The benefits of being bilingual
The annual international fair on the Drillfield.
File 2016As technology rapidly expands, the ability to connect, converse and share with people around the world is increasingly becoming easier. With the creation and development of the internet comes the existence of unprecedented levels of global communication. This has allowed for a greater cultural awareness of the world and the people who live in it — including the languages said people speak. With roughly 6,909 living languages being spoken today, why is it that so many people, especially in the United States, are monolingual?
According to the U.S. Census, only 20 percent of Americans are bilingual; in the United Kingdom, that number is 38 percent. When compared to the 56 percent of Europeans who are bilingual, primarily English-speaking countries seem to fall short.
But while a higher percentage of the world’s population speaks Mandarin, English is used in more countries; it is estimated that English is the official or primary language in 59 countries, spanning five continents. English is also increasingly used as the standard language of business, and is one of the six official working languages of the United Nations, alongside Chinese, Russian, Arabic, French and Spanish.
It is easy, then, to see why those who learn English as their first language, don’t feel the need to learn a second. But the benefits of bilingualism exceed just the ability to communicate, including cognitive benefits that start as early as childhood.
According to Vanessa Diaz, a psychology professor and director of Virginia Tech’s Language and Cognitive Development Lab, bilingualism in children provides important perspective.
“There is something called theory of mind development which is children’s understanding of the mind — of what the mind is, that different experiences are going to lead to some different thoughts, that people know different things … we see more rapid development in these capacities (in bilinguals),” Diaz said.
In addition, Diaz says bilingualism provides increased executive functioning — improving memory, attention, and cognitive flexibility, or how quickly you can switch tasks.
But the benefits of bilingualism extend outside the brain and its functioning. With learning a new language comes exposure to different ways of thinking about grammar and syntax — strengthening one’s ability to speak and understand their native language, or language as a whole.
“Becoming bilingual makes you more aware of language structures both deep and superficial, so you become better pragmatically, stylistically, as a speaker and writer of your own native language. I am pretty sure even people who are learners of a foreign language at a basic level, that have not reached multilingual status, would say the same,” said Corinne Noirot, a French professor at Tech.
On the last, and perhaps most relevant benefit of bilingualism in today’s society, Diaz and Noirot agree: promotion of cultural relativism.
Cultural relativism describes the concept that an individual’s beliefs and values should not be measured against the beliefs and values of others, but rather in the context of their culture. It is, essentially, the idea that there is no “standard” or “right” way of doing something on a global level, because one size does not fit all.
“Languages very literally shape the way we see the world. Knowing several (languages) pushes you away from ideas like what’s normal for me is either natural or universal, or how it should be, or the best. You are pushed towards cultural relativism,” Noirot said.
Perhaps in the search for a world that is not only more connected, but more compassionate and accepting, multilingualism is key.
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/lifestyles/the-benefits-of-being-bilingual/article_43b71026-fd42-11e7-8d2e-536a1838ef40.html
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