Shawn L. Bird

In these years of educational cut backs  to programs like music and languages, here’s a fascinating article about the value of learning foreign languages.  Knowing more languages improves understanding in your own language.  How cool is that?

I know that when I started learning Italian, I started to make all sorts of connections between Spanish, French and English words that added nuance to all of them.  For example, in Italian fog is nebbia.  Suddenly the word for a foggy idea, a nebulous idea, got an added layer of meaning.

In Italian left is sinistra.  The evil side.  The sinister side.  The good sit at the right hand, but evil is waiting on the left.  Bwah ha ha!!! (you could already hear that evil laughter, right?)

So not only does your brain forge new neural connections when you learn a new language, which is good in itself, but it is also improving your skills in your first language.  Win win!  I love happy endings.

Check out the article here:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bilingual-brains