It makes sense to me that learning a foreign language has great cognitive benefits because it allows you to think in a whole new way. I have a friend who grew up speaking spanish, but now primarily speaks english since he lives in the US. He’s told me about how the different dreams he has are in different languages depending on what the mood of the dream was. He didn’t fully understand it, but described his dreams in spanish as being more intimate and personal, while his dreams in english were more stressful and exciting. I found this really interesting as we learned about the effects of learning a second language. My friend subconsciously (or maybe even consciously) associated each language with different types of experiences.
As Professor Bialystok explained in the article, bilinguals aren’t necessarily smarter than those who know one language. I would think that they have a unique experience in learning, comparable to learning how to program a computer, or calculus, learning a new language gives you another unique way to interpret the world. I think of it in the same way I view the experience you gain from reading a book. After you finish a book, you become a different person because of the experience, but you aren’t necessarily smarter than you were before.
I found it weird that the article brought up the question of why bilinguals never slipped up and used the wrong language at times. If someone is bilingual then they can effectively communicate in both languages, so why would they get confused as to which one they were currently using? Rarely, if ever, do people use two different languages within the same sentence or even conversation, so it makes perfect sense that bilinguals would be able to use only their desired language.
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