The brain of a bilingual speaker quickly gets used to managing two languages at the same time. Here's a selection of some of the most important benefits brought by bilingualism.
Scientists who examined the phenomenon gave it a specific name – the bilingual advantage. Research has shown that the brains of children who grew up speaking two different languages develop better cognitive functions. Children usually do it by simply communicating with others – their ability to quickly pick up new words and phrases is simply amazing! This means that we can call bilingual a child who grew up speaking two different languages, but also one that at the age of 11 moved to a different location and was required to learn the local language. Scientists claim that language acquisition is a process that starts at the beginning of our lives and ends around puberty. We acquire the skill, and even if we have to work on our writing, speaking seems as natural as breathing. In the most common sense, bilingualism refers to a situation when a child grows up and is confronted with two distinct languages.īilingualism is closely related to the phenomenon of language acquisition – the particular way in which we all learn our native language as children. Here's an overview of bilingualism, its main benefits, as well as its main cognitive costs.īilingualism is a term that has many definitions, which fluctuate also in research – depending on the study, different groups of individuals might be considered bilingual.
#CONS OF BEING MONOLINGUAL FULL#
The research area of linguistics and psychology has yet to recognize the full impact of bilingualism on the lives of such speakers, but what we know so far seems to suggest that speaking more than one language can bring substantial cognitive benefits. Now think about a child that grows up speaking two or more different languages – the world of meanings available to this child will be much wider than one experienced by other children. Logically, the more words we know, the more things we know about the world. Our native language shapes the ways in which we see the world, demarcating the boundary between what we can name, and what is beyond our experience. However if your family live far away from you, you will end up watching a lot of weird chat shows to keep up with the slang or reading books that are impossible to understand just to refresh your grammar.Key Advantages and Disadvantages of Being Bilingual For most of us, we use one language at home to communicate with our parents and another to speak to our friends. You will never use your languages in a balanced way, so often you have to “keep up” the others in order to remain fluent. You either picked it up as a baby or you were forced to learn it when you moved to another country.Ĭon: You will always be better at one than the other In reality, though, you didn’t have a choice about learning an extra language. Think about it – everyone does seem much hotter when you go abroad. It’s attractive. People will always tell you that they find you cultured, worldly, or super intelligent.
Granted, the struggles aren’t awful, but there are pros and cons to being fluent in more than one language. But it’s not all motor development and A* grades. This week, a study from the University of Washington found that bilingual babies will have developed “better” brains before they even utter a first word.
#CONS OF BEING MONOLINGUAL HOW TO#
Being able to switch between two or more languages in conversation is pretty cool, until your brain starts malfunctioning and you momentarily forget how to speak.
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