Growing up in the heavily francophone and distinctly multicultural city of Montreal, I spent most of my childhood days at my Sicilian grandparents’ apartment, playing with French-Canadian friends before my American mother fetched me after her day at school to join my Canadian father and brother at our home in the suburbs.
In the span of a single day, I would be exposed to a rotation of Italian, French and English, the latter acting as the default language of communication between the plethora of dialects I encountered on a daily basis. I had a much sounder grasp on English, the language I spoke at home, than my friends and grandparents, and as such often acted as an impromptu translator during conversation. When a francophone friend or a well-meaning grandparent struggled to recall the English counterpart to a foreign word, I would immediately offer its translation, a feeling of pride as my reward when I watched their faces assume the lightbulb “aha” look of comprehension, this accomplishment encouraging my continued habit of anticipating people’s speech for future tongue-ties. I learned to do this so unconsciously that I often guess what people are about to say before they’ve even said it — I’m a terrible person to tell jokes to.
The childhood I led has wired my brain to function much like a Google search engine, able to concentrate so intently on the objects of my attention that the superfluous is either tuned out or omitted completely. My friends don’t believe me when I say that I didn’t notice them screaming my name because I’m having a conversation with someone else.
I do not believe that the way in which my brain has come to function is unusual, but rather reflects the tremendous influence our world’s increasing multicultural interconnectedness is having on the development of young minds. Various studies conducted at York, Northwestern and Pompeu Fabra University in Spain have supported the claim that the bilingual brain is wired in a way different to that of its monolingual equivalent. Research has shown that bilinguals have tangible advantages over their monolingual peers in the areas of task-switching, language comprehension, working memory and inhibitory control, or the ability to focus on relevant information and ignore the irrelevant.
The development of these characteristics has been linked to the multi-lingual lifestyle, the act of toggling between languages requiring an increased level of focus and attention to one’s surroundings in order to maintain conversation in a multitude of dialects. Experimental results have shown that in any given conversation, the brain actively draws upon all languages known to a multilingual, regardless of their applicability to the situation. This phenomenon requires that the mind be able to selectively focus on only one language at a time, managing its unique speech patterns, pronunciation and grammar structure while simultaneously inhibiting the expression of competing languages. This linguistic juggling act strengthens and physically shapes the control mechanisms of the brain, crafting flexible minds better suited to adapting to our ever-changing society, beyond the obvious application multilingualism has in facilitating interaction with other cultures.
That being bilingual presents tangible benefits towards learning is reassuring in a city where over fifty percent of the population identifies as mulit-lingual. Once seen as a barrier towards higher achievement in school and beyond, it is clear that the knowledge of multiple languages has more advantages than where once ever thought possible. Now that’s a message that can’t be lost in translation.
Cassandra Mazza is a second-year student from Victoria University studying English
