The recent New York Times’ article Why Bilinguals are Smarter discusses how being bilingual can not only give you an intellectual benefit, but it can even delay the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease later in life.
Because your brain has to reconcile two different languages when you’re bilingual, it’s constantly exercising cognitive function skills and improving your executive function.
The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.” In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.
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Studies have shown that bilinguals can solve certain mental puzzles better than monolinguals, and are quicker to adapt to environmental changes. Bilingualism has even shown to be effective in babies as young as 7 months of age:
In a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, 7-month-old babies exposed to two languages from birth were compared with peers raised with one language. In an initial set of trials, the infants were presented with an audio cue and then shown a puppet on one side of a screen. Both infant groups learned to look at that side of the screen in anticipation of the puppet. But in a later set of trials, when the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen, the babies exposed to a bilingual environment quickly learned to switch their anticipatory gaze in the new direction while the other babies did not.
Even if you haven’t started teaching your child a second language yet, “The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).”
Mr. Bee and I attended a birthday party this weekend, and we were surprised to find that most of the parents in attendance were speaking exclusively Chinese to their children, and some of them weren’t even Chinese! It really got us thinking about how we haven’t made teaching Charlie a second language enough of a priority.
The intellectual advantages of being bilingual are important to us, as is maintaining our cultural ties through language. I’d previously heard, and mistakenly believed, that learning a second language delayed speech. But apparently children as young as Charlie know how to distinguish different languages spoken in the home. I suppose we put off teaching him a second and third language because I can speak Korean, Mr. Bee can speak Japanese, and we only speak English to each other. But the benefits of bilingualism are something that we can’t afford to ignore much longer!
Are you raising a bilingual child? What are you doing to teach your child a second language?
pomegranate / 3225 posts
Wow, I would love to have a bilingual child. Personally I think it is really important. I learned Spanish living and traveling in south America for a year, and i hope to teach my child too!
hostess / wonderful honeydew / 32460 posts
Yep! We speak Korean and English to LO.
cantaloupe / 6730 posts
Do it!! It kills me that my mom can speak Dutch and my dad can speak German and I can speak neither. They claim that it’s because they couldn’t understand eachother’s languages, but I don’t know why that would have prevented them frim speaking them to me.
kiwi / 500 posts
We speak Chinese to LO most of the time. I screw it up sometimes but husband is much more fluent than I am. I noticed my daughter definitely is more sensitive to our language when she hears it. Webcam receive Chinese tv at home and she enjoys the programming more. It was always very important to us to speak to her as exclusive as we can at a very early age. She will have plenty of time to learn and be exposed to English so I am not too worried about that. My siblings and I were able to retain our native language very well. Being bilingual has definitely given us more opportunities and advantages in my life so i think it’s very important
papaya / 10560 posts
I wonder if anyone out there uses Little Pim? I speak Spanish but my husband does not and would like to raise our little one to be bilingual in English/Spanish. I am also curious about baby ASL. I have actually seen some friends use this one with their babies and it is so intriguing to me how they are able to communicate with their LO’s at such a young age!
pear / 1787 posts
My husband is fluent in Spanish and I know a little…we’d love to speak the language to our children! It gives you such a leg up. Plus, my MIL is from Mexico and it would be cool for our kids to know a part of their heritage.
coconut / 8299 posts
What great timing for this post! I was getting concerned that my LO wasn’t speaking very much yet and thought it was due to the two languages we speak at home. Now I feel better about keeping that up. We almost switched to using only English at home to speed up his speech. I think I’ll just continue speaking two languages and monitoring his development.
GOLD / pomelo / 5167 posts
Ive been speaking mostly English to Mavi and my husband in French. (and this since birth) He’s 21 months old and doesnt talk much but clearly understands both languages.
wonderful pear / 26210 posts
We’re also a bilingual family, and as someone mentioned to me on the train, it’s really a gift to be able to offer this to our child. I admit I didn’t do a ton of research on the benefits of multiple languages, I did it more out of necessity…I would like my son to be able to communicate with both sides of his family. I would also like him to learn to read and write his second language, which I didn’t and regret quite a lot.
We’re also experiencing some delays in speech at 16 months, but it is clear that my son understands both languages. It’s pretty amazing.
honeydew / 7968 posts
We havent really started yet, but my parents speak Korean to them. Theyll one day go to Korean school. Maybe well hire a Spanish speaking nanny…
bananas / 9227 posts
I originally wanted to introduce just 2 languages, English and Swedish. We communicate mainly in English, but we live in Sweden. The tentative plan is to have DH speak in Swedish, while I speak in English to the LO. But after reading this, I’m considering teaching a 3rd language, Tagalog.
If we’re able to regularly Skype with my mom, I know she’d try to teach LO a few Tagalog words. But now I’m thinking about actively introducing words on my own as well. I haven’t done enough research on the topic yet, so I don’t exactly know the best way to teach a 3rd language, but it would be very beneficial because the 2 main languages we’re teaching is already taught in school. Which would make Tagalog, the only “foreign” language.
GOLD / wonderful coffee bean / 18478 posts
Unfortunately, we have not been able to start DD on a second language yet but I am planning on enrolling her in Chinese school for the fall.
cantaloupe / 6669 posts
I wish I had learned Spanish as a child – it is my father’s first language but he never spoke it to me. Part of me thinks about learning so I can teach our kids, but I don’t know that I am dedicated enough to follow through. This is good motivation though!
guest
We speak Hebrew at home, but my son clearly prefers English (spoken in daycare and with his friends). He does have speech delays, but as mentioned here, it has nothing to do with him being bi-lingual (though if sometimes feels like they are behind their monolingual peers)
One interesting fact I learned is that speech delayed Bi-lingual kid’s vocabulary, consists of combination of the two languages. It may be trivial, but I have never look at his speech that way.
So I stopped thinking about his progress in one language, or the other. And instead looked at the combination of the two.
coffee bean / 27 posts
so I was just literally talking with someone about this- she’s hesitant to speak italian to her son because she thinks his language skills are lacking already. I told her about this article and she’s now going to be more proactive about embracing the bilingual atmosphere. It’s such an awesome gift to offer a child- I wish I were bilingual from childhood!
pomelo / 5866 posts
My LO has been going to a parent-attended preschool 2 hours,twice a week since 8 months old. They do Hawaiian songs and instructions as well as English in circle time. But that’s it. Both DH and I are experts in Spanish101 and know some phrases in key languages. I think it might be confusing if we are not fluent, at least until she gets older. We are not planning on sending her to language school but I have this great Chinese curriculum on DVD for kids, produced by our local cable channel. Maybe when she hits elementary school, I’ll show it to her. What I learned in my college linguistics course is that language learning is much easier if you expose them before 10.
GOLD / apricot / 341 posts
Our 16-month old is bilingual (almost trilingual) and clearly understands both languages. He isn’t speaking much yet – but we have been expecting delayed speech development due to our bilingual approach so we are not concerned about it.
To make it work for our family, we decided to break one major “rule” of raising a bilingual child – and that is that my husband speaks both Swedish and Hindi with our son, whereas it’s apparently best for each parent to consistently speak one language. Swedish is the language we use as a family (and that my husband and I speak with each other) and since I don’t speak Hindi, it felt better for us to have a language as a family that we all could share.
When we lived in the US Alec was of course exposed to English as well, but now he only really hears English when I read to him (as most of his favourite books are in English).
One of the most helpful aids we have found is baby signing. It really helps to bridge the languages as my husband and I both use it with our son, so he quite quickly learns that for example “pani”, “vatten” and “water” are the same word since both my husband and I will make the same sign when we say it.
kiwi / 623 posts
My mom and I will speak Cantonese to my LO. When my husband hears me speak cantonese, he starts speaking in mandarin. I told him my mandarin sucks so I rather speak my native language rather than a wrong 2nd language.