How do our brains cope with speaking more than one language?

第二言語や第三言語を話すことは明らかな利点をもたらしますが、単語、文法、さらにはアクセントが混同されることもあります. これにより、私たちの脳の働きについて驚くべきことが明らかになります。"例えるなら、利き手でないほうの手で字を書くのが突然うまくなるような状態があるとしたら" 私たちの脳は驚くべき可能性を秘めています。 (English) Speaking a second or third language brings apparent advantages, but it can also lead to confusion in vocabulary and grammar, and it reveals surprising things about how our brains work. "I think the best analogy is, imagine that there's some condition in which you suddenly become better at writing in your non-dominant hand." Our brains have fantastic potential.

How do our brains cope with speaking more than one language?

[1]

A)

Speaking a second or even a third language can bring apparent advantages.

But the words, grammar, and even accents can get mixed up.

It can reveal surprising things about how our brains work.

B)

I was once asked the number of pieces in a French bakery and unintentionally answered in Chinese.

I speak English and have not used Chinese in years.

But sometimes, we make mistakes.

C)

"We know that as a multilingual, whenever you are speaking, all the languages that you know are activated," says Declerck, senior researcher.

They need to have a control process, which means suppressing unrelated language.

First, bilingual volunteers are asked to say the name of a color in one language and then in the other language.

When this control system fails, intrusions and lapses can occur.

For example, when the control is inadequate, one language may be spoken when another language speaks.

D)

Declerck speaks four languages.

Regular train business trips from Germany to Belgium required him to speak multiple languages for conversation with conductors.

"Somehow, I always responded in the wrong language. It was impossible to keep up."

And errors can be a great way to gain insight into how we use and control the languages we know.

Gollan, a professor of psychiatry, has been studying language control in bilinguals for years.

"They inhibit the dominant language so much that they are slower to speak in certain contexts," she says.

For example, in that color naming task described earlier, it can take longer for a participant to recall a word in their first language when switching from their second, compared to the other way around.

[2]

F)

Participants sometimes read words in the correct language but with the wrong accent.

G)

Gollan had Spanish-English bilinguals read aloud three types.

He analyzed their ability to switch languages.

1. English-only paragraphs

2. Spanish-only paragraphs

3. Paragraphs that mix both English and Spanish

The findings were startling.

For example, I am accidentally saying the Spanish word "Pero" instead of the English word "But."

Such mistakes occur when reading aloud paragraphs that require switching languages.

And these same errors occurred even when participants looked at the words rather than "skipping" them.

Most participants were native English speakers.

However, they made more errors with English words than in Spanish, their weakest language.

H)

"I think the best analogy is, imagine that there's some condition in which you suddenly become better at writing in your non-dominant hand," she says.

Bilinguals try to use both languages easily by suppressing their best speech.

But too much of that suppression can slow down the language they are good at, says Gollan.

I)

Gollan's experiments also found reversed dominance in another surprising area - pronunciation.

Participants sometimes read words in the correct language but with the wrong accent.

And again, this happened more for English words than Spanish ones.

And even our use of grammar in our native language can also be affected in surprising ways.

"When you use a second language, it does impact the way you perceive and process your native language," says Kasparian, who studied neurolinguistics.

Kasparian tested native Italians who had learned English as adults.

They could no longer speak Italian well because they lived in Canada.

[3]

J)

Italian migrants were more likely to reject correct Italian sentences as ungrammatical if these did not match correct English grammar.

K)

And the higher their English proficiency and the less they used their Italian, the more likely they were to have found the correct Italian sentences ungrammatical.

When looking at grammatically correct sentences only in Italian, brain activity patterns differed between Italians living in Canada and Italians living in Italy.

It indicates that their brains process sentences differently than native English speakers, Kasparian said.

English relies more on word order than Italian, explains Kasparian.

"Even a first language can change, even if it's a language that you've used every day for most of your life," she says.

L)

However, Kasparian's study shows that language is not fixed throughout our lives, shifting and actively competing and interfering.

Goldrick said that immersing yourself in a foreign language environment, creating situations that suppress other languages and doing lots of practice will strengthen your new language.

M)

As shown below, bilinguals show to perform better on control tasks.

* They are doing well for tasks that require concentration on non-intuitive information.

* Delays the onset of dementia

* Social benefits of being able to talk to many people

My multilingualism may have brought me some advantages.

But I haven't been there since I failed at the bakery.

Maybe I should go there more to practice my language skills.

How our brains cope with speaking more than one language 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220719-how-speaking-other-languages-changes-your-brain