QUESTIONS OF DIVERSITY
Why You Should Speak More Than One Language
Shirley Mensah, SA-7566 “Comment vas-tu? Teny3y)) t33? Muhutis3n?
Annyeonghaseyo?” I simply just said; “How are you”, in four different languages. The first salutation is from the French language, the second and third salutations are words from the two native languages, Ga and Twi, which I speak in my country, Ghana. The last is from the Korean language, Hangul. One might ask how and why I know all these languages. I readily share my story about languages with you below.
As a child growing up in Africa, my world revolved around
the many languages spoken all around me. Ghana is a multi- lingual nation that has over 80 tribal languages being spoken. Thus, I developed a love for learning new languages within and outside my culture.
One day in college, I decided to do some research on foreign languages and perceptions about it. I found that the majority of people in island nations do not see any need for learning and speaking other languages. English is mostly seen as the universal language of the world. An article1 by Clayton Lewis on “Monolingual Myopia”, noted that there is a reversion to a belief in “English language exceptionalism”. That is, since English is the accepted lingua franca of international busi- ness, there is no need for the majority of people in the world to learn other languages.
I, on the other hand, strongly believe that language com-
petency is increasingly becoming a valuable asset in this fast- paced integrating world. Hence, in this article I will discuss the importance of, and some benefits of, learning and speaking more than one language in this modern age.
The first benefit concerns the anatomy of the human brain.
A multilingual brain looks and works differently from a mono- lingual brain. An article on a Swedish study2 on language and brains in 2012 states that, “language learning makes the
Figure 1
brain grow”. In this study, a group of people had their brains tested before and after learning a foreign language. It was found that the brains of the people under study had actually increased in size, compared to their brain size before learning the new language. This increase in the brain size is due to the continuous exercise the brain does as it processes words in the various languages known to the individual. To explain this exercise the brain does, I will use a scenario in daily speech. For example, if an individual who is fluent in many languages wants to say the English word “canvas”, before the person verbalizes the full word; the brain picks up on the first few letters of the word and throws suggestions to the individual, as if playing a guessing game. So your brain undergoes this exercise in suggesting words that fit the start of the real word you wish to say, “canvas”.
These word suggestions your brain throws at you may be,
canopy, carnivore, cannot, etc. The coolest part about this is, the brain not only suggests English words to the individual, but also suggests words from all the other languages known to the individual. All this happens in milliseconds with every word we speak in our daily communication. Even as I am typ- ing this article, my brain is continuously making suggestions in my mind for the next word I am typing out. And these sug- gestions come in all the five languages I know. This rigorous lifelong brain exercise leads to a number of cognitive benefits.
The first cognitive benefit is the development of higher den-
sity of the grey matter in the brain. According to an article by Susan Perry on “The Bilingual Brain”3, brain scans of polyglots (people who speak many languages) were found to have greater grey-matter density. The density was pronounced in people who were very proficient in a second language and those who learned a second language before the age of five.
1. Clayton, Lewis. “Monolingual Myopia”.
U.S.News.com. Mar. 12, 2015. 2. Lund University. “Language learning makes the brain grow, Swedish study suggests”. ScienceDaily, 8 October 2012. 3. Susan Perry. “The Bilingual Brain”
.Brainfacts.org/Society for Neuroscience, Sept. 1, 2008.
50 TPG •
Jul.Aug.Sep 2019
www.aipg.org
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