The Limits of Language are the Limits of Your World
Transcriber: Lorenzo Alati
Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Hi, my name is Zara Pehlivani,
and I didn’t learn English
until kindergarten.
As an Eastern European American,
I never found this odd.
I’ve been fortunate to have grown up
in an inclusive
and supportive environment.
Many of my friends and I have been able
to assimilate to American life
and American culture,
while still maintaining
knowledge of our origins
and speaking our native languages.
For me, that’s normal.
So I find it rather interesting
that out of nearly 18 million kids
in the United States
who have bilingual parents,
barely half of them
are actually bilingual.
Think about this.
This is like if a fourth
of all Americans could fly,
yet only half of them
actually used this ability.
And this is really analogous,
because the truth
is that knowing a second language
is literally a superpower.
And what about the other
three-fourths of the population
who aren’t born
into bilingual households?
Well, they can learn to fly
with a second language
and reap its benefits just as well.
When you are bilingual, you are constantly
switching between two languages.
At home, for example,
I tend to speak Bulgarian,
whereas at school I speak English.
When I’m with my bilingual friends,
we speak in “Englarian,” a mix of the two.
It turns out that this subconscious
switching behavior
can have some crazy effects in life
that aren’t necessarily
related to language.
Researchers at UCSB found
that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,
or DLPFC,
was activated when
participants had to switch
between naming pictures
in English and Spanish.
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
is a part of the brain
associated with things like attention
and blocking out information you know
but don’t need at the moment.
That last part’s called inhibition.
One study showed that students
who spoke two languages
were better at picking out
a specific sound
in the midst of background noise.
This shows that if you’re bilingual,
you can tune out distractions better
because your inhibitory
functions are enhanced
from the constant exercise of inhibiting
the language that’s not currently in use.
Another interesting thing is that knowing
a second language expands your perception
and how you analyze events and situations.
For example, if a native German speaker
saw the man in this picture,
they would probably say
that the man walks towards the building.
But a native English speaker
would simply say that he is walking.
In this sense,
speaking German causes you
to pay closer attention
to the end-goal of the action,
whereas speaking English causes you to pay
closer attention to the action itself.
Why?
Because of grammatical constraints.
In English, we use present participles
ending in “ing” as in “walking”
to describe ongoing actions,
whereas in German and even Bulgarian
this doesn’t exist -
only the base verb, as in “walks.”
As such, in German and Bulgarian
you need to tack on an extra modifier
in order for the sentence
to sound and feel more complete.
This exact phenomenon
was studied in an experiment
with German and English monolinguals,
as well as bilinguals.
Those who spoke both languages were able
to articulate and perceive the images
as both end-goal-oriented
and action-oriented.
In real world applications,
speaking two languages adds dimension
to the way we perceive events,
which in turn will help
with problem solving.
There are other
less concrete examples, too.
There hasn’t been too much research
into language specifics
and what effects they have
on your worldview,
but there are intriguing grammatical rules
that could have influenced
your perception.
For example, in Bulgarian,
we have two grammatical
past tenses for verbs
depending on whether you
are a firsthand witness.
So if I were discussing ancient Rome,
I would use the form of “was”
“bilo”
which immediately conveys
that I wasn’t a part of it,
and if I told you what I saw
Jenny was doing in the hallway today,
I would use “beshe” for “was”
because I saw it firsthand.
English has no such distinction,
and in the Bulgarian language,
credibility is tied to direct experience.
Interestingly, in Bulgarian,
the Bible is written in the form of “was”
of firsthand experience,
which increases trust in religion.
Moreover, in Spanish, the word for “hope”
and the word for “wait”
are one and the same: “esperar.”
This might show that hope is perceived
as the expectation
that something will happen
if you only wait long enough.
In Bulgarian, we have
separate words for “dream,”
as in what do you do when you sleep
and “dream” as in an aspiration.
In Bulgarian, “dream” is exclusively
what you do when you sleep.
Could this mean that those
brought up speaking English
perceive their aspirations
as being more far-fetched?
So the Bulgarian language
has distinct words
for such subtly nuanced abstractions.
Yet, it somehow fails to offer
separate words for “leg” and “foot,”
where English does.
Same goes for fingers and toes.
In Bulgarian,
they’re both called “fingers.”
Go figure.
In Spanish, you “have” heat,
you “have” hunger and you “have” fear,
whereas in English, you “are” hungry,
you “are” afraid and you “are” hot.
In English, these things
are a feature of you,
whereas in Spanish, they’re things
you are temporarily in possession of
and can get rid of at any time.
Being bilingual has also shown to have
a number of health benefits as well.
It increases gray matter volume
in the prefrontal cortex,
bettering cognitive capacity
and resilience.
Bilingualism has also proved
to help delay the brain’s aging process
and can even decrease the likelihood
of developing things
like dementia and Alzheimer’s.
So what if …
all second, third, fourth,
fifth generation children
knew their native languages?
What if it was part of the American norm,
which we all assimilate to,
for everyone to know a second language?
What if these attributes
came along with us all into the workplace?
Well, according to recent studies,
being bilingual can earn you
between five and 20 percent more
than your monolingual
employee counterparts.
Americans lose almost $2 billion per year
because of language
or cultural misunderstandings.
So being bilingual can help
the country’s overall economy.
According to “New American Economy,”
demand for bilingual skills isn’t limited
to one end of the skills spectrum,
but instead is spread across
the economy as a whole.
Bilingualism can help you
in most jobs, not just one.
Having lots of multilingual employees
also helps companies
be better prepared
to grow internationally.
So by encouraging bilingualism,
both inherent and learned,
we can better equip ourselves
to perform well
in an increasingly interconnected world.
We can become better at focusing,
remembering and multitasking,
and can improve our cognitive
health for our entire lives.
We can improve and foster
intercultural understanding and tolerance
because we’ll understand how come
German speakers are more goal-oriented,
while English speakers
are action-oriented.
Or how come English speaking babies
are born with 10 fingers and 10 toes,
while Bulgarian babies
are born with 20 fingers.