A research has discovered being multilingual not only increases your thoughts in your younger generation but can also make the mind more strong in later lifestyle and even offer protection from dementia.

Researchers from You are able to School believe discussing two dialects could boost key mind routes and boost ‘mental versatility.’

Study innovator Dr Ellen Bialystok, said: ‘Previous research have established that bilingualism has a valuable impact on intellectual development in children.

‘In our papers, we analyzed latest reports using both personality and neuroimaging methods to analyze the effects of bilingualism on knowledge in grownups.’

They discovered that when tracking two dialects a person utilizes mind parts that are crucial for common interest and intellectual management.

This could reconfigure and boost the management systems used to process both dialects and could boost ‘mental flexibility’ – the ability to evolve to continuous changes.

Studies also recommend that bilingualism increases ‘cognitive reserve’, the safety impact that exciting psychological or work out has on mind performing in healthy getting older. This source can also delay the start symptoms in those experiencing dementia.

Dr Bialystok said: ‘Our summary is that long term encounter in handling interest to two dialects reorganizes specific mind systems, creating a more effective base for professional management and retaining better intellectual efficiency throughout the lifetime.

‘It should not be unexpected that extreme and continual encounter simply leaves its level on our thoughts and heads, and it is now clear that the multilingual mind has been exclusively formed by encounter.’

The research has been released in the publication Styles in Cognitive Sciences.

According to this study is to develop new strategies for processing language which allows older people compensate for the decrease bilingual intellectual capacity suffered as a result of aging.

Shanna team Kousaie and Natalie Phillips of Concordia University, Canada, studied two groups of bilingual adults with good fluidity. The first was comprised of subjects aged between 19 and 35 years of age. In the second group, ages ranged from 60 members to 81. The purpose of the investigation was whether older people are based on the context to process the words that are spelled the same way in both languages ​​but have different meanings.

And indeed, the results indicate that, mentally process the strings of words that they did read the study subjects, older people are worth much more context than younger to determine the meaning of written text.

The discovery was made by measuring the relative rates of response of younger and older, and analyze the differences in the EEG records the “process” triplets of words.

Working memory is an intellectual ability that functions as a kind of mental notebook. Mostly, it serves as temporary storage for quick access in which to house the information relevant to the task at hand.

As we age, diminishes our working memory, and with it the ability to process words quickly. As a result, older people tend to offset this decline with additional strategies, but in most cases they realize that usan.Tal as Phillips points out, these deficits and compensatory adjustments are normal and that no changes entail significant damage. The elderly participants in the study had no cognitive impairment as a result of their intellectual work. In fact, lest we forget, made better use of their mental resources to help the context to process words in two languages.

Know in depth the effects of bilingualism on the brain may have an interest that goes beyond the merely academic. There is increasing evidence that bilinguals have a cognitive advantage over monolingual, because their brains are used to “manipulate” two languages ​​on a daily basis.

Contrary to the belief of some, the Philippines’ colonial past did little for its formation as a multilingual society.

Some History (You may just scan this part.)

Prior to the arrival of any colonizers, the Philippines had already consisted of different peoples of different cultures who had spoken languages of their own. The Filipinos traded with their Asian neighbors, most notably China, and by so doing they’ve imported some of their culture. With this, the Filipino languages borrowed some words from its neighbors’ languages.

Then came the Spaniards who invaded the Philippines for some 200 years. The Spaniards studied the languages of the natives and taught Christianity using them. At the height of Spanish rule, some Filipinos learned Spanish but others, not being taught the language, borrowed words from it but retaining the grammar of their native tongue.

After that the Americans arrived and seized control of the country from the Spaniards. Unlike the Spaniards, the Americans taught their language, English, to the Filipinos. They’ve upgraded the educational system of the Philippines. English influenced the Filipino languages too but just to a certain extent. Spanish loanwords outnumber English loanwords.

The Japanese took control of the Philippines briefly, not enough for Filipino languages to be influenced greatly by it nor for the Japanese language to be learned by the Filipinos. The Japanese lost the war to America which regained control of the archipelago.

The Philippines soon gained independence and adopted a lingua franca, Filipino, which is based on the Tagalog language.

Current Languages

Even though the Philippines had three colonizers (Japan, Spain, and the U.S.), the only foreign language largely used in it today is English. Spanish and Japanese are spoken by only a minority.

Apart from English and the lingua franca, Filipino, each region of the Philippines has a different native language. To cope up with the language barriers, the Filipinos either learn the languages of neighboring provinces or speak in the lingua franca which is Filipino.

Colonial past or not

How would it have ended without colonization? The Filipinos would still speak different languages because of the need to socialize with the other Filipino ethnic groups. They’d still learn the languages of neighboring provinces and, perhaps, a lingua franca. An average Filipino would still speak more than one language.

Note that this article is about the Philippines’ languages. I do not claim that the Philippines would be the same with or without its colonizers from whom it owes some of its progress and culture. I claim that the Filipinos would still be bilingual with or without their colonizers.

Many of the world’s greatest linguists grew up in homes where more than one language was spoken in the home.  This was quite normal in most countries where a native language was spoken, and an official or community language was also taught.  In many countries with active immigration, other languages may be heard at an early age.  There are many theories on childhood language development, some holding that humans have a natural ability to learn language, others holding that the brain is malleable enough in youth to learn anything, including many languages.

Even though there is a proven human capability for learning more than one language, many languages in the world are on the verge of dying out.  There are about 6,000 languages in the world, and some experts predict that half or more of such languages could die out over the next century as more and more members of isolated communities move for economic reasons and fail to continue their native language. 

There are slightly over 60 native American languages spoken in Mexico, and over 600 spoken in all of Latin America.  Some endangered languages are spoken by a few thousand people, and some have only a handful of speakers remaining.  Iquito is a language spoken by about 22-26 elderly speakers in Peru, and Pipil was outlawed in 1930’s El Salvador, with a few remaining surviving speakers. There are active efforts underway to chronicle many of these dying languages.  If a language has fewer than a hundred speakers, that language is unlikely to survive another century.  Approximately four percent of the world’s population speaks 96 percent of the world’s languages.

Ecolinguistics emerged in the 1990’s as a new paradigm for linguistic research that took into account the growth and death of languages in their social and ecological context.  Michael Halliday’s 1990 paper entitled New Ways of Meaning: The Challenge to Applied Linguistics is identified as the source of the ecolinguistics movement.  Ecolinguistics takes account of the destruction of ecosystems and economic growth on the growth and death of languages. 

There have been some notable revitalizations of dying languages.  Hebrew was an ancient language with no living speakers, when it was revived and became and became a national language with millions of speakers.  Gaelic, Welsh, Galician, Basque, and Catalan, have had similar revitalization attempts with mixed success.  Yiddish was a dying language, but was revived in large measure through an active program of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. 

The Endangered Language Fund is a fund dedicated to the preservation and revival of endangered languages.

This is the key to learning quickly. By learning the phrases you need to know and concentrating on learning the rest later. It does take some practice even to just learn the little phrases, but with patience you will get there quickly.

There are a number of courses you can take at either a college or online. There are also numerous books, tapes, DVDs and Cd’s available that can teach you the need to know phrases. Whichever route you decide to take, you should be comfortable with the method so you excel in the end.

Leaning how to speak Spanish is something we all should do in this country as the amount of Spanish Americans has been on the rise in the last 10 years. Many people don’t think they should learn the language and as a matter a fact, they believe it should be vice-versa, they should learn ours.

Imagine being able to speak Spanish with just enough understanding where your day-to-day interactions can help you in certain situations. Wouldn’t you like to be able to understand what your coworker, neighbor or friend is saying?

Learning Spanish shouldn’t be a necessity; it should be something you want to learn to better your understanding of a people and their culture. The best way to achieve this is by immersing yourself into the culture and putting yourself in places where the language is spoken often.

The more a person is exposed to the Spanish language and the willingness to learn said language, the easier and quicker they will be able to comprehend and retain the information. So go ahead and check out some of the online courses and start learning Spanish today, before you know it, you will be telling people you are bilingual.

Languages are a passion for me. But I sat down to wonder that in modern day Britain, I haven’t seen very many people who are multilingual. Is it because they just can’t be bothered to take up a language or is it because they don’t have the need to? I happened to read somewhere that English is the language spoken by the greatest number of non-native speakers and it shocked me to read that by 2025, every Chinese person, right from the rich to the poor will be able to speak English. Even in India, a large majority of the middle class speak English incredibly fluently. But I wondered, in a country like Britain, where people chose to go on holiday every year to various destinations in Europe and abroad, why is it that most people are monolingual? Is it a sign of weakness in intelligence? A sign of not needing to? Or is it just pure human nature?

Taking up a language is meant to be one of the most helpful things. Not only does it help jog up your memory and keep it fresh, but it could even beat diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Knowing a language is seen very greatly by universities and improving your chances of getting in. For jobs it is essential if you chose to live abroad and having a language in your CV means your chances of getting a job are multiplied. It eases the process of travel a lot more because for once, you can actually understand what other say. Languages broaden knowledge about cultures and keep those cultures alive. With all of these reasons present for every one to learn a language, I wondered – is it monolingualism that is increasingly popular or is multilingualism dying out? An increase in one would mean the decrease in another. Are we just ignorant to the fact that in this world, 6912 languages exist, waiting for us to learn just one more than we are born with?

What is really shocking is that the number of people now in Britain who do continue to be illiterate in their own language, English seems barely laudable. The number of people who struggle to pass GCSE English seems quite stunning. Many people struggle to get jobs because they can’t read or write and it seems bad that we can’t do anything to change that situation.

As I wonder about languages and why people don’t speak as many languages now, I feel that personally, now we aren’t bothered to learn languages. Holiday is just relaxation time rather than trying to understand different cultures. In a world filled with stress, learning a language is last in everyone’s agenda. The advantages of learning a language are copious and multilingualism, according to me, is the way forward. Still I hope that if we can’t keep the culture of multilingualism alive, other people from other countries will continue to. After all even though languages might be different, the people of the world are united.

I’d like to finish with two witty quotes, one by Geordie Howe, an ice hockey great from Canada who said, “All hockey players are bilingual. They know English and profanity.”

The other is by Mark Twain, the famous author, “In Paris, they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.”

We all know how English (or precisely, how American) we are. Look at our street signs: 99% are in English. Everywhere we go, English is in the air. From the songs we fondly sing in our videokes to the text message we send. English is of course taught in schools at all levels. Since there are lots of situations where English rules, I’ll point next where in the Philippines English is not used. Note though that the spoken vernacular is peppered liberally with English words making them Taglish, Bislish, etc:

• Speaking/socializing. We use the regional languages (Tagalog, Bisaya, Ilocano, etc). This situation now creates a broken language e.g. Taglish and Bislish among the Pinoy educated elite. Examples: Tagalog: Fluent me mag-English. (I’m fluent in English);  Bisaya: Gi-cramps akong feet. (I have cramps in my feet). This phenomenon happens also with other regional languages. I just don’t know what will happen to the spoken languages in the country, 50 to 100 years from now. But I pray that the regional languages will still be spoken. As what happens to Spanish in Zamboanga or the French in Haiti, I suspect that a creole language will ultimately rise. So we will have lots of varieties of it in the country since we have seven major languages. Imagine these seven giving up to an English creole.

• Mass media (>50% Tagalog). Yes it’s around that because broadcast media is 70% Tagalog (broken down into TV broadcast (90% Tag.), AM broadcast (100% Tagalog), FM broadcast (100% English). Local cinema is also in Tagalog. However, the print media (newspapers, magazines) is by far around 90% circulation in English.

• Schools, churches, the government and commerce. This is quite tricky since it’s given that printed/written texts are exclusively in English in these institutions, but the vernacular prevails in the speaking arena. In schools for example, even for English classes, the teachers switch to the vernacular when teaching i.e. in explaining the concepts. The churches (Roman Catholic for example) have their service in English or the vernacular. The government speaks primarily in English, but in the vernacular most often in one-on-one conversations. The situation in the government is more or less the same with commerce and business. Almost all firms in the country speak the vernacular in their day-to-day activities.

That’s all there is to the local languages. It seems that English is so intertwined with our daily lives that it seems so hard to live without using it. I can say that this has effects on the Filipino psyche. Even my dreams are trilingual: Bisaya, Tagalog and English.