Bilingualism benefits the brain

A fascinating article on the Economist's website shows the importance of bilingualism for mental health. No only are native bilinguals better able to focus on mentally demanding tasks, but being bilingual defers the onset of dementia by an average of five years. Note: being able to remember a bit of secondary school Spanish does not count - for the bilingual effect to work, you have to be in a situation where you skip effortlessly from one language to the other on a regular basis. "The effects are weak to nonexistent for those who merely have a passable ability, infrequently used, in a second language", the article says.

Working in a totally bilingual environment, speaking English at home and Polish in the street, this is marvellous news. Good news too for my parents - still mentally as sharp as pins - who spent their working lives talking nothing but English; being immersed in English in the office and in the street while speaking Polish at home has evidently proved valuable for them both.

As I wrote the other day, Poles in general are rapidly improving their English language proficiency - and not only English - Poland has become a mecca for shared services centres for global corporates, because it's so much easier to find German, Russian, Italian or French speakers here than in, say, Bangalore. If you want to get on in life - learn another language - but if you want to live a longer, fuller, life - perfect that language and use it as often as you can. A 50/50 breakdown is ideal. I speak Polish at work (at the expense of my Polish colleagues who speak Polish at work and at home, though who are all able to speak excellent English). So hats off to my English-born colleague Paddy, who is spending all this week speaking nothing but Polish.

Much of the fun of being bilingual resides in those linguistic spaces where on language has a word for something, while the other doesn't - today I spent about ten minutes explaining the word 'fuss' to a student (if you are Polish and are unfamiliar with the word, see this post). When there's a word for which there's no direct translation, the fun starts. 'Cat' = kot, 'wallet' = portfel. But what equals 'fragile', 'reasonable', 'pattern' (as in 'I can see a pattern emerging here...'), 'imposter', 'to fail', 'to bully', 'grumpy', 'underwhelming', for example? The list is long. And were I blogging in Polish, there'd be a similarly long list of Polish words that the English language does not have a direct translation for (brakować, mieć pretensje, kombinować, załatwiać sprawę).

I've been bilingual since the age of three and half, when I started nursery school; armed with the words 'please', 'thank you' and 'toilet', I never experienced any difficulties acquiring English language skills, because my mind was young, and my facial muscles were able to adjust to the strain of extreme English vowel sounds. A huge advantage in life.

Are there any downsides to being bilingual? Until recently, researchers held that a child of above-average intelligence would benefit from being brought up bilingual, while one of below-average intelligence would be held back, confused and handicapped by bilingualism. This is now shown to be untrue - children with two or more languages have lifelong advantages bestowed upon them. Accident of birth in my case, but for my generation (especially those couples who were both British of Polish descent), those who took a conscious decision not to speak Polish to their children as they grew up are now seen as having taken away something that could have been very useful from them.

A personal story about my bilingual upbringing in 1960s West London here. And do click onto the labels 'English language' and 'Polish language' below.

This time last year:
Wine connoisseurs - or wine snobs?

This time four years ago:
Crushed velvet dusk in my City of Dreams II

This time five years ago:
Going North, the quick way

This time six years ago:
Glorious autumn dusk

This time seven years ago:
Last man voting?