Bilingual people are smarter?

“…Bilinguals have to do something that monolinguals don’t do—they have to keep the two languages separate. Bialystok likens it to tuning into the right signal on the radio or television: The brain has to keep the two channels separate and pay attention to only one.”

by: Dan Mariano

Many of us Filipinos think that our fluency in English gives us an edge in the job market, especially overseas. However, our competitiveness may not be entirely due to our facility with the language we picked up from the Americans who occupied the Philippines from 1898 to 1946—and who continue to exert a po-werful cultural influence on our country to this day.

Most educated Filipinos speak English and Tagalog or whatever happens to be their native tongue. Many others actually speak more than two languages—but they are certainly not unique in this skill.

In this era of globalization the number of people who are bilingual, or even multilingual, continues to grow. More interesting is the scientific observation that the ability of people—not just Filipinos—to speak more than one language tends to make them smarter.

In an article titled “Being Bilingual May Boost Your Brain Power,” Gretchen Cuda-Kroen wrote: “Research suggests that the growing numbers of bilingual speakers may have an advantage that goes beyond communication: It turns out that being bilingual is also good for your brain.”

In her article posted on the NPR website, Cuda-Kroen’s noted: “In an interconnected world, speaking more than one language is becoming increasingly common. Approximately one-fifth of Americans speak a non-English language at home, and globally, as many as two-thirds of children are brought up bilingual.”

The author cited the case of Judy and Paul Szentkiralyi who both grew up bilingual in the United States, speaking Hungarian with their families and English with their peers.

When they first started dating, Judy and Paul spoke English with each other. However, when their relationship turned serious they decided to raise their children speaking both languages.

“Today, Hungarian is the primary language the Szentkiralyis use at home,” Cuda-Kroen reported. “Their two daughters—Hannah, 14, and Julia, 8—speak both languages fluently, and without any accent.”

The case of the Szentkiralyi children refutes the fallacy that bilingual children become confused or fall behind kids who speak only one language.

Cuda-Koen quoted Janet Werker, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who studies language acquisition in bilingual babies, saying: “Growing up bilingual is just as natural as growing up monolingual.”

Werker’s research reportedly shows that babies of bilingual mothers can distinguish between languages even hours after birth. “There is absolutely no evidence that bilingual acquisition leads to confusion, and there is no evidence that bilingual acquisition leads to delay,” the psychologist said.
According to Werker and other researchers, the evidence to the contrary is actually quite strong. “Instead of holding you back, being bilingual, they say, may actually be good for you.”

Cuda-Kroen quoted another psychologist, Ellen Bialystok from York University in Toronto, saying the reason lies in the way the bilingual mind uses language.

“We don’t really know very much in psychology,” Bialystok reportedly said. “But the one thing that has been so overwhelmingly proven, that I can say with great certainty, is this: For a bilingual who really has two good languages that they use, both of them are always active.”

No matter what language a person is speaking at the moment, both languages are active in the brain.

“The evidence is very dramatic. Even if you are in a context that is utterly monolingual, where you think there is absolutely no reason to think about Chinese or Spanish or French, it is part of the activated network that’s going on in your brain,” Bialystok said.

As a result, bilinguals have to do something that monolinguals don’t do—they have to keep the two languages separate. Bialystok likens it to tuning into the right signal on the radio or television: The brain has to keep the two channels separate and pay attention to only one.

“The brain has a perfectly good system whose job it is to do just that—it’s the executive control system. It focuses attention on what’s important and ignores distraction. Therefore, for a bilingual, the executive control system is used in every sentence you utter. That’s what makes it strong,” said Bialystok.

According to the psychologist, constantly engaging this executive control function is a form of mental exercise. Bialystok and other researchers believe that this can be beneficial for the brain, Cuda-Kroen reported.

Bilingual speakers have been shown to perform better on a variety of cognitive tasks, and one study Bialystok did found that dementia set in four to five years later in people who spent their lives speaking two languages instead of one.

“They can get a little extra mileage from these cognitive networks because they have been enhanced throughout life,” said Bialystok.

Moreover, the advantages of bilingualism may be due to more than just
“mental fitness,” Cuda-Kroen wrote.

According to Bialystok, preliminary evidence suggests that being bilingual may physically remodel parts of the brain.

“It’s something researchers are only beginning to look into, but she says there is reason to believe that speaking a second language may lead to important changes in brain structure as well,” Cuda-Kroen reported.

These observations apply to people who speak their native tongue and their second language correctly. Whether or not mongrel idioms—such as the Taglish or “swardspeak” popularized by the news and entertainment media—help boost the brain power of speakers is yet unclear.

What is clear is that speakers of such patois do not sound smart at all.