The benefits of speaking multiple languages - What in the World podcast, BBC World Service

Hey, hey, how many languages do you speak?

One. Two. Maybe even more.

[In Swahili] Hello, how many languages do you speak?

[In Swahili] One. Two. Maybe even more.

Well, today we're talking about polyglots.

People who speak more than one language and that's actually both of us.

[In French] Well, today we're talking about polyglots [In French] people who speak more than one language [In French] and that's actually 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.

[In Norwegian] Today we are going to talk about people who speak multiple languages [in Norwegian] we will also hear about the tips [in Norwegian] on how you can learn more languages And we're going to share some tips in case you want to pick up a new language.

[In Kinyarwanda] We are also going to share with you [in Kinyarwanda] how you can learn multiple languages I'm Hannah Gelbart. And I'm Victoria Uwonkunda.

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.

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 learnt French and Italian at school, and Spanish and I studied Spanish and Portuguese at university.

What languages do you speak?

So I usually say when people ask that question because I speak five but I try to say I speak, I understand eight.

Eight?

Yeah.

Go on, give me the list. There is a cheat list on that. So my mother tongue is , , 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.

Like Emilia, who is part of your team, when she’s speaking Swedish, I’m speaking Norwegian, we understand each other perfectly well.

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. We're going to hear today about what happens in someone's brain when they do speak multiple languages.

It's not just words and grammar though, is it?

It's also like idioms and expressions. Every language has loads of expressions, so one of the ones that's hard to translate in English is like it's raining cats and dogs.

In Spanish you might say like [in Spanish] I'm off milk which means like I'm in a really bad mood, but it literally means like I'm off milk.

There are so many, for example, in Norway, in Norwegian, which is one of my favourite is [In Norwegian] buying a cat in a bag.

Basically it's buying a cat in a bag so it means you're buying bad, you're getting a bad deal.

So if you buy, say, an apartment or something and it's, you know, you paid more for what it's worth and you just think, why?

Why the cat, why the bag? 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 İclal Dağcı. 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 tenth 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 because I think life is too short to be lived in one language, as one person.

Right now, I can go to a lot of countries and just communicate easily in the local language. Or I can read books, listen to songs, and make different languages and understand everything.

So, Vic, how did you learn all the languages that you speak?

So for me, um, so obviously Rwanda being, 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, um, 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 learn Swahili and in 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, we go to Norway you're having to learn another language where all the subjects other than English obviously are in Norwegian, but at the same time you're learning,

you're going through the, I am going to school while at the same time you're meant to understand history in this language.

In Kenya, I figured the quickest ways to learn is to be in the streets, is to be with the kids in the neighbourhood, is to go to the market.

Market is the best place to learn the language, You know, because 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 are speaking in various languages and you pick up but usually Swahili is the, is the language that most people use because they have other different languages so it's the language all people have together

and it came easily to me because I was able to kind of be with the neighbourhood kids and, you know, be in school and pick up the words that people are using and they're saying and of course, in class they would be like, well, that's not the correct word for this so you kind of have, as you did in school, you have the proper way because you're having a teacher with you.

And the good thing about being in Norway and learning Norwegian is everything we consume in terms of TV, films, it's all subtitled.

So if it's a film in German, it's in German. Everything else is subtitled.

So because we had learnt English and we could understand English, it was easy to hear whether it was Friends whether it was Titanic, whichever it was, you know when we came at the time, you would, you be able to understand the English but you can see the words in Norwegian which help.

There are so many benefits to learning multiple languages, like you say, surviving, thriving in multiple communities you can travel, you can connect to people.

Now 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 Liégeois 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 in to the languages around them to make sense out of what people say to them.

And then when children start to speak several languages, if you think about it, they have to focus on one language and ignore another one when they're speaking.

They also have to be able to switch from one language to the other, depending on who they're speaking to.

And these are what we call cognitive control skills.

And a lot of brain imaging studies are showing that from early childhood to adolescence to adulthood these brain regions and networks are the ones that are stronger in people who are bilingual and multilingual.

This could be why later on in age when adults have dementia, they seem to show symptoms later when their bilinguals as opposed to monolinguals.

We think that juggling several languages has helped them really boost this brain efficiency.

So being multilingual or bilingual is boosting your 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?

The benefits are you get to meet so many different people and language is an opener.

It's an icebreaker in a way as I'm sure you've noticed when you've travelled, right?

So whenever I go, one of the best countries I love to travel to is Italy.

I do not speak Italian, but at just the moment you just say [In Italian] good morning, how are you? and you just start speaking, they think, Oh My God, she speaks our language, they they just start speaking and I'm like, I really don't but they are so warm and they're so happy they want to, because that is the connection and that's the humanity that I find is the greatest benefit.

And obviously, whether I'm travelling for work or for pleasure it's just meeting people, hearing their stories and the moment you've broken that ice, it's great.

And also for me, I find that my memory is sharper because obviously so much is happening. As you said, you don't know, you don't want to know how big my brain is. I really don't either. But it just, 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 And also there are codes that come with those languages and the cultures that are connected to the languages.

Of 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.

What was it like, when you moved there, when you had to learn it? And how different is it?

It's actually of the five, let me discount Kinyarwanda, of the four Norwegian is the easiest.

Yeah. 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 it's [In Norwegian] I go, you go, he she go, we go, they go.

And same if you're going to do the past just have to do [In Norwegian] I went, you went, he she went.

And you learnt it as a teenager, but your parents had to learn it as adults, which I imagine was so much harder.

Oh My God, I, 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.

They were well-travelled before, so it wasn't like a big culture coming in, but a) the language is new, the way of being is different to what they were used to, and now you're putting on top of it language.

These are people in their fifties, you know, but they soldiered on because as much as we have English and everybody speaks and understands English from three upwards, if you choose to stay and live there because everywhere you go is Norwegian, it's their language.

Norwegian is the only language that you can use and you will need to use It's the language that is used.

So if you want to work, if you want to live there, you have to learn.

And they did. I give them props because it's just, it wasn't easy but because again, I think also with us kids because we had seen what they had done with our mother tongue so it was just easy to, we picked it up quite quickly, so if they were making a mistake, you know, making a sentence because obviously they're having to think how does, how is a sentence built

in Kinyarwanda or French or Swahili?

Now they have to rethink, and then you find it's different and it is different in the way sometimes Norwegian can be so we're also helping them along the way so it's kind of a way of paying back.

You helped us get to this, you know, to keep our mother tongue and here we are going to help you kind of find a way to navigate this new reality.

So it was a challenge and they rose to it.

They sound really inspirational actually.

They are my parents. Yeah. They're amazing.

They are amazing.

And the fact that it is harder for adults to learn languages is backed up by the science.

So let's hear from Professor Liégeois again.

Learning a new language at any age will have some advantages because it's a brain workout and in older age we don't use so much of the regions involved in memory learning new skills,

learning to articulate. we all dream, right?

And I don't know if you've had this experience, but when I'm immersed in a culture I spend a long time somewhere, I start dreaming in in different languages.

What languages do you dream in?

Um, you know what? a) I really rarely think about what I'm dreaming in because a) there's so much is happening, but b) also depends on who is in the dream.

So if it's my family members, because obviously other than my sister in Germany who has another language that none of us have, when we are together, it's a, 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 you give yourself a chance to strengthen those So if I have them in my dreams is just a cacophony of languages, everybody speaking, there's everybody saying that, but we all understand.

connections and improve your brain efficiency.

And if it's my childhood friends, it's definitely in Kinyarwanda despite the fact that we either live in Norway or we've met again in the UK, or we've met in America or we've, it just kind of automatically goes to the individual in the dream.

And I don't know about you, but I learnt all of my languages quite a long time ago.

So at any age, learning a new language could be the key to 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, really maintaining your brain health for much longer.

gives me the heebie jeebies, another fantastic English expression, 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 İclal again.

For me, Russian was really tough at first.

Well, no matter how old you are, when you learn a language, I remember crying over grammar tables, verb aspects, noun cases.

It just felt impossible to learn it, until I discovered Russian music So by learning a new language, you're going to 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.

use those brain regions and networks.

Once I created some sort of emotional connection to the language I just started singing along the lyrics and acquiring the words naturally and it 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.

Iclal 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 languages 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, uh, reading and writing are no biggie.

But if you're learning Japanese, there's three writing systems. You've got some serious memorisation 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 throws 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 I say, you know, I don't use French law 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 and music.

As one of our contributors said, music is a great teacher as well because if you're able to listen, there is the international and obviously international will depend if they are native speakers or if they are Americans or if they are British or whatever.

But you learn words, you can look them up.

And these days, I mean, we've got apps that are helping people do.

And 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. They will never be able to speak your language or the other languages as well, as good as the natives.

So be bold and go out there and just speak.

Vic, muito obrigado. Muchisimas gracias. Gracias. Merci beaucoup.

De rien, de nada Ingen årsak, asante sana, urakoze cyane.

Thank you so much for coming into the studio.

And thank you for joining us.

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I'm Hannah Gelbart, this is What in the World from the BBC World Service and we'll be back with another episode soon.

[In Portuguese] See you next time, goodbye!