http://www.theswcsun.com/bilingualism-is-a-benefit-in-more-ways-than-one/
A couple of days ago, I’ve seen a very nicely
explained summary of what I’ve learned in my linguistics classes back at the
Moscow State University: our language reflects precisely the way we see the
world and the way we think. The only problem I had with this TED talk was that
many given great examples showed how the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of
various languages is linked to our perception of the world (clear distinction
of light and dark blue in Russian, everything measured by geographical position
in some Australian tribe’s language, etc.), but did not give any proof to
speaker’s main thesis – that it is also the other way around and our language
shapes the way we think and see the world around. Personally, I am even more
interested in the further question: when you learn a new language (and by
‘learn’ I mean you speak it quite fluently), does the reality in your head
changes accordingly? Does the brain of a native English-speaking person who
acquired a high proficiency in Russian, distinguishes light blue from dark blue
much faster than the brain of a native English speaker who does not know
Russian? Or is it necessary for him/her to leave in a Russian speaking
environment for his/her brain to change its ‘vision’? Does your perception of
the world broadens when you speak more than one language or do you lose one of
the ‘visions’?
A quick search
for answers on the Internet revealed the following. Firstly, there is not yet
enough data and research evidence of how (and if) human brain and human
perception of the world changes when a person becomes bilingual or even
multilingual. Secondly, the studies that do exist show that people who speak
more than one language actually alternate their ‘language-formed’ perceptions
according to the situation and environment around. Moreover, some scientists
claim that it is very healthy and handy for your brain: the brain muscles have
to work out hard every time you need to express yourself and you will not get dementia
or Alzheimer’s disease when older. In fact, it is easier for bilinguals to just
mix up two languages in their speech as this way, the brain does not have to
put so much effort into analyzing what word and what perception to use in each
situation.
Being bilingual Russian-English myself (though, not being
brought up as bilingual) I must admit that having more than one ‘language’ universe
does broaden my perception of the world. The simplest example is the concept ‘awkward’
which I learned only when I moved to the United States. I can find a dozen of
Russian translations but each of them would express the English concept only
partially, depending on the situation. However, in my everyday perception there
exists a whole concept of someone or something being ‘awkward’ as one full
picture regardless of the situation. So, in case of something existing in one ‘language
universe’ and not in another, speaking fluently more than one language does fill the holes.
But nothing comes without a price. I sadly admit that
being bilingual limits my creative writing abilities. According to several studies
(and supported by my experience), bilingual people tend to have weaker verbal
skills (all of us living abroad had these painful moments on not being able to
remember this one word in our own language) and not only
on the lexical but also grammatical level. I noticed it when I took creative
writing classes in my American college. English is very much action-oriented language
with a lot of active verbal constructions and shorter sentences, while Russian is
more object/description-oriented language with a lot of adjectives, adverbs and
longer syntactic structures. Writing my pieces for the class, I realized with a
despair that even though I have a good English, I sound absolutely Russian with
all these endless actionless descriptions and unreadable pyramids of adjectives.
The problem was that what I could have expressed in few compact Russian words demanded
long detailed English explanations in order to capture my thought. The worst
came when few months later, I decided to try writing some novels in Russian. It
was a disaster – my language felt handicapped to me with dry sentences and tenuous
scenes. Being bilingual, which was supposed to enrich my language expression
abilities, was killing me as a writer…
To summarize, I can’t wait to see more studies that
would shed some light on what is happening in time with our brain and our
perception of the world when we start living in more than one language. So far,
it seems like I will not die from dementia but I will not become a brilliant
writer in neither of my languages…
Resources:
TED
Talk by Lera
Boroditsky 'How language shapes the way we think'; Miguel Angel Muñoz 'Does being bilingual makes you smarter?'; Gollan,
T.H., Montoya, R.I., & Werner, G.A. 'Semantic and letter fluency in
Spanish-English bilinguals'; Ellen Bialystok, Fergus
I.M. Craik, Gigi Luk 'Bilingualism: consequences for mind and
brain'; Gaia Vince 'Why being bilingual works wonders for your
brain'; Nicholas Weiler 'Speaking a second language may change how
you see the world'.
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