Language and Brains

I have always been amazed by people who can speak more than two languages. Last time I went to the Malaysian US Embassy to attend my VISA interview. While waiting (it was a very very long wait..), I overheard the conversation of the interviewer with his interviewees a few times. He spoke in English most of the time and once or twice he spoke Chinese and Latin! That's three..and I think he might be able to use more.

Ethnologue stated that there about 6909 languages in the world!

Being multilingual (able to use several languages) is an advantage when it comes to employment. Firstly, it's amazing enough that you can do so. Secondly, if it's an international company or a company that has international relations, they could really use someone that can talk to people from various countries. It's safe to say that even though English is widely used internationally, those who can actually speak the native language of a person can attract more attention from him/her and in business, attention is something precious.

That's not all.

According to guradian.co.uk and Society for Neuroscience, learning more languages improves your brain function! Simply to say, the more languages you know, the more better your brain is. How can that be?

The brain is not as some people assume (that the more you study, the more tired it becomes). Your brain is like your muscle. The more exercise you get, the tougher it becomes. It's a fact that your brain can store and process more data and information compared to a supercomputer. Besides that, in terms of functionality, the brain is far better compared to a computer's memory capacity and processing capability. When your computer has too much data, it slows down but it works otherwise for your brain. The more you know, the better it gets.

Our brain needs exercise too.

In the research carried out regarding language capability and brain functionality, students who know more than one language are proven to be better than those who don't. This refutes another assumption where people claim learning many languages can get you "language confused". Apart from that, older people who have retired are encouraged to learn new languages to avoid inactivity which can degrade the brain or in other words, leave the brain to rot. Furthermore, it can really help avoid forgetfulness and Alzheimer's disease!

Isn't our brain cool? The more we learn, the better it gets. As we learn to do more things, it gets better at doing things. So, let's learn a new language (and try to speak it out)!

p/s: Google Translate helps :P

Fine..it's not New Year yet..but why put to tomorrow what you can do today? :D

*images from: compleattraveller.blogspot.com, compleattraveller.blogspot.com, & languagematters.com