bilingual in Greek and English made it easier for me to learn Japanese as it opened me to differences in ways of thinking. Although I didn't achieve the fluency in Japanese I have in my childhood languages. I didn't perceive tip of the tongue delay until I also started learning Italian. A fourth language took it's toll and delays suddenly became very noticeable and sometimes annoying. Or maybe it's just because I've gotten older, hard to say.
Yeah thats a thing, some times Im speaking my native spanish and I just cant continue the sentence bc I cant find the word in spanish but I do find it in english, if the person Im talking to understands english its not a problem, but otherwise is quite anoying
Also very happy that "code switching" was mentioned. I have a degree in anthropology, and code switching was my graduate study work. I literally wrote the paper on the subject. Done very well here, but this channel is always amping the quality of material.
The only struggle I had with having 2 languages growing up is not knowing which one I was speaking, or which one was supposed to be used situationally. I thought I was speaking English when I was speaking German, and German when I was speaking English. It wasn't until we returned to the states and everyone in my class were only saying certain words and not the other, then I was sent home with a note to be placed in ESL classes, that I understood I wasn't speaking English in public, but at home.
If you talk to someone in one language and then suddenly someone speaks to you in the other language. My brain, at least, sometimes does not register that there was a language change, and you just reply to the person in a language they don't understand.
I was able to speak 4 languages at one point(only 2 fluently), but when you dont use some of them for a looooooong time, you tend to forget alot of it sadly
I normally think out loud a lot with all the languages I know... that way, I never forget them. Plus, I watch lots of videos for the languages I know as well (mostly here on KZhead)
That happened to me with German (my second mother tongue) because I started neglecting it and used English instead to learn it fast. My German ended up getting much worse than it used to, which was pretty bad for me considering I had German as my first language at school 😅 I don’t want to lose my German though so now that I graduated I’m gonna have to make an effort and immerse myself in more German content and speak it more with my mother
Usually what happens there is that it's not really forgotten, most of it is in there somewhere and if you try to learn the language again, you learn at a speed that you couldn't possibly have learned it the first time.
i speak 4 languages.. Iban my mother tongue, english, bahasa melayu, mandarine..and other dialects, among all the languages i almost forget mandarine cause from where i live most chinese communities here they can speak iban, or bahasa melayu sarawak.. but when it comes to counting, i prefer using mandarine.. cos it's more faster..
You can forget even your mother language if you use 2second one for a long period of time and not your 1st
Being an Indian, specially from the South of India, I am privilaged to have the opportunity and circumstances to learn 5 languages - Telugu (Mother tongue), Tamil (Native local language), Kannada (Local language of the state im living presently), Hindi (2nd Language at school), and English. I believe knowing more than one language can help you connect more with people.
that's so cool. i really wanna learn bangla but have zero to no idea as to where to start from. also, which one of the first 3 languages that you mentioned is the easiest one?
How about useful languages?
@@abrahamtzm3783 Don't know what u mean by "Useful Languages". I am from Kerala. I know English,Hindi, Malayalam, Sanskrit and Tamil. Nothing more of a pride than knowing the World's Two Oldest Languages.
@@guardianknight83 I’m learning Malayalam
@@abrahamtzm3783 Those langauges are already useful since they most likely use them a lot where they live. A language is useless if you only use it for bragging rights. Kinda like how weebs learn Japanese or Koreaboos learn Korean and then never really fully use it. No offense to such people but by then its just due to hobby/self interest not due to usefulness or the need to
Very neat! I'm a child & adol psychiatrist and am fascinated by language development I also SO WISH I had been raised in a multilingual fashion . . . and was one of those people who can pick up languages effortlessly! I look forward to watching more of your videos THANK YOU for the WORK that goes in to these videos 🙏🏽
I'm fluent in 4 languages, and it's absolutely amazing. The access you get to so much information from all around the world...
In the late 90s, my family moved from an Arabic-speaking to an English speaking country. I was seven and picked up English pretty quickly after starting school, while my little sister was two so she mostly spoke Arabic until she started attended kindergarten around age four. About a year into kindergarten, her speech started to get a little muddled and our doctor thought it might be because she was hearing two different languages - Arabic at home, and English at school. The doctor suggested sticking to one language, so my parents and I started speaking more English at home. Eventually, I stopped speaking my first language altogether - though this was also partly due to my adolescent desire to assimilate, and 2000s Islamophobia. Twenty years on, I am taking Arabic lessons to pick it back up and am genuinely surprised at how much I remember - it's like it was put into storage and just needed dusting off! I hope doctors are no longer making the suggestions that our 90s doctors did - I love that this video addresses that, while some parts of language development may be slower in bilingual children, it may just be because their brains are working harder, and it's actually better in the long run!
That was really bad advice from the doctor. Never let doctors advise you on language issues go to a professional linguist at your nearest university. They should have spoken Arabic at home or in the Arabic speaking community but English outside of the home and at in places where Arabic is not spoken. This would have been a better strategy and would help retain both languages.
Yeah, Im half Central American *Spanish at home, English outside. My reading was really high, but i didn't talk much (I still take my time, for effective word choices😅) As a 90s kid, teachers thought I was development challenged. Thank GOD my mom didn't listen to them and kept speaking and reading Spanish and English. She was right, Spanish would help put food on the table. It also helps me understand phonetic and romance languages (which opened the door for an international career 🎉)
When I was 14 we transferred to a different city and have to use their dialect/language even at home. My aunt said it's the best way to easily adjust to their language. In just a year i forgot my first language except for the basic words and i can't even form a sentence. But when i went back to my old city i adjusted easily again. But up until now that i am 26 i spoke both languages in one sentence without noticing it. But i only do it when im talking to people who understand both languages. I sometimes think i have no control with my own brain. 😅
may i ask what tool you use to learn arabic?
Inshallah brother! 💪
As a fluent speaker of 3 languages, yes bilingualism/multilingualism is a superpower. One benefit of many: you are never really lost for words
I'm also a speaker of 3 languages, and I have to say that sometimes, when I'm switching much from one to another, I accidentally mix some words, and that's really fun 😄 For example I was talking in Spanish with a friend and suddenly I said "yes, yes" to what he was saying, both of us laughed hard because English isn't even my mother tongue 🤣
most people of the world speak more than two languages. It's not a superpower, it's common. :D
@@zasher7800Bullshit.
My dad speaks 4 different languages and he is introverted 😂
@@zasher7800that might be statistically right, but it is different across different regions and which languages you are talking about, especially at the native level
I’m Japanese and learning English. It is always good for me to learn something new like watching this video. Thank you this channel.
The background music/tracks throughout the video has been mastered and panned by a genius
"it's never too late to learn a SECOND language" is such an anglophone thing to say. Even if we are not all bilinguals, most people around the world know more than 1 language. In Africa most people know their local dialect + 1 or 2 more languages. In Luxembourg everyone speaks 3 to 4 languages. Unilinguality is the exception, not the norm.
here in Latin America, most know 1 language. then there are Indigenous peoples who speak their native language OR the people who come from another country ( Arabs and East Asians) who bring their language as well making them bilingual or trilingual. so- it's not always an " anglophone" thing to say. I am from Mexico and I know 5 languages because I studied hard.
@@taopanda98 lots of people in Mexico are learning English now though
@@mannytuzo that's true! But not a lot of people know it 100% unless they work abroad or study abroad or work with a foreign company even living in Mexico
@@taopanda98 Agreed, I live in Japan there are a lot of Brazilians. They usually only know Portuguese. Also it's PBS, it's aimed at Americans who generally only know one language. There was no need to get so uppity.
@@jimmythechimp2 I am not being uppity nor was my intention. I was just explaining that it depends on each person as not everyone in Latin America is the same. I had a tutor from Mexico whom is also a polyglot. She knows Japanese and English as well as Spanish. Another one knows Mandarin, Italian,Spanish and English. One commonality of all of us is that we studied hard AND the opportunity to go abroad or work with people from abroad. Not being uppity. Just speaking facts.
Apart from the English speaking world, most of the world has some familiarity with more than 1 language. Maybe this led to the arrogance of thinking that multilingualism is unnecessary. As an Indian, I easily speak 3 languages, learned simultaneously, at native proficiency and I took Spanish classes later in life and have intermediate!
This is just straight up not true. There are many people who live in rural areas who only speak one language. Try finding a bilingual farmer in lesser Poland or Patagonia
Um the english world has a lot of bilingualism.
As someone from NE India, three languages is like the basic standard
U r talking about some whites maybe, born and brought up in america for generations, but a lot in this world know atleast 2 and not all indians know 3 languages, only particular states do, people know 1 and 2 mostly
@@lly_09 That's usually more a matter of whether or not there is one language of exchange to cover most matters. If you can't conduct most of your daily affairs in one language, then you're going to be learning more just to get by. And it is very expensive in terms of the time involved if you're going beyond just the basics of the language. That's time that could be spent on other things.
I always saw my bilingualism as nothing special to really pay attention to, but after this video I'm very grateful.
This is one of the most interesting videos I've seen in a while. Especially when they touched the subject of prosody, I never thought about japanese and all that. I'm gonna save this vid in my faves
I am glad that multilingual studies are getting done so we learn more about how we can do better.
id like a study on how we can teach better. Most schools in the us teach it similar to maths and it does not seem to be efficient whatsoever.
I miss read this as "so we can learn how we are better" and that made me chuckle
I am currently speaking 6 languages currently, 3 fluently. It literally changes your mind and makes you more open to other perspective and makes a person more informed in a more unrestricted manner.
how do you maintain the ability to speak so many languages? I know 2 and learning a third one seems exhausting
@@KatrineVavere I use it everyday like watching youtube or chatting friends. You really need time to maintain it and it is easy for me since I have lots of free time.
@@KatrineVavere i am speaking 3 , learning german as four. when im speaking japanese. my brain switches when the one im talking to is also speaking japanese. sometimes i forgot what to say the words in other languages. funny
You're so right! I'm Fluently in 2 languages and I do understand 2 more (about 80 percent) And I have to say after learning my second language it was so easier to learn a 3rd language too. It helps you understand so many different cultures and perspectives of life.
@@ExoBau :)
I feel so validated! When the Dr. said that we are very aware of our code-switching!
This is an interesting topic … I grew up bilingual (German from my dad and Dutch from my mom). When I got English in school I sucked it up in no time. And even in France on our holidays I never felt uncomfortable using the little I know to communicate with the locals and it keeps getting better.
My son is 3 years old and he is trilingual, I am Brazilian, my ex husband is polish and my son was born in Scotland, so my son is learning Portuguese, polish and English. It’s amazing how he is able to switch from one language to another. He knows his father doesn’t speak Portuguese, so he uses English and polish with him . As we are living in Poland now and I’m learning polish, he speaks the three languages with me. At kindergarten he only speak polish with teacher and friends. He is only 3, this is amazing to see
That's great that you are raising him multilingual. We are raising our niece multilingual. It's amazing how easily she learns languages thanks to starting her learning as a baby. The website and KZhead channel Multilingual.family has great advice for raising children multilingual and the OPOL method (one person one language). The website is run by a linguist raising her own children to be multilingual. We used her advice with our niece, and it was very helpful!
I’m jealous of people who are bilingual or polyglots. I’ve always thought that being able to speak more than one language was in a way a superpower! This was a really informative video that I enjoyed 👍
thanks for being jealous of me >:}
As someone who was never raised in a bilingual family but later became a bilingual during my late teenage years, I’d say: go for it and don’t waver. _ Don’t wish but pursue. _ Remember: this is a skill that can take years to develop. _ Don’t be discouraged and persevere anyway. _ And lastly, do not study a language because “it’s popular“. _ Learn that language because you want to.
In my country almost everyone is bilingual.
Actually most of the people of the world speaks more than one language except the english speakers! Lol So it’s not that great of a superpower. I myself speak 3 languages including English. And of course English is not my primary language.
Learn Norwegian or Français! It's going to help alot, any European language similar to English actually. Français est très helpful and really, really easy for an English speaker..I'm learning it but I'm bilingual. (Excluding french)
I'm a native English speaker and learning Polish and German and it's so cool to see how bilingualism just. Is, neurologically and developmentally speaking. I've always been in awe of people who can just switch like that, and I aspire to be able to do that one day
You addressed a crucial question that’s been piquing my curiosity for a while.. why on earth are children more likely to pick up a language way faster than adults? Not mentioning their ability to produce the right sounds effortlessly which leads later on to avoid having accents, in contrast to adult learners’ who seemingly, in their case to be negligible. The fact that babies are capable of hearing as well as distinguishing almost all various different sounds respectively never ceases to amaze me. Thank you for sharing this! it is an eye-opening
I am a linguist and I can answer your question. When we think of a baby's brain, we should think it as an empty canvas. In a newborn's brain, there are so much neurons waiting to be assigned, create a pathway. There are 3 pathways strongly related to language in the brain, and one extra between two hemispheres. Throughout infant's life, these pathways are created and the neurons are assigned to their duties, which means they are filled with information and have purpose. As the child grows up, neurons pick up new information and sometimes new purposes, but eventually all the neurons are working and there is close to none that is empty and/or unassigned. So therefore, adults learn with more effort due to being full or close to full, but children learn effortlessly due to being neurologically "idle". I think this is enough for an answer. But I will share my original comment to this video below, for a more direct answer. One additional note: Neural transmission gets slower with age due to life expectancy. Yes, all cells have life expectancy; but neurons are especially slow at rejuvenescense, renewal of the cell; therefore, disadvantageous. At one point in human life, around 60-70 ages, neurons' reduce to renew rate goes up and learning becomes very hard. On top of that, the working neurons are now slower due to degrading of both the Schwann and Myelin sheaths. ---- This video shows why linguistics needed to happen. There are numerous errors in understanding both the language and the bilingual. The cognitive approach is well accepted, but what a psychologist and a linguist understands from the word "cognitive" is different. This topic is far too complex to be told in a video aimed at common folk, but this short statement can be said about bilinguals: "Bilingualism is as effortless as monolingualism. Two languages are acquired just like one would be". What is different are the parameters of the languages that are acquired, nothing else. Being a bilingual doesn't require anything special, as long as the acquisition happened within the critical period, which is roughly 0-11 years for the language acquisition. The only thing that matters in language acquisition is the input. No matter the language, the child will learn it seamlesly; although the performance of the speech can differ depending on the quality of the input. There are categorizations of bilingualism in this manner, but it is not related to our conversation. I want to point out just one error and elaborate on it. Just because I don't want anyone to be discouraged of learning phonology of a foreign language. It is perfectly possible to learn and articulate the phonetic inventory of any language. (The level of performance differs in relation to person's hearing and perception qualities, education, intelligence and mental health.) People don't lose the ability to distinguish different phonemes in different languages, this is a false statement. I don't know if this statement was intended or a result of dumbing down the text. The perception of sound is modified throughout infant's life with linguistic input. This modification makes it so that the most common sounds should be perceived with as minimal effort as possible. But this does not mean it excludes other speech sounds to be perceived. Within this framework, when people hear foreign speech sounds, at first they just perceive it as the closest phoneme they know in the manner and location of the articulation. This is called least effort law. It takes a reason to go against it, otherwise the law will go in effect.
As someone who has learned linguistics albeit in a limited capacity, this video makes my heart happy.
My son is bilingual. We never translate Chinese to English for him. But he always translates English to Chinese (he thinks we don’t speak English 😂) until he found out we understand english. He looks like he has this switch. Every time go visit grandparents he switches to English. And once he is talking to us he switches back to Chinese. It’s very interesting to witness the amazing moment like this. 😆 I hope he can carry this till he grow up as an adult.
How old is he? That’s so funny that he doesn’t know you know English! 😂 I have a one year old, and we’re raising him to speak Chinese too.
Very interesting video. It especially interested me because I'll never know if I grew up bilingual, but realized only very late, or became so after I left childhood. Namely, I am French, but was born in Canada, and my parents made a conscious effort to let me know english, like talking to the english neighbors, going to an english preschool, or having an English au pair. for all of that, I didn't seem to acquire English, to the point that, in my first three years of secondary school, I was simply horrible at it (bad grades and all)... I was about 14 when I discovered that there were English books that I wanted to read, and that were not translated. there it was, in 3 months, I went from near complete inability to being a semi fluent reader
I grew up bilingual, and I find new languages relatively easy to learn. I also seem to hear differences in sounds and identify words that are somewhat shifted in a new language more easily than others seem to.
I'm simultaneously bilingual and a terrible translator. What's never mentioned in bilingual videos like this one though is bilingual body language and being bicultural. When I speak to Americans my body language is completely different than when I speak to people from Spain. I can tell immediately from body language who is American and who is Spanish no matter the race. The way the eyes or the hands move, it's a crucial piece to communication.
I just mentioned that in another video and someone got offended.
Yup, hand movements when you talk matter. If you're not sure, ask Italians and Argentinians.
@@__-fl3yt lol
There was a time in my life when I was bilingual. I even became a little bit trilingual around 2006-2007. But I have lost all interest and am definitely monolingual once more. But, even during my multilingual phases, I had zero interest in interacting with or speaking with people in those non-English languages. I was in it just for the reading and writing of it. Just for the study of the language itself.
Totally true. Every culture has its own body language.
I'm a simultaneus bilingual who speaks catalan and spanish since I was able to speake. I remember that I used to confuse both languages when I was a very young kid. I wasn't able to understand that there were two diferent languages, even if I knew that there were two diferent labels for a single object and sometimes I spoke in catalan to my monolingual spanish family and I didn't understand why they weren't able to undestand me. My hipothesis is that this studies have been done with bilingual speakers who speak two diferent languages diferent enough to have a diferent prosody (children of Spanish or Chinese speaking imigrants in US that have grown with both, English and theirs parents language). But maybe two closer languages like two romance languages it wouldn't be that easier to distinguish by neonates.
I think it has been studied, because I recall reading that bilingual children whose languages are closely related take longer to differentiate the languages and will mix languages up to the age of 4. Anyway you should definitely check out the book El Cerebro Bilingüe by Albert Costa, he is a researcher on the topic and also Catalan Spanish bilingual.
I think I have become semi-bilingual... Because my mum is exactly the same. she speaks Catalan and Spanish and from what I understand frequently switches between the two. I say semi-bilingual because there are lot of phrases and sentences in Spanish and catalan that I can understand and know the individual sounds to them. But I cannot replicate them myself because I spoke english my whole life, also, I couldn't tell you which was spanish and which was catalan for along time and I still mix them sometimes... and my mother pushed us too much to become bilingual that she didn't make it fun she forced the issue too much and my brothers and I rebelled and didn't learn as a result. There is also the fact that people didn't believe me when I told them catalan words for things in Spain. Because they were so stuck in learning Spanish. Which isn't bad. Just, I'm also correct and we were in Barcelona! I been there for many winters and summers. I knew the culture.
I agree! It would be interesting to compare the experience of a trilingual person who spoke Spanish, Catalan and Mandarin for example
@@JustAnotherPerson4U there's actually a term for this, heritage language. You grew up listening to these so you're familiar with at home language (informal) but speaking or writting in those languages is difficult. The same happened to me growing up in a spanish house hold with english only schooling. The good knews is that you're never to late to learn! I ended up having to learn how to speak and write spanish at 12 due to moving and the switch wasn't to difficult.
@@JustAnotherPerson4U I'm going to say something that I probably shouldn't say, but wow, that must suck for your mum... I would HATE not being capable of speaking to my children in my native language
I used to wonder how bilingual children didn’t cross their two languages together, but watching this made me realise they'd understand the languages were separate if the people they learned to talk from didn't combine them.
Love it, always asked my self why felt like I switch when I speak each language, also noticed i I feel like a little deferences in personality whenI switch
I'm a polyglot. I can speak 6 languages well. My parents trilingually educated me, and now that we reside in a completely different country, we have adopted their language. When I was 11 years old, I started taking Japanese courses, and I attended a trilingual high school in my senior year. With the exception of math, my grades are above average, but I don't consider myself smart. Anyways, can you conduct a study about changing personalities when switching language? I experience that a lot 😂
thats so cool
After like about 5, languages become kinda useless for the great majority of people cause you don't need to know that much to live life and don't use them that often.
Yeah I have a slightly different personality in Japanese. My theory is that it's partly about the language and culture behind it and partly that we sort of get a chance to be someone else now we know most of our existing friends and family will not be able to understand you.
You can say its almost like that. Language carries a lot of values from the culture.
There was a time in my life when I was bilingual. I even became a little bit trilingual around 2006-2007. But I have lost all interest and am definitely monolingual once more. But, even during my multilingual phases, I had zero interest in interacting with or speaking with people in those non-English languages. I was in it just for the reading and writing of it. Just for the study of the language itself.
I'm wondering how this applies to the written language, especially when the languages have different alphabets , both my children are bilingual - English and Cantonese and I found their ability to learn the spoken language was easy, but when it came to written Chhinese (even with simplified Chinese, their proficiency in written Chinese was much more delayed even though their English was developmentally right in step with native learners, this despite Chinese actually being their mother tongue and Cantonese the language they are culturally immersed in, we live in Macau, China
I think it's just simply harder to learn Chinese characters. I remember in Chinese public school we learned the Latin-based Pinyin within a week but it was years and years of acquiring new characters and written practices through elementary school to be proficient in Chinese
The main difference is that alphabetic languages have a framework for mapping phonemes to the written form. This is not generally true for logographic languages. Adding to the confusion is that Cantonese is different from literary Chinese, and simplified Chinese further obscures some of the original derivation of the Chinese character. For example, written Cantonese is often grammatically different than written Mandarin. Lastly there is a political desire to diminish other forms (some call them dialects) of Chinese thus reducing overall proficiency in local spoken forms.
@@Obscurai I don't think the difficulty of learning written Chinese has this much to do with the vernacular vs modern mandarin divide. Alleged negative impacts of simplified are even less plausible. Even before simplification, the evolution of characters themselves does not follow strict patterns all the time so there is little in regards to simplified losing information, if anything it helps writing memorization.
@@My-nl6sg My mother has given up on simplified Chinese having only learned the traditional characters. She says that they are confusing, sometimes ambiguous and often do not have characters for Cantonese words. This is the perspective from a Cantonese speaker. The experience for Mandarin speakers may be easier. Since the original poster is Cantonese, this experience probably applies to them as well. In many ways Simplified characters were designed for Mandarin speakers and thus would be slightly more difficult for other "dialects". In case you are not aware Cantonese also has slightly different grammar than Mandarin beyond the phonetic and pronunciation differences.
@@Obscurai Cantonese is my native tongue, but genuinely if the education system introduces Mandarin at an early age, the acquisition is not difficult. That is not to say that the Mandarin-centric education policy should not be criticized, but it does not generally pose significant difficulty for literacy. On the topic of simplified characters, my grandparent's generation went through the transition between traditional and simplified in the PRC, however, the challenges posed to a relative minority do not diminish the conveniences of simplified's reduced strokes to first-time learners, as many Chinese would tell you.
I'm a Polyglot, I can read,write and speak 3 indian languages apart from English, I speak Tamil, Telugu,Hindi and English and in India being a Bilingual is no big deal because most people are bilingual already, English is not our first language here, since we have 21+ languages already moving to different parts of the country makes us have to learn the language within that particular place.
As a bilingual raised person(Lao-Vietnamese). I always curios that how my brain functions different compare to other people. Thanks for making a good video that answers all my questions.
It would be interesting to see what the results would be of someone creating an 'Alphabet Song' that uses _all_ the phonemes so that little kids would get some practice with them all even if they are mostly monolingual at that point.
could be difficult to find someone familiar enough with all the phonemes to write this, remember these phonemes include sounds like the Glottal clicks in Xhosa and tonal languages like Cantonese and Mandarin
@@ChurchillGeoff It would be an accomplishment to be proud of.
@@qwertyuiopgarth It would have to include 800ish distinct phonemes. I think it would take an AI to put that together, not a human, and I'm not sure how easily kids would pick it up. Would be an interesting experiment.
Wow this is an amazing idea!
@@EnkiduShamesh Actually I think there could be another solution. Instead of an AI or a single person, find multiple people. Have one person create sort of a template for a children's song-esc tune. Essentially a generic, easily malleable melody set to a basic track. Then, have multiple people write their version of the alphabet song with their respective native phonemes to that tune. Allow them to manipulate the melody and beats to fit their language's rhythm. Then have one person compile all the versions of the song and create transition points between each version. And voila! You'd have a song with all the phonemes and even better it would be segmented between languages so you know what languages use which sounds. Another bonus, you'd get a sense for each languages rhythms as well. Would that be a lot of work? Yes. Would that require a lot of people, teamwork, energy, and time? Probably. However, if there was a song like that, I'd learn the heck out of it lol
I was born to a Dutch father and Indonesian mother and was raised in a simultaneous bilingual household, but I developed a language disorder. It was advised that I were to be raised in a monolingual household for my cognitive development and be taught the other language sequentially, so my parents decided to raise me in an English speaking home. Now that I'm an adult, I always have an interest in learning new languages, and I am quick to pick up pronunciation differences, accents, and the grammar structure, but the hardest languages are the language my parents used. Guess my brain was just wired differently.
Aduh sayang banget. Juist doordat ik alle drie de talen heb geleerd, is it easy for me to communicate with people from different backgrounds. Maar het was niet makkelijk voor mij. Yang susah itu, kadang kadang otak ku berubah focus bahasa, then only people that were able to understand me fully were my parents and my siblings. It was mental gymnastics when I tried to master a world language and bahasa orang tua ku, terwijl ik ook nog eens de taal van mijn geboorteland moest onderhouden. Tapi, sekarang tiga-tiga nya sudah lancar. En daar ben trots op. I hope you'll find the motivation to chase is, cause it really is fun 😁
Is your father still with you?
maybe bcoz English and Dutch are too close linguistically?
It's more likely Indonesian and Dutch ( and they're both phonetic), that has similar languages since Indonesian adopts quite a lot of Dutch words with a mix of other languages and some words do sound different in either language spoken
Amazing explanation and fun! That’s the way I see it learning a new language, a bit like Patapon game. Liked and subscribed 👍
for me personally, my dad was and is still a huge influence on my love of languages... he worked abroad to support our family, and had to learn malay, bahasa indonesia, as well as several indonesian dialects... i currently speak 8 languages (6 fluent, 2 so-so) because my dad encouraged me to learn to connect with more people, not just for work but to make friends...
Bilinguals: **exist** Also Bilinguals: "Wait, what's that word in English again?"
This was really nice to see. I grew up with Japanese and German and people say I'm good at catching the sounds and rhythms of other languages. All through my life, I have had a distinct sensibility when it comes to words and language. Knowing two and more languages and thus being able to navigate different spaces of perception, thought, and feeling has enriched my life much. I now live in Indonesia, raising a bilingual child, and doctors here are discouraging us from doing so. I think it is because they associate bilingualism with delay in development, or seeing it as a handicap. I heard people in Japan saying the same, the fear that "children will not speak either language fluently." So I hope more people can appreciate the findings in this affirming video!
I agree. I grew up learning 3 languages simultaneously and have always found it easy to pick up sounds, rhythm and pronunciation of other languages. Now I speak 3 more languages and am planning in learning more. Though it's a bit confusing at times to get the right words, it's quite interesting in a phonetic perspective.
Don’t worry at all!! If your kids learns the language from you and the same language is taught in school and in written form it will be just fine!! I learned Dutch when i came to Holland as an 3 years old immigrant’s child. Learned Dutch through the tv, school, friends etc… Learned our native tongue from my mother, only in orally form. Unlike most Chinese or Korean people we didn’t had a weekend school to learn our native tongue. It would have helped me to expand my vocabulary. At the same time i also learned English.
Kinda weird that Indonesian doctor are saying that because the children here usually speak at least two languages.
My country is the opposite. They'd be down to have their children learn another langauge. But then again my country is multilingual and code switching is expected. It's a great advantage really
Really? That is so strange. Most Indonesian grew up with 2 or 3 languages. Standard Bahasa Indonesia, Betawinese (Jakartan's variant of BI), Sundanese, Javanese, Balinese and Basic English. In some families, mandarin/cantonese and arabic also present. Familiarity in Japanese add bonuses to tourism and trading. And now Koreans make appearance. Not trying to discredit your doctors and their hospitals, but perhaps, there is fourth or sixth opinion regarding this matter. Anyway, thank you for sharing. I hope your baby grow up healthy physically and mentally, smart, poise, and talented🎉
The more languages you can speak the better- just meeting new people and having horizons broadened is great. I’m bilingual and working hard to get a third under the belt. I live in France now and learning French. It’s amazing how hard your brain has to work - I come home with my brain fried after spending a whole day at work conversing with my French colleagues and writing emails etc. I find phone calls the worst as you get a lot of info from persons face as well when speaking and calls just don’t have any feedback
The one thing I wish my parents had done differently when I was young was to be more strict about switching. Especially in a context where one is surrounded by bilingual speakers, it can lead to a habit of ‘mixing’ languages. Which in my opinion makes one lazy about learning and recalling vocabulary and can weaken ones proficiency across the board.
I had a teacher who began learning Russian at 46. He was around 60 when he began teaching me Norwegian, and it was SO STRANGE: he had no accent! I still don't quite understand that! Not only is Russian in a totally different language family than his native, Germanian language, but he knew the language really well in terms of grammar too! The obly way I understood he wasn't Russian was that he sometimes didn't know certain words, and when I first taught him how to pronounce them, they sounded weir, but he practiced a little, and then everything was perfect. I know several people that have acquired second, or even third languages fast and efficiently, and barely have any accent, if at all, even though they started learning the language relatively late
wow~I think they are gifted.
I majored in Linguistics and Japanese over 30 years ago and bilingualism has been a favorite topic ever since. I encourage anyone I know who had the opportunity and resources to raise their kids bilingually. I'm currently studying Serbian and I'm intrigued by how my own brain is taking on this new challenge, at almost 60.
You may know Steve Kaufman... ? **Two mm Kaufmann
i had never heard that sequential bilingualism was considered a handicapping experience, but this is definitely was the case with me. my brain power really dwindled once i became bilingual and started thinking in two languages.
I started learning English in school a month before turning 10 and started using it rapidly and getting good at it at age 12½. However, growing up the language was already everywhere. In songs, in subtitled movies and TV shows, in a few toys, online, in words that were mixed into my native language. I wonder how much that has affected me in terms of how I pick up on the language. Things like the R sound used in English is something I've always known about. For th-sounds, I didn't realize they were different from f-sounds before learning it the language in school, but it became fairly clear to me after that. Maybe it's a combination of hearing it from an early age, my own natural language abilities, and growing up with a language where pronunciation of a word can make quite a difference.
Just my own little experience: I was raised properly bilingually with two very different languages - Swiss German and Finnish. I quickly found that in school not only did I have way less trouble learning new languages (French was mandatory) than most of my peers, but I was also able to pronounce things with far less effort. And I would be considered a "science/math person", so languages were nowhere near my horizon of interests. Still, my grades were high and the study felt pretty much effortless. Later I picked up English, mostly just by reading stuff and watching videos - hell I could not explain a single English-grammar-point if my life depended on it. This is purely something I acquired passively in my 20s. Sure I make a lot of mistakes, but I am always understood and I do not feel like I need to use much focus or effort to speak English. I also still speak ok-ish/useable Japanese and I understand Dutch and Spanish with no issues. I think an interesting point comes up when I compare myself with my wife. She is clearly linguistically much more intelligent and gifted than I am, and if she sits down and concentrates to write an English (also not a native) text it will be in an entirely different league than whatever I would be able to write, no matter how I tried. Also, if she speaks in her native tongue, she can hold any speech with far greater sophistication than I could in my native tongue. However, the one thing I noticed, she often "needs a moment" or at least it clearly takes some effort when she switches between languages and she has often just spoken Dutch to me after she spoke with her family. Or she mixes up a few words when she switches between languages. With me, this doesn't really happen. I can switch between languages mid-sentence if I want to, it is pretty much effortless and I seem always in full control of what language I am currently speaking. So for me, the "switching part" is really easy indeed. And if I look at the ambiguous images shown in the video, I have little issue seeing both parts at the same time. I can also listen to two conversations at the same time without too much bother. Personally, I can only recommend raising children properly bilingually, I will forever be grateful that my parents did so, or I would probably just be another science nerd who can't stutter a single phrase in a foreign language.
"able to pronounce things with far less effort." - Yes, this! Also a polyglot and Cantonese is my mother tongue. But I routinely get confused for a local when I speak in other languages. I guess the "range" that we hear and can pronounce is comparatively large VS a monolingual speaker.
I'm a bit skeptical about the phoneme-deafness. As a sequential tetralingual myself, I wasn't able to distinguish the phoneme differences until my language teacher pointed out to me that certain phonemes in English actually lie between the phonemes in my native language. Once I knew what to look for, it was an astounding revelation. It was like a whole new world was unlocked.
Something to consider is that in normal language interactions we're able to use other information to determine what sound was said. You can analyze the context, the syntax , etc., and use that to help you. However, hearing words in isolation (like in an experiment) might prove more difficult. I know that for myself, in my L2, I almost never have problems understanding what phoneme was said, but I still have an accent.
@@robertdaly9162 Hmm interesting. It sounds like you can identify the phonemes but are having trouble replicating them verbally. Idk if you've tried this but one possible solution might be watching people make those sounds. There should be videos like that on YT and that is how babies learn to speak, actually. By watching people's mouths and trying to make those sounds themselves.
I agree. That depends how much you're immersed in one language. When you're beginner you use the 1st language as reference so is natural to not distinguish, but once you reach a certain level you work and observe such minor details, that you couldn't before.
Exactly! I’m sorry but plenty of kids and teenagers learn a second language without an accent. So I don’t believe you stopped learning phonemes at infancy!
@@steffaely it's the video that's misleading, honestly, not the science itself. It's true that distinguishing newer phonemes becomes difficult after a point--and that point is NOT infancy, i believe it's closer to puberty--but difficult =/= impossible because (as we're all aware) it's been done countless times over!
I speak 5 languages (4 of them fluently) and I'm learning a 6th for the sake of communicating better with my spouse's family. What was interesting to me was that when I first started learning Japanese, whenever I tried to recall a word, the French equivalent would come to mind instead. This happened less as I progressed and once I became fluent in Japanese, the reverse happened. ie. when I tried recalling a word in French, the Japanese equivalent would come to mind instead. It's as if Japanese had moved into the same area of my mind/neural networks that had previously housed my French. Not a huge loss since I don't use French much anymore (it's the language I am no longer fluent in out of the 5 I speak). But still; I'd rather have kept them all!
As a child I heard both of French and English as in my early stages of life as an Arabic speaker, my parents spoke Arabic at home, yet since we lived in France: French was all over up till kindergarten, yet when return to my homeland: French was substituted by English, by hearing my uncle's late wife; who happens to be British, on her daily conversations and arguments 😂 so hearing French at a very early age didn't help speaking it at that time, yet it helped me understanding it and helped in pronouncing the vowels right, which majority of French tell me that I have a good pronouncation on them, despite that I can't speak the language well, and I'm still learning till now.
I have to say, the graphics in this episode were really helpful for me, personally. I mostly understood the concept of code-switching before this, but the animations finally got it to fully click for me. Thanks, Andrew! Also, Dr. Arredondo mentioned executive function. Makes me wonder if ADHD has any impact on a person's proficiency in their bilingualism
This is crazy, between the ages of 13 and 14 I started consuming constant media in a second language, it must have taken me about 6 months to fully understand it, and then a month or two to become fluent at it. Very impressively, by the time I entered high school, my grades went immediately up, as I had a better way of understanding different things in different ways. I never related both events, but there might be something behind that
A month or two to become fluent? Either you are the top language genius in the world, or your standard of what is considered fluent is very low.
Yes I always thought that. Learning a new language helps your brain gain the power to think in new ways it never did before. Cos it has to gather these new funny sounding words into a sentence and make it make sense. All in real time. Incredible.
I learned to speak spanish in my late 20’s. The coolest part about it is that when your first learning, you have to process the words through internal translation before speaking them, but later on there’s no thought involved. it just comes out as naturally as English. I guess it becomes semantic knowledge at that point, but still a very cool process to experience.
In my experience, once you learn a language, soon the gibberish will start to make sense as you begin to recognise more and more words in a spoken or written sentence.
Such an awesome video! Thank you for your research 🙏🏾
Bilingual brains lead to some of the best jokes. What font is used on beef noodle soup restaurant menus? Times牛肉麵
I'm always so sad when I can't explain my bilingual jokes without going into a lesson on the language the people I'm talking to don't speak! Or when a non-native speaker says something to me in their target language that leaves us both laughing for five minutes because it was NOT what they meant...I can't explain it to people so easily if they don't speak both languages involved, and then it's not funny anymore. 🤣 "I bekomme two cards!" is one of my favorites.
That pun only works in Mandarin. Specifically, the Cantonese pronuciation is "ngow yuk mein" sounds nothing like "niú ròu miàn"
Sequential trilingual here. I can often trick Chinese listeners into thinking I'm a native speaker until they see my western face. I think a big part of the issue with advanced speakers never "sounding native" is a lack of guided effort in accent reduction. I have a linguistics background and could hone in on minute differences in supposedly similar English sounds, but most don't have a pressing reason to train their ears and mouths to hear/produce them, since they're already understood by others.
This could be true. I'm very aware that my Zulu accent is off & I can tell when people's Zulu accent is off. I just never make the effort to change it. So I pronounce "Bongani" and "Bhongani"
As someone bilingual in English/Spanish that stress timed and syllable timed thing just blew my mind. Like “ohhhhh yeah!!”
I’m studying to become an x-ray tech and it gives me such good feeling to be able to help my fellow Hispanics. They always give a sigh of relief when they find out I speak Spanish. I know when I graduate I’ll have more opportunities than others because many hospitals and outpatients are looking for multilingual techs.
In my case, when I think about my problems using my additional languages, I usually think in a clearer way since I'm not thinking with my native emotional patterns.
That is a really interesting observation!
omg.. i think I do that too. I only learned English well in my 20s, so the childhood trauma only came in Dutch
I wonder how this all works for neurodivergent children. I'm on the spectrum, and my parents tried to raise me bilingual, but I only ended up confused. Have to wonder if ASD played a part in my confusion back then.
Well I can say that I'm also in the spectrum and bilingual, one thing that would happen quite often tho is I'd have issues knowing when it's not ok to code-switch, which did result in speaking in English to non English speakers and Spanish to non Spanish speakers
Not only you. Same with me... It's partially because my mum was unintentionally trying to teach us 2 languages. Catalan and Spanish. so I didn't know which was which, and in addition to english which was in the country I was living in. My mum pushed too much and all three of her children rejected her languages because she forced the issue too much.
I am on the spectrum (with an unfortunate crapton of comorbidities - all of them different neurodivergencies) and I am fluently trilingual, nearly quadrilingual. I've found that I am more creative than many in my linguistic expression. If I can't think of a word in one language, I'll make something up based on the other languages I speak, and, surprisingly, people will understand what I mean. They'll laugh and wonder at the weird word I used, but they understand the meaning of it. I was technically "confused" as a child by the languages, but that's just because I was still learning them and trying to figure out the code switching. I think by age 4 I had it figured out pretty decently, though. People are too quick to call it "confusion" when it is simply a skill that needs to be acquired and honed. My brother, who is neurotypical, experienced the same type of "confusion" growing up, but for a shorter period of time than I did. It's unfortunate that many see learning multiple languages in children as "confusion" and immediately discontinue using multiple languages for this reason. Knowing 3 languages growing up has also been immensely beneficial and absolutely crucial in learning my 4th language. I grew up speaking German with my mother, French with my father, and English with my friends. I am fluent in all 3. I have since learned Japanese and have acquired N2 proficiency in it.
I was diagnosed with ADHD >10 years ago, I speak 5 languages, and read/write 2. I don't know about others, but sometimes when i speak in 1 language for hours/days, I have trouble switching to another language. Takes a while before I can be fluent. The first hour or so is the most difficult. There is also some research on personality changes when a multi-lingual person speaks in a different language.
I wonder if experiences differ due to language? I’m autistic and speak Japanese and English. Two very different languages. I’m sure most people’s initial reaction to this is “hey aren you really confused because Japanese is highly context based language?” and not really? Since I’m using it daily with my mom (for nearly 30 years now), I’m able to use indirect ways of speaking with her to talk about something semi-privately, especially when we’re outside somewhere such as a supermarket or in Japan specifically. Cognition/intelligence wise, the way I’m affected is a mixed bag. I used to be really terrible at math but can recognize pretty much every single tone/accent/pitch as theorized in the video. Also in recent years I’ve been doing more cognitively demanding, precise timing based games like Nioh and FromSoft games.
I grew up learning two languages at home as an infant. The number went up to 4 when I enrolled in school as a toddler. I'd like to mention that media plays an important role in learning. The topics that weren't discussed at home were learned through watching movies and listening to songs in different languages.
This is very interesting. I’m technically a sequential trilingual. I learned English as an infant, Italian as a tween and French as a young teen. My mother is Italian and despite me not learning the language until much later, I have an almost imperceptible accent in both Italian and French.
I'm Trilingual, know Georgian, my native language, English and Russian. Both English and Russian are taught in school, so it is expected for everyone in my generation to know both languages, but I learned them as a toddler from TV. It is quite odd, because I did learn both languages from TV, I had people to converse in Russian but nobody to talk to In English for a long time. But I watched and read far more in English later on, so I developed both extra languages peacemeal, I'm far better at reading and writing English, though it is much more difficult spelling wise, but have a slight stutter and a light accent while speaking I English, because I only heard it and rarely spoke. Russian on the other hand, I can speak like a native because I had people to talk with growing up, but reading is a massive chore, takes a lot of concentration to not read Cyrillic as Latin. Also, I both excelled and struggled in both languages in school. Never learned it by grammar books and barely ever looked at the curriculum, went off instinct and it got me through well enough, but you can't learn spelling from Scooby-Doo and if not spellchecker I'd be illiterate. Tried learning French the old fashioned way, failed completely. Don't remember anything from 2 years of schooling, all those exams were for nothing. Schooling is a terrible way to learn a language, just watch cartoons!
I can relate a lot. I grew up monolingual as a German in Germany. The first foreign language I learned was Latin at age 10 and then at age 12 English was introduced. Both I only learned at school, they played no other role in my life. I was really bad in both and my teachers said I had no inclination for languages. When I was 16 I fell in love with a guy from Italy and to communicate we only had English and suddenly my English became very good, spoken and written. And because I started spending all my holidays in Italy, spending time with my boyfriend's family and friends I quickly became fluent in Italian. At age 20 I moved to Italy and realized my "Italian" was a heavy dialect and because I went to university in Italy to study psychology, there I learned proper Italian. Later I met my husband, who's Greek and I moved to Greece. After living in Greece for 18 years I'm often taken for a Greek native speaker. So it turned out that I'm very good at learning languages, but I can't learn them in a school setting. I need to learn them in an environment where they are used naturally.
@@helgaioannidis9365 damn, best teacher is life i suppose. My French is god awful buy when i actually visited and had to rely on it i actually manage to orient myself and somewhat talk to natives. now cant even sting a sentence
მეც ეგრე ვიყავი რუსულთან მიმართებაში და ხო მართლა მაგის კითხვისთვის განსაკუთრებულად გამოვყოფ ხოლმე დროს. ეხლა აქტიურად ვსწავლობ ინგლისურს, რუსულს, ჩინურს და პოლონურს. რაც უფრო დრო გადის მით უფრო მავიწყდება ქართული ოღონდ:დდდ. იმის მიუხედავად რომ გეგონება ახალი სამყარო აღმოვაჩინე ენების სწავლით, ქართველებთან კომუნიკაცია ძაან ძნელი გახდა. ახალ ინფორმაციას ინგლისურ ენაზე ვიღებ იქნება ეგ პოლიტიკაზე, საზოგადოებაზე, გამოკვლევებზე და ა.შ. თუ ვინმესთან გაზიარება მინდა ამ ინფორმაციის თარგმნა მიწევს. ბევრი ტერმინი პროსტა არც კი არსებობს ქართულში, ან არსებობს მაგრამ მე არ ვიცი იმის გამო რომ მოწყვეტილი ვარ ქართულ საზოგადოებას. ბევრ საგანს რომ ვუყურებ პირველად გონებაში ინგლისური სიტყვა მომდის და მერე მიწევს ქართულზე გადათარგმნა, ტანჯვაა ჩემთვისაც და ჩემს გარშემო მყოფი ხალხისთვისაც. მარა ტიპი თუ ძაან არ ჩაუჯდები ენებს და შედარებით ზედაპირულად ისწავლი ეს პრობლემები ალბათ არც გაჩნდება.
My 9-year old is a fluent trilingual. It opens up 3 different cultural and literary worlds for him to explore and appreciate. And I’m pretty sure he will take up a foreign language later in life, like many urban Indians, including me. That exposure, for me, is one of the biggest advantages of learning more than one languages.
I look forward to hear it all
That was very insightful as i myself speak 8 languages and my 4 year old is speaking 3 now so pretty happy for the information
Great episode! Never considered my bilingualism a superpower!! YAY! I must point out though that the initial separation of languages is not hinged on rhythms and intonation as you suggest, it must be much simpler: The two languages are connected to the respective speaker! If the mother speaks one language and the father another, the separation is possible. Mama speaks one way, Papa another. If both mix their languages spoken to the child though, the separation is not initially possible because the languages seem jumbled in their minds. I saw this happen with a neighbor's child who grew up with his parents German and American (like mine) which both kept switching the language spoken to the child depending on the situation. The child therefore initially spoke a haphazard gibberish of German and English which its parents understood (and i also), but when the child tried to play with the neighbor's children, it could not communicate. It took the child a long and very frustrating time to sort this out. The rule among parents who raise their children with more than one language is that each adult needs to stick to one language when speaking to the child. The language spoken among the adults doesn't need to be fixed as that probably doesn't concern the child early on and it will have figured out the differences by the time it does ... Thanks again for the great episode!!
I read the book "Bilingual - Life and Reality" by François Grosjean. It's a great read because it's very analytical and explains how it isn't always so simple and he shows all the different variables in fluency irl situations etc. English has been my first language and I started learning German from the age of 8 after my mum and I moved to Berlin from the UK. Honestly my fluency varies but I have no accent whatsoever when I speak German but my accent changed from British to American over the years. There are so many factors as to why and how bilingualism effects our lives. For example if you live let's say in a country like Canada which has two native languages (English and French) it's great to be bilingual due to the community being bilingual. In many other cases it isn't necessarily only an advantage. If mist of the community is monolingual and you speak their language as well as another, one might feel that ones expression is being limited due to surrounding circumstances. It's a complex matter.
really cool point of "the community" being bilingual. I was in Colombia recently and we met two ppl from the tucano tribe. in wikipedia it says that the men of the tribe always marries outside of their tribe and bring in a new language. they speak tocano, but the mom speaks her native tongue and then there is a third language. the speakers also said they're not aware that they are changing/switching languages.
I did a huge research project on this topic my senior year of high school and it was awesome 😌
Being bilingual even offsets the diagnosis of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease!! Up to 5 years later than their monolingual counterparts
I’m a sequential bilingual and I dream and curse in both languages. I haven’t found any words or sounds I can’t pronounce at the native level. I think I’ve finally found my superpower.
I was raised bilingually and so was my younger brother. We both have an affinity to learn languages now. I’ve observed the same thing with other people that grew up bilingually.
Absolutely! I grew up trilingual and I've had so much ease learning my 4th language as a result.
Same here. Grew up learning 3 languages at once, have learnt another, and am planning on learning more. Being a polyglot is fun, but I have found that the language I acquired later[French] is something that feels less instinctive than the ones I grew up with; I kinda have continually wire myself to use phrases or words in that language, and the lack of practice can deteriorate the vocabulary over time, in a more accelerated rate than the simultaneously acquired languages.
@@aegresen that's very true. My simultaneous languages are proto-european (English, French, German), but my 4th language is Japanese (austroasiatic language). It is definitely less instinctual for me to speak it. I have better time understanding it - speaking it takes a much more active effort, even though I'm very good at it. I'm sure that if I didn't live in Japan and didn't have the chance to practice, my Japanese ability would just evaporate.
I was raised almost simultaneously with 3 languages, which I think is pretty handy for a lot of situations. Korean household, Spanish speaking country, English speaking school.
It's fascinating watching my 3yr old nephew switch between Marathi (native language), when he's talking to his grandparents or English and German when he's with his parents/playmates without missing a beat!
Wow! Perceptual narrowing is so interesting! I tried to teach my niece Chinese when she was 3 and she spoke it perfectly if he repeated me. But now she sounds all American and can't get sounds right but her tones are good still. I had no idea why! Now I do!
3:27 Perceptual narrowing is not as final as this episode makes it sound. I'm a sequential polyglot, my first language is Spanish, have attained proficiency in English and French, and have some knowledge of other languages. Spanish is kind of an outlier amongst romance languages for having a relatively small phonetic repertoire, and I struggled at first both distinguishing and producing sounds that Spanish doesn't use. However, I'm perfectly capable of identifying them and pronouncing them now. "This" and "these", "but" and "bot", "s" and "z" all sounded the same to me at first and now I can clearly hear and pronounce each one. Same goes for "nasal a" and "nasal e" in French or open and closed "e" and "o" in Catalan. I could tell I had mastered those sounds once I heard a new word and I knew how to write it and look up its meaning, whereas before it was essentially guess work.
The question is: can a native speaker still recognize your accent? In most cases, even at the highest levels of proficiency, the answer is generally yes. It shows that, somehow, sequential bilinguals do it differently. It doesn't mean it's worse, of course, but it's certainly different.
@@silvasilvasilva depends on the language. My English is a mesh of American with British, so natives will notice I'm foreign, but won't be able to tell where from based on it. Other things might give me away, but I don't have an identifiable Spanish accent. In French I have a Parisian accent (I lived there for seven months), whereas in Catalan natives tell me I have an accent from Girona, even though I've never set foot there lol. My point wasn't that perceptual narrowing isn't a thing, simply that it's not black and white as you'd think based on this video. It takes effort and intent. I pay attention to how natives speak and try to imitate them, sometimes unconsciously. Spies for example, are trained to prefect the native accent of wherever they will work, so it is possible to overcome it with sufficient practice.
@@silvasilvasilva There is this youtuber called Matt from Japan, I think. He was able to speak Japanese as his second language so well that even Japanese people couldn't tell his accent. He immersed himself in everything Japanese for like 6 years, having manga papers taped to the wall, exclusivly watching media in Japanese, even if he didn't understand, and changed the settings of all of his electronics to Japanese.
@@Hydratz Yeah but japanese doesn't have many (if any) sound that is exclusive to japanese and hard to produce.
@@zerotofifty Japanese does have pitch accent which is extremely difficult to replicate if you count it
I'd like to see how my multi-lingual colleague stacks up in a test like this. Based on her family history, I'd wager she grew up speaking two languages, and by the time she was an adult she had learned a further three. I've also heard that aside from early exposure, some people's brains are just naturally wired in a way that lets them better absorb linguistic subtleties. For example, someone with a keen ear for music can apparently master tonal languages more easily than their non-musically inclined peers.
It is always good to be able to communicate and understand with people from other countries. Regardless if it is actually makes you smart or not
This was great it reconfirms and validates everything I learned in college 20+ years ago. A good follow up video should cover the damaging effects of the concept of assimilation that prevented and deterred 1st generation Americans (immigrants) from teaching their native languages to their children and grandchildren. Im watching this video thinking, "Cool, this reinforces my desire to teach my kids to be bilingual. However, I can only teach them Spanish even though I'm ethnically Filipino American. My parents and grandparents are gone and there's no Filipino language school nearby." I really feel like we lost something here
As a Taiwanese American, I'm trying to raise my child with both Taigi and English at home, and hopefully my child can pick up Mandarin interacting with other Taiwanese relatives and kids. I'm looking to do my part in Taigi revitalization, and in the process perhaps help my daughter flex her brain muscles.
There is no way around raising our child with 4 dif languages from the very beginning 🤷 my husband and parents want that I add two more but that would too ambitious.. My husband is Greek, we live in Germany and talk English to each other. And we are planning to live in a Spanish speaking country, so my husband started to learn Spanish and I learned it before. My Mom and Dad speak Russian to me and I answer Ukrainian. My parents are proud Ukrainians and my Dad doesn't speak neither German nor English. So if the kid doesn't learn 5 or even 6 languages at once it's not gonna be able to talk with my Dad 🤷 I speak 6 languages that I didn't acquire at the same time and was really happy about the results of research ❤❤
I'm a native English speaker and learned Spanish to around a B2 level in high school/ university. Now I'm an esl teacher in Thailand, and I'm trying to learn Thai. I have found myself still making interesting Spanish/ Thai sentence combos even after being here nearly 3 years because my brain switches into Spanish first before switching into Thai when I decide to turn off English. It also doesn't help that I still know more vocab in Spanish, so my brain likes to fill in any Thai word I don't know with the Spanish. At the same time, I can feel my Spanish slipping because I don't hear it and don't have occasion to use it and it actually be helpful. It's very frustrating. I don't want to lose my Spanish (and would like to achieve a higher level of fluency) but I also want and need to learn Thai.
My first language is Russian, but learned Ukrainian in elementary school. Since learning English, the English words sip in whenever I try to speak Ukrainian. I used to think Russian and Ukrainian are almost the same. Now that I struggle to speak Ukrainian due to English pushing it out, I realize that Russian and Ukrainian are not as close as they may seem.
I just came back from a trip to Europe and this happened to me with Italian, and happened to my friend with Portuguese. By the end of the trip it got better. What I can tell you is keep practicing, " si se puede "
@@Alex-de8kd tell Putin that lol
@@luftwaffle3766 🤣
I can totally relate. That happened when I was starting to learn Spanish. I was trying to Speak Spanish and I had the words coming in English but my first language is Portuguese which is a lot similar to Spanish. I was trying to turn off Portuguese and then I was mixing English and Spanish. Our brain is tricky sometimes.
This was so interesting! I was born in Korea but our family moved to Shanghai when I was 7. There were no Korean schools back then so I had to be enrolled in an international school where the main language was English. So I spoke Korean at home, Mandarin outside, English at school. The funny thing is, I went to two different international schools. A British one, then an American one. My first ESL teacher was from Australia lol. I've been in the US for over a decade, so my accent is mostly American. But every once in a while, a perfectly intact British/Aussie accent comes out. It usually makes my friends point out "you're doing the accent switcheroo again" 🤣 This is a bit rarer, but sometimes an "Asian" accent comes out! Which is so weird, since I never actually had that. it's like my brain didn't switch fully back to English? I've lost fluency in Mandarin ever since I left China, my third language. When you don't use it, you lose it! But whenever I get the chance to speak it, it still comes out like I'm a native speaker. I just, uh, have to review my characters 😅
Merci!Thank you for this valuable video 😊❤
I grew up a French monolingual. I eventually managed to get fluent in English, and I'm very interested in phonetics and learning other languages, however I've always been jealous of simultaneous bilinguals and their ability to code-switch seamlessly between two native languages, especially since I could've turned out to be one of them, but my mom ultimately gave up on speaking to me in Dutch.
I would say though that someone who learns other languages post-infancy can certainly share in the cognitive advantages as well, to a varying degree. I've seen myself grow in areas such as attention/inhibition, code switching (a lot), and not relying on mutual exclusivity. ☺
Really interesting. I think it's important the scientists produce studies about bilingualism and autism.❤
Super cool! I grew up speaking Chinese and English so sequentially learned vocab from Japanese I’ve been told I have an American accent while in Korean I sound Chinese (especially with the words that come from Chinese 😅)