Why speaking multiple languages is good for your brain
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Hey, hey, how many languages do you speak? One, two, maybe even more? Hello, my name is Lugangapi. My name is Billy Tatu. I'm a Minguine. Well, today we're talking about polyglots, people who speak more than one language, and that's actually both of us. Today we're going to talk about polyglots, people who speak many languages, which are me and Hannah.

You're going to hear from polyglots talking about why they love languages, how they learn them, and you're going to find out what being a polyglot does to your brain. Today we're going to talk about the people who speak multiple languages, and then we're going to hear about the tips on how you can also learn multiple languages.

And we're going to share some tips in case you want to pick up a new language. I'm Hannah Gelbart. And I'm Victoria Owong-Honda. And this is What In The World from the BBC World Service.

So, Vic, most people in the world speak more than one language and there are loads of countries that actually have more than one national language. That is not the case here in the UK. We're not known for our language learning abilities, but we do learn languages at school. I learn French and Italian at school and Spanish and I study Spanish and Portuguese at university. What languages do you speak?

So I usually say five, but I try to say I speak... Now, I understand eight. Eight? Yeah. Go on, give me the list. There's a cheat list on that. So my mother tongue is Kinyarwanda, from Rwanda, and French, which I learned from young age.

and Swahili and English, which I learned at the same time when we moved to Kenya, and Norwegian. So the other three is because Swedish and Danish, they're kind of similar to Norwegian, so I can understand. Same with Kirundi, which is the mother tongue for people in Burundi, which is similar to Kinyarwanda, so hence eight. I would love to see how big your brain is. I mean, I don't know.

I'm scared to look in there. There are so many things up there. It's not just words and grammar, though, is it? It's also like idioms and expressions. Every language has loads of expressions. So in Spanish, you might say like, estoy de mala leche, which means like I'm in a really bad mood. But it literally means like I'm off milk. There are so many in Norwegian. One of my favorite is, basically is buying a cat in a bag.

So it means you're getting a bad deal. Why the cat, why the bag? Exactly. Nobody can explain that, but I just love it and I love using it all the time. I want to take a quick pause and I want to introduce you to someone. This is Ijlal Darja. She's a Turkish polyglot and she's studying in Italy. I'm a self-taught polyglot and a political science student. And right now I'm learning my 10th language.

Languages have been a huge part of my life since my childhood and basically as a child I started teaching myself languages out of pure curiosity but over time it became something much bigger. Right now I can speak Turkish, French, Italian, English, Spanish, German, Russian, Dutch, Swedish and this year I'm learning Finnish. Why do I love learning languages? Well, I grew up in Istanbul where I was constantly exposed to different cultures which I think kind of gave me a fear of missing out.

Every language gives you access to a deeper understanding of people and cultures, gives you new perspectives, and I also believe it makes you smarter. So Vic, how did you learn all the languages that you speak? Rwanda, it was a Belgian colony, so hence the French. So I grew up speaking those languages together, French and Kinyarwanda. And then obviously with the history of the country, having to flee, having to leave Rwanda,

Go to Kenya, they don't speak none of those two languages. So you have to learn. It's a necessity for your survival, for you being there. So we learned Swahili and English at the same time. So we were in schools, at least me and my siblings. We were in school where you are going to school where you're learning all these other subjects in a language you've never spoken before. But at the same time as you are learning it,

Same thing happened with Go To Norway. You're having to learn another language where all the subjects, other than English, obviously, are in Norwegian. In Kenya, I figured the quickest way to learn is to be in the streets, is to be with the kids in the neighborhood, is to go to the market.

Market is the best place to learn the language. You learn the intonation, you learn how people speak, how people behave, and you can also watch and learn. And obviously being in Kenya, people speak Swahili, it's the language that most people use. And it came easily to me because I was able to kind of be with the neighborhood kids and, you know, be in school and pick up the words that people are using and they're saying. And the good thing about being in Norway and learning Norwegian is TV, films, it's all subtitled.

So because we had learned English and we could understand English, it was easy to hear whether it was Friends, whether it was Titanic, whichever it was, you know, you'll be able to understand the English, but you can see the words in Norwegian, which helped.

There is a bunch of research that shows that being bilingual or multilingual is actually good for your brain. And here to talk about that is Professor Frédérique Liegeois. She's a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London. Growing up in a bilingual or multilingual environment can have many advantages for your brain. This is because it triggers what we call brain adaptation. The brain is changing its shape and efficiency to adjust to the environment.

Babies, even before they speak, have to tune into the languages around them to make sense out of what people say to them. And then when children start to speak several languages, they have to focus on one language and ignore another one where they're speaking. They also have to be able to switch from one language to the other depending on who they're speaking to. Later on in age, when adults have dementia, they seem to show symptoms later when they're bilinguals as opposed to monolinguals.

We think that juggling several languages has helped them really boost this brain efficiency, which is a great advantage. It's like a brain workout. So there are like medical benefits as well. How has being able to speak multiple languages influenced your life? Like how has it improved your life? So the

The benefits are you get to meet so many different people and language is an opener. It's an icebreaker anyway. I'm sure you've noticed when you've traveled, right? One of the best countries I love to travel to is Italy. I do not speak Italian, but the moment you just say buongiorno, come vai, and you just start speaking, they think, oh my God.

She speaks our language and they start speaking. I'm like, I really don't. But they are so warm and they're so happy. That is the connection. And that's the humanity that I find is the greatest benefit. And also for me, I find that my memory is sharper. I'm on top of things. Maybe it's because of how I was made. But I also think some of it has to do with the fact that I can think differently.

switch in various languages and also there are codes that come with those languages and the cultures that are connected to the languages. If all the languages you speak, I'm fascinated by the Norwegian connection and how different that must have been from all of the other languages that you spoke up to that point. How different is it?

Of the five, let me discount Kinyaranda, of the four, Norwegian is the easiest in the sense that the way they conjugate is straightforward. Whereas in French, for example, you've got 16 ways of saying or using a verb.

Norwegians have simplified matters. It's you've got your present, you've got your past, maybe near past, you've got your future. Let's not complicate life. So you will say, I go, you go, we go. She goes, he goes. No, no. In Norwegian is, I go, you go, he, you go, we go, they go. Same if you're going to go to the past. You just have to do yik, yik, yik.

You learnt it as a teenager, but your parents had to learn it as adults, which I imagine was so much harder. I look back and I don't pity them because, first of all, you're having them coming into a new culture completely from everything they've ever known. The language is new. These are people in their 50s, you know, but they soldiered on because as much as we have English and everybody speaks and understands English from three upwards...

Norwegian is the only language that you can use and you will need to use. So if you want to work, if you want to live there, you have to learn. And they did. It wasn't easy, but I think also with us kids, we picked it up quite quickly. So if they were making a mistake, we were also helping them along the way. So it kind of...

A way of paying back. You helped us get to this, you know, to keep our mother tongue in here. We are going to help you. And the fact that it is harder for adults to learn languages is backed up by the science. So let's hear from Professor Leah Joie again.

In older age, we don't use so much of the regions involved in memory, learning new skills, learning to articulate. So by learning a new language, you're going to use those brain regions and networks. So you give yourself a chance to strengthen those connections and improve your brain efficiency. So at any age, learning a new language could be the key to really maintaining your brain health for much longer.

Well, no matter how old you are when you learn a language, we all dream. What languages do you dream in? You know what? A, I really rarely think about what I'm dreaming in.

But B, it also depends on who is in the dream. So if it's my family members, because obviously when we are together, it's a mix of everything. So if one starts saying something but this word is not coming quicker, they know that they can use this language. So if I have them in my dreams, it's just a cacophony of languages. Everybody's speaking this, everybody's saying that, but we all understand. And if it's my childhood friends, it's definitely in Kinyarwanda.

I learned all of my languages quite a long time ago. The thought of picking up a new language now and putting in the hours and starting from scratch, whether it's Arabic or Russian or Mandarin, like, it gives me the heebie-jeebies. It makes me feel really, really overwhelmed, which is how a lot of people feel when they think about learning a language, even for polyglots. So let's hear from Ijdal again.

For me, Russian was really tough at first. I remember crying over grammar tables, verb aspects, noun cases. It just felt impossible to learn it until I discovered Russian music and created a personal connection to the language. Because I think the most difficult language to learn is the one that you don't enjoy learning.

Once I created some sort of emotional connection to the language, I just started singing along the lyrics and acquiring the words naturally and didn't feel as difficult as before. So I wouldn't say languages are inherently difficult to learn, it's just all about your mindset.

Ijlel talked about mindset there and it's true because how you approach language learning can really impact how much you get out of it and it is true that people who already speak languages may have certain advantages when it comes to learning new ones. So now let's hear from Lisa who works for the language learning app Ling. I often get the questions which language are difficult and which languages are easy and what makes them so.

Well, it comes down to a few factors, I'd say. First up, your native language is your secret weapon. If you speak English, learning Spanish or Dutch feels pretty doable. They're really close together. They're similar words, familiar grammar. But if you're diving into Mandarin or Arabic, you'll really want to buckle up. There's different sentence structures, vocabulary that make it a whole new ballgame. Second, writing systems also make a huge difference. If a language uses the same alphabet as English, again like German,

Reading and writing are no biggie. But if you're learning Japanese, there's three writing systems. You've got some serious memorization ahead of you. Third up, grammar is another major factor. Some languages play really nice like Indonesian. It has a simple structure. There's no verb conjugations.

And then there's other languages like Russian that throw six different cases. Then we have pronunciation that can be a total game changer. So Spanish and Italian, they're super phonetic. You get what you see. English on the other hand, that's a total mess. And then we have tonal languages like Thai where tiny change in pitch can mean the difference between saying mom or horse. And finally, accessing learning resources is key.

If you want to learn French or Spanish, congrats, you've got endless apps, Netflix, TikTok, memes helping you out. But learning Icelandic or Mongolian, well, good luck finding a lot of resources here. And what about you, Vic? What tips do you have for learning a new language?

Just go and immerse yourself with the people. I found it the easiest. If you are where you can actually be forced to speak it, that's why, as I said, I don't use French a lot, but I make an effort to make sure that I'm speaking or I'm listening or when I go to...

to Paris I just make sure that I just insist that I speak it and people speak back to me so I say go and be with the people another tip is never be afraid of speaking to people because obviously you think I've got an accent or I can't really speak like they do it is what it is be bold and go out there and just speak Vic thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much nothing nothing in your shop

Thank you so much for coming into the studio and thank you for joining us. You can get in touch anytime on Instagram, on WhatsApp. Leave us a comment in any language. We will do our best to try and translate it using the multitude of languages available here at the BBC from colleagues like Vic. I'm Hannah Gelbart. This is What's in the World from the BBC World Service and we'll be back with another episode soon. See you next time. Bye.