The bilingual advantage

As an advocate of bilingual education and multilingualism in general, I was pleased to come across the New York Times: The Bilingual Advantage article today. A female cognitive neuroscientist "has spent almost 40 years learning about how bilingualism sharpens the mind" and her research demonstrates how "the regular use of two languages appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms." And this is only part of what her research has found.


Among Dr. Ellen Bialystok's findings "that bilingualism helps forestall the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease", she also says that her research shows that bilinguals...

• "manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important"
• use an "executive control system" that is found in our brain that is responsible for helping us focus on what is important and ignore irrelevant details. Apparently bilinguals use this system more and therefore,  "it’s that regular use that makes that system more efficient."
• can use their knowledge and constant use of two languages to aid in multitasking (hence, the constant use of the "executive control system")

What this article does conclude is that it is the constant use of both languages that leads to cognitive advantages. 

What can we learn from this? I believe we should be proud of our multilingualism and realize the numerous benefits of our ability to communicate (fluently) in more than one language and continue to take pride in it as we pass it on to our children and encourage them. I also feel that we should not let ourselves discontinue the use of one or more languages that we have learned (if this is the case). I think parents should teach their children their native language and encourage second language acquisition. 


Thank you for your time (and check out the NYTimes article),


Gracias por su tiempo,


Obrigada pelo seu tempo,

Do I speak English, Portuguese, or neither?

When I left Brazil in 2005 I spoke Portuguese with only the slightest accent; however, I could barely write an e-mail. Over time, my reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills have pretty much balanced themselves out and I consider myself fluent although my Portuguese language skills are no match for my English language abilities. I don't just mean because English is my native tongue, but I am college educated in English and I know that although I can write well in Portuguese, my ability is not even close to what I can do in English.

With that being said, I feel that I confuse the two languages (and don't even get me started on my Spanish language skills). When I return to Brazil I want to devote time and energy to improving my Portuguese, especially my writing. Maybe I'll finally make some use out of the grammar book(s) I own.

I used to be so adamant about not code switching when I speak Portuguese. But as E becomes more fluent in English and I speak less Portuguese on a daily basis, it's just kind of happened and I don't bother avoiding it. Code switching can be fun. I mean, who doesn't want to say "Você vai fazer laundry?" ["Are you going to do laundry?"] or "Vou pro office". The issue I have with all of this language confusion is that I occasionally forget words that I want to use in English and I'm not even living abroad (yet). It wouldn't be such a big deal to me if I could instead remember the word in Portuguese. I can't help it - second language acquisition is very interesting to me (and part of my Master's studies). 

I guess what I need to figure out is how to separate English from Portuguese (and Portuguese from Spanish) in my brain. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy my multilingualism.