We all have our mother tongue but over forty percent of the world’s population also can speak a second language. Bilingualism is a natural part of many people’s lives and research has tried to explore what this does to the brain and what the benefits happen to be for our lives. On this week’s show, we’re going to learn why having that second language can be good for your life and also your health.  

Our first guest has been studying bilingualism for decades and is here to help us understand how it helps our lives. She is Judith Kroll and she is a Distinguished Professor of Language Science at the University of California, Irvine. Before we get into what bilingualism gives us, we learn about the process of learning a second language and why it is beneficial to learn earlier than later. We also explore the concept of codeswitching which allows a person to immediately change languages even in the middle of a sentence. We also explore how being immersed in a multilingual environment can be good for both your learned language as well as your mother tongue.  

We then move on to the benefits that come with knowing more than one language. While this certainly allows us to travel and possibly increase our job potential in many sectors, some of the best benefits come in the way of improved health. We hear about how one the effects of our greatest concerns with aging, cognitive decline, can be helped by knowing that second language. The research reveals a that while our brains age, we may still be able to hold on to our abilities.  

In our SASS Class, we take a different approach to knowing a second language. While we may tend to think of French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, and others as that bilingual choice, there are large segments of the population who focus on speaking fictional languages such as Klingon and Sindarin. Our guest teacher is David Peterson and he is the creator of two languages, Dothraki and High Valyrian from Game of Thrones. We learn about his experience becoming a language creator and how these dialects are formed. We also learn that these languages are just as useful to have as any other…as long as you are in a population hat speaks it. 

If you enjoy The Super Awesome Science Show, please take a minute to rate it on Apple Podcasts and be sure to tell a friend about the show. Thanks to you, we won the Canadian Podcast Award for Outstanding Science and Medicine Series. Let’s keep the awesome momentum going together!  

Twitter: @JATetro
Email: [email protected] 

Guests:

Judith Kroll
Web: https://bilingualismmindbrain.com/lab-members/judith-f-kroll/ 

David Peterson
Web: http://www.artoflanguageinvention.com/ 
Twitter: @Dedalvs 

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