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Medical Video: 4 reasons to learn a new language | John McWhorter
Learning to speak is one of the most extraordinary things that humans do. Not only is it always about hundreds of thousands of vocabulary words you have to master or the fact that you learn three new words per day in the first six years of your life. Learning to speak also about sentence patterns and syntax, as well as the overall complexity of grammar - not counting parables and figures of speech, and synonyms.
You have achieved this through hard work and a long journey. Now, imagine doing it again from the beginning, two or three times - becoming bilingual, trilingual or more. The brain of a polyglot (a person who speaks fluently in many languages) is a very special mechanism, and scientists are only just beginning to learn more about how having foreign language skills can influence the way of learning, behavior, and structure of the brain itself.
The importance of learning a foreign language
The left brain is generally believed to be a logical part of the brain and where our language skills come from. When we learn a new language, the brain will automatically create new neural pathways, which can cause real changes.
1. Sharpen memory and sharpen thoughts
A group of Swedish researchers found that learning foreign languages was related to changes in brain size, reported by The Guardian. People who have the ability to speak more than one are proven to have better memory, higher creativity, and are more cognitively flexible than those who only speak mother tongue.
The study found significant thickness in the area of the hippocampus and the gray matter (cerebral cortex) - a layer of neurons specifically responsible for memory performance, thought, awareness, and, of course, language - from new language learners, compared to non-student groups -language. This thickening of the forebrain area is associated with improved memory and sharper thinking.
A 2013 study from the University of Kentucky found that groups of 60-68 years old people who had more than one language ability showed faster and more efficient brain performance than those who only spoke one while undergoing cognitive tasks, with frontal cortex energy less wasted.
2. Lower opportunities for dementia and Alzheimer's
Language skills acquired early can avoid you from various opportunities for loss in old age later. Reporting from Time, the chances of bilingual people experiencing dementia due to age are 4.1 years slower than the group of people who only speak mother tongue. In addition, bilingual people are also believed to have withdrawal opportunities to have Alzheimer's 5.1 years slower than those who speak only one language.
One reason, every cognitive reserve - education, other language skills, and even playing Sudoku - will strengthen the brain and help it be more resilient to disease. Another theory says, multilingual brains experience the same increase as those who are monolingual, but multilingual people can handle it better because their brains work at a higher level than they should be able to function.
3. Change the perception of the world
Apparently, learning a new language does not only change the physical makeup of the brain. Based on linguistic relativity, learning languages other than mother tongue can also change the way we view the world - especially color perception and dialogue accents.
Did you know, blue for Japanese is not always "blue"? While for Indonesians (including in English), shades of blue are limited to dark blue, young and dark, Japanese have 50 different vocabulary words to describe blue. This makes monolingual Japanese able to distinguish more nuances of blue than us. Meanwhile, Trimba tribe in Namibia only has five color categories - Vapa (shades of white to light yellow), Buru (green and blue), Dambu (green, red, and brown), Serandu (red, pink and orange), and Zuzu (shades of blue, red, purple, dark green).
Meanwhile, Koreans and Japanese cannot distinguish the pronunciation of the letters "r" and "l", which makes it difficult for them to distinguish "river" (river) from "liver" (heart) when they hear it. They use a single sound unit (phoneme) that represents both.
Multilingual people may show greater social empathy than those who grow up speaking only one language. Each human being initially develops with a belief that the assessment of their world is universal - what they think is right, applies equally to others. Once they understand that the world is not always principled like that, selfishness will collapse little by little, which in turn will open up opportunities for actual socialization to begin. When you dedicate yourself to learning a new language, at the same time, without you realizing it, you also learn about the culture, behavior, and ways of thinking of the people. Indirectly, you will open up and adapt to the values of that society, which can enrich your view of the world.
There is nothing to speed up the process of empathy for others such as the realization that the words you have always used to label everything in the world - dogs, trees, bananas - are not the same as what others use.
Learning new languages opens us up to new experiences, greater job opportunities and allows us to establish relationships with other people that we might never meet if we don't have multilingual abilities.
After knowing the various benefits, are you interested in starting to learn a foreign language? It doesn't matter when you start, all of these benefits will still be achieved.
Nous-allons apprendre le français!
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