Is Bilingualism a Superpower? | Otherwords

There was a time when psychologists thought growing up bilingual was harmful to brain development, but recent studies into bilingual children have turned that idea on its head!

Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and fınds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fıelds of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective on what it means to be human.

sources:
Janet Werker (2012). Perceptual foundations of bilingual acquisition in infancy
Nuria Sebastian-Galles and Chiara Santolin (2020) Bilingual Acquisition: The Early Steps
Erika Hoff (2017) Bilingual Development in Children of Immigrant Families
Ellen Bialystok and Fergus I. M. Craik (2010) Cognitive and Linguistic Processing in the
Bilingual Mind
Jonathan A. Berken, Vincent L. Graccob, Denise Kleina (2016) Early bilingualism, language attainment, and brain development
Maria M. Arredondo, Xiao-Su Hu, Teresa Satterfield, and Ioulia Kovelman (2016) Bilingualism alters children’s frontal lobe functioning for attentional control
Maria M. Arredondo, Richard N. Aslin, Janet F. Werker (2020) Bilingualism alters infants’ cortical organization for attentional orienting mechanisms
Maria M. Arredondo, Richard N. Aslin, Minyu Zhang, Janet F. Werker (2020) Attentional orienting abilities in bilinguals: Evidence from a large infant sample
Drew Weatherhead, Maria M. Arredondo, Loreto Nácar Garcia, and Janet F. Werker (2020) The Role of Audiovisual Speech in Fast-Mapping and Novel Word Retention in Monolingual and Bilingual 24-Month-Olds

Host: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
Creator/Director: Andrew Matthews & Katie Graham
Writer: Andrew Matthews
Producer: Katie Graham
Editor/Animation: Andrew Matthews
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
Fact Checker: Yvonne McGreevy

Special thanks to:
Maria M. Arredondo, Ph.D.
Lena Widen Dunsmoor
Beth Widen
Daniella Varela
Teddy Matthews
The Child's Lab at the University of Texas

Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Associate Director of Programming for PBS: Niki Walker

Stock Images from Shutterstock
Music from APM Music
Otherwords is produced by Spotzen for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

[sarahnunez]

Apparently for sequential bilinguals it's easier to express their feeling in their second language, rather than their native one beause it feels less personal. An episode on that would be great!

[ReynaSingh]

Regardless of whether it makes you smarter or not, it always nice to be able to connect with different people from different cultures

[trishaang]

I'm Chinese but I was born and grew up in the Philippines. My parents taught me Chinese at a young age, and I learned Filipino and English when I entered school at 4 years old. I don't even remember learning these 3 languages. I just grew up knowing all 3 and knowing when to switch languages when I need to. It's amazing! I think everybody should learn at least 2 languages. It really does open up a whole new world.

[zeegeejay]

I learned Spanish while living in Chile. I would study Spanish every day and practice what I would learn with the native speakers. It all felt like memorization for months until one night I started dreaming in Spanish. Then when I spoke, I no longer had to translate in my head. The rhythm would just flow out of me and learning new words started becoming as easy as just hearing what the new word was and my brain would just accept it. What I'm getting at... is I find it fascinating that once my subconscious got invloved everything became much easier. Something deep in the brain "wants" to absorb the new language.

[MandiSmash]

It boggles my mind that anybody ever thought bilingualism was a handicap... I honestly can't wrap my head around that. I only speak one language fluently but have studied others, and I've always been in total awe of anyone who speaks another language fluently, it is absolutely a super power.

[lunar_python]

I’m a simultaneous bilingual with English and Mandarin, and the code switching thing is so true. People would often ask me to translate things and it was hard for me to use both languages in my brain at the same time. Even if I spoke in a mix of English and Mandarin at the same time, I find that I usually stick with one language’s words/grammar and only switch out certain words or phrases with the other language depending on who I was speaking to.

[donalpaccio]

I'm fluent in 4 languages, and it's absolutely amazing. The access you get to so much information from all around the world...

[otterspotter]

Also very happy that "code switching" was mentioned. I have a degree in anthropology, and code switching was my graduate study work. I literally wrote the paper on the subject. Done very well here, but this channel is always amping the quality of material.

[TheHornedKing]

Here in Norway we are taught English early in school, and having consumed English media for most of my life and continuing to do so daily, English is almost as natural to me as my native tongue at this point. I even think in English a lot.

[veraciously]

I'm a sequential bilingual and found a book on this topic very interesting: The Bilingual Brain by Albert Costa (originally in Spanish, the writer studies Spanish/Catalan bilinguals primarily but the book covers studies from all sorts of bilingualism studies). The book comes to the conclusion that no, bilinguals aren't smarter, brains just work differently. What I also found interesting is that the inhibition of the other languages causes bilinguals to have a greater "tip of the tongue" delay when having to name words quickly under study conditions. Like it takes longer for bilinguals to reach the word because there's two vocabularies to work with.

[krisselissan]

I grew up bilingual with Swiss German and Finnish, and I’m honestly really thankful to my parents for that, cause it has made it much easier for me to learn other languages, when compared to friends that were raised monolingual

[jazcc]

I know that most people think that this is no big deal because they learned many languages in their culture in their childhood but it’s just not about the language but how the brain functions when we know all of these languages. It expands your mind in other ways you didn’t think because we’ve all learned to speak multi languages in a very young age. That’s the beauty of it. We’re all extremely special and we don’t even know it.

[jai]

Being an Indian, specially from the South of India, I am privilaged to have the opportunity and circumstances to learn 5 languages - Telugu (Mother tongue), Tamil (Native local language), Kannada (Local language of the state im living presently), Hindi (2nd Language at school), and English.

I believe knowing more than one language can help you connect more with people.

[SagaciousEagle]

Language proficiency should be taken into consideration. Some people even have difficulty expressing in their dominant language.

[SevenOho]

I always saw my bilingualism as nothing special to really pay attention to, but after this video I'm very grateful.

[Jelinaas]

You addressed a crucial question that’s been piquing my curiosity for a while.. why on earth are children more likely to pick up a language way faster than adults? Not mentioning their ability to produce the right sounds effortlessly which leads later on to avoid having accents, in contrast to adult learners’ who seemingly, in their case to be negligible. The fact that babies are capable of hearing as well as distinguishing almost all various different sounds respectively never ceases to amaze me. Thank you for sharing this! it is an eye-opening

[MonsieurBambi]

I was able to speak 4 languages at one point(only 2 fluently), but when you dont use some of them for a time, you tend to forget alot of it sadly

[Jo-bsuu]

weird that bilingualism was seen as bad for people when learning how to play an instrument has been long seen as a sign of intelligence. Reading complex music IS learning a language in a way

[morrispet]

Very neat!
I'm a child & adol psychiatrist and am fascinated by language development
I also SO WISH I had been raised in a multilingual fashion . . . and was one of those people who can pick up languages effortlessly!
I look forward to watching more of your videos
THANK YOU for the WORK that goes in to these videos 🙏🏽

[mayav]

The more languages you can speak the better- just meeting new people and having horizons broadened is great. I’m bilingual and working hard to get a third under the belt. I live in France now and learning French. It’s amazing how hard your brain has to work - I come home with my brain fried after spending a whole day at work conversing with my French colleagues and writing emails etc. I find phone calls the worst as you get a lot of info from persons face as well when speaking and calls just don’t have any feedback