The 4 advantages of speaking several languages

Several little-known advantages of being a polyglot. Do you know them?

Many of us are well aware of some of the advantages that can be gained by learning new languages can have. Most of these strengths, however, are related to the application of the language skills acquired during this process.

Advantages of speaking several languages (being multilingual is good!)

Despite this, some scientific studies suggest that a large part of these advantages of bilingualism may lie beyond the realm of languages. Specifically, it seems that the simple exercise of learning and speaking several languages makes our brains more functional, useful or skilled in some aspects. Here are four reasons why it is good to master more than one language:

1. It promotes creativity

On the one hand, there is scientific evidence that might indicate that bilingualism positively affects the development of a creative mind. creative mind. This could be explained because the fact of thinking from two or more ways of encoding our mental representations favors the emergence of a non-linear, i.e. creative, type of thinking. This kind of "lateral" thinking is characterized by leaps beyond a single cognitive scheme; a scheme that allows our perception of the world but also makes it more hermetic and closed in itself.

2. Improved attentional control

At the same time, another study points out that bilingualism helps to mold a brain with a greater capacity to pay attention to what is important and to inhibit distractions. and to inhibit distractions, as well as to switch from one object of attention to another with relative ease. This may also translate into greater ease in reaching a good level of performance in any voluntary activity, especially if performed in a complex and changing environment. It is possible that this improvement in attentional management is due to the continuous "filtering" exercise that bilingual people have to do when they can convey an idea with a very large repertoire of words in several languages.

3. It mitigates the symptoms of dementia.

There is also evidence to support the ability of the bilingual body to delay and alleviate the symptoms of dementia.. While dementia involves the degradation of brain tissue, having mastered several languages creates alternative neural circuits that, in the absence of the connections that have been disappearing due to dementia, can help maintain a level of adaptation to the outside world for a longer period of time.

4. Improved control of executive tasks

Finally, there is evidence about better control over novel tasks that have to be solved by reasoning.. Bilinguals find it easier to cope with problems that can only be solved by applying new rules, i.e., to perform activities that are not familiar enough for our brain to have automated them. In this particular study, bilinguals showed higher performance in solving mathematical problems with which they were unfamiliar.