three types of bilinguals and differences between the adult and child language processing.
- Compound bilingual, develops two linguistic codes simultaneously, with a single set of concepts, learning both languages, as she begins to process the world around themselves.
- Coordinate bilingual, working with two sets of concepts, learning one language (english) in school, while continuing to speak the other language (spanish) at home and with friends.
- Subordinate bilinguals who learn a secondary language by filtering it through their primary language.
If this is true, learning a language in childhood may give you a more holistic grasp of its social and emotional contexts.
Conversely, recent research showed that people who learned a second language in adulthood exhibit less emotional bias and a more rational approach when confronting problems in the second language than in their native one.
¿Hablas español? Parlez-vous français? 你会说中文吗？
If you answered, "sí," "oui," or "会" and you're watching this in English, chances are you belong to the world's bilingual and multilingual majority.
And besides having an easier time traveling or watching movies without subtitles, knowing two or more languages means that your brain may actually look and work differently than those of your monolingual friends.
So what does it really mean to know a language? Language ability is typically measured in two active parts, speaking and writing, and two passive parts, listening and reading.
While a balanced bilingual has near equal abilities across the board in two languages, most bilinguals around the world know and use their languages in varying proportions. And depending on their situation and how they acquired each language, they can be classified into three general types.
For example, let's take Gabriella, whose family immigrates to the US from Peru when she's two-years old.
As a compound bilingual, Gabriella develops two linguistic codes simultaneously, with a single set of concepts, learning both English and Spanish as she begins to process the world around her.
Her teenage brother, on the other hand, might be a coordinate bilingual, working with two sets of concepts, learning English in school, while continuing to speak Spanish at home and with friends.
Finally, Gabriella's parents are likely to be subordinate bilinguals who learn a secondary language by filtering it through their primary language.
Because all types of bilingual people can become fully proficient in a language regardless of accent or pronunciation, the difference may not be apparent to a casual observer. But recent advances in brain imaging technology have given neurolinguists a glimpse иnto how specific aspects of language learning affect the bilingual brain.
It's well known that the brain's left hemisphere is more dominant and analytical in logical processes, while the right hemisphere is more active in emotional and social ones, though this is a matter of degree, not an absolute split.
The fact that language involves both types of functions while lateralization develops gradually with age, has lead to the critical period hypothesis.
According to this theory, children learn languages more easily because the plasticity of their developing brains lets them use both hemispheres in language acquisition, while in most adults, language is lateralized to one hemisphere, usually the left.
If this is true, learning a language in childhood may give you a more holistic grasp of its social and emotional contexts.
Conversely, recent research showed that people who learned a second language in adulthood exhibit less emotional bias and a more rational approach when confronting problems in the second language than in their native one.
But regardless of when you acquire additional languages, being multilingual gives your brain some remarkable advantages. Some of these are even visible, such as higher density of the grey matter that contains most of your brain's neurons and synapses, and more activity in certain regions when engaging a second language. The heightened workout a bilingual brain receives throughout its life can also help delay the onset of diseases, like Alzheimer's and dementia by as much as five years.
The idea of major cognitive benefits to bilingualism may seem intuitive now, but it would have surprised earlier experts.
Before the 1960s, bilingualism was considered a handicap that slowed a child's development by forcing them to spend too much energy distinguishing between languages, a view based largely on flawed studies. And while a more recent study did show that reaction times and errors increase for some bilingual students in cross-language tests, it also showed that the effort and attention needed to switch between languages triggered more activity in, and potentially strengthened, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
This is the part of the brain that plays a large role in executive function, problem solving, switching between tasks, and focusing while filtering out irrelevant information.
So, while bilingualism may not necessarily make you smarter, it does make your brain more healthy, complex and actively engaged, and even if you didn't have the good fortune of learning a second language as a child, it's never too late to do yourself a favor and make the linguistic leap from, "Hello," to, "Hola," "Bonjour" or "你好’s" because when it comes to our brains a little exercise can go a long way.
3. Reap the whirlwind is a term derived from the proverbial phrase, "They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind", which in turn comes from the Book of Hosea in the Old Testament (Hosea 8-7). Its idiomatic meaning is to suffer the consequences of one's actions.
CONVERSATION AND PRACTICAL PHONETICS March 15 2019
Rod Liddle
March 10 2019, the Sunday Times
Hurry up and appoint a nomenclature tsar, so we know how to speak PC.
I have always been intrigued by the term “women of colour”. It is used, usually, as a designation for females with protected characteristics and who are thus in some way oppressed, characterised by 1. /ðeəˈvɪktɪmhʊd/ their victimhood. And yet it implies, directly, that there must be “women of no colour” out there. Are these wholly transparent, wraith / reɪθ/ w -like creatures not rather worse off? Nobody can see them.
You might bump into one on the pavement, I suppose — without realising what it is you’ve bumped into. You 2. /ˈmʌmbl ənəˈpɒlədʒi/mumble an apology but she is gone — possibly to buy shoes, which many women enjoy doing, for feet that she cannot see. It is time that women of no colour were seen. But how, but how?
There is no semantic difference whatsoever between “women of colour” and “coloured women”, and yet one is politically acceptable and the other is very rude, as Amber Rudd has recently discovered. I’m not sure Rudd is terribly bright: even I know that you can’t call people “coloured” any more, and I’m hardly the most woke creature in this hideous white hegemony.
But she’s not the first to have stumbled over the inane, divisive and perpetually changing rules regarding nomenclature. Alan Hansen, when he was a football pundit, once referred to “coloured players”, and 3. /ˈriːpt ðəˈwɜːlwɪnd/ reaped the whirwilnd. Worse still, the handsome actor Benedict Cumberbatch referred to “coloured” people — a real problem for him, as his ancestors owned loads of them. “Women [or people] of colour” is an American import and I would guess that it is the preferred term because of the slight yet telling, and very American, pomposity of that “of”.
I always preferred “black”, but this probably dates me too, as it is considered offensive among some — er, black — people in America. I remember the Commission for Racial Equality telling journalists back in the 1980s that Chinese people could be considered “black” because they were objectively suffering the same discrimination at the hands of the white majority. That went down really well with the Chinese.
But I still stick to black and will do so until I’m prosecuted. I’m also aware that Afro-Caribbean is unacceptable, while African-Caribbean is kind of OK. Maybe because it is considered wholly wrong to abbreviate “African”, as it downplays the incredible vibrancy and success of that continent, or just reminds people of Sly Stone’s haircut.
No black or Asian person I know can bear “BME” (black minority ethnic), although that is used by the state when compiling wholly fatuous data. Nobody knows what to call gypsies any more. “Pikey” is definitely out. “Gypsy” is considered de trop and in men of a certain age brings to mind that nice young lady who used to advertise Cadbury’s Flake, which she ate in 4. /əsɪˈdʌktɪv ˈmænə/ a seductive manner while sitting on the back of a caravan. Phwoar, etc.
Even “Roma” and “Sinti” are 5. /ʌnəkˈseptəbl ən ɪnˈækjərət/ unacceptable and inaccurate in most cases in the UK. Officialdom uses “traveller”, but because most of them do not travel anywhere further than the nearest organised bare-knuckle fight, they have taken to using “static traveller” as well. A static traveller. Is there a more absurd term than that? And yet it’s what I always put on the form at hospitals when asked with which ethnic community I most happily identify. And the forms always make it clear that I don’t have to actually be Somalian, or black British, or a static traveller — just what I fancy myself to be.
Perhaps we should appoint 6. /ənəˈmenklətʃe zɑː(r)/ who could send us an email every morning informing us what the acceptable terms to describe other people are and what are completely out of order. It would be useful for all of us, but especially for people as out of touch as Amber Rudd.
Or better still, how about this? We relax a little. We curtail our obsessiveness. We look for the commonality in all people, of whatever 7. /ˈkʌlə kriːd ɔːr kaːst/ color creed or cast— not for what divides us. These ephemeral terms are coined to emphasise difference and victimhood, the terminology of a spurious agenda. And yet Diane Abbott, the subject of Rudd’s slur, is not remotely a victim. She is a powerful woman, far more powerful than those benighted legions of women of no colour, who do not have shadow cabinet jobs.
