The worst thing about being a polyglot

The other day on Twitter, I saw this video of an Iraqi Christian speaking in

standard Arabic, Fusha, and I was very encouraged to see that I understand,

or I understood basically everything he was saying, helped a little by

the subtitles, but I heard the words.

I could understand him, even though I haven't spent that much time on standard

Arabic, but time I've spent on Arabic, I've spent on Lebanese Arabic in the

last year or so, plus I've been working on my Turkish, not to mention my Farsi.

And so then this made me think about this whole issue of, you know, what are the

pros and cons of learning many languages?

And of course, in my case, it's not just the three languages that I've been

working on over the last few years.

But, you know, throughout the period of time that I've been learning languages,

these languages are there in my brain.

And what are the advantages and disadvantages, pros and cons of

learning different languages?

So I want to talk a little bit about that.

First point is, to me, a language is, or learning a language is not just

about being able to say a few things to someone, say, in a restaurant

or, uh, in a store or whatever.

It's more about learning about those languages, the history behind those

languages, the cultures, and so forth.

It's a form of discovering the world that I live in.

People who share this planet with me, uh, you know, while I'm Here sort of alive.

So to that extent, obviously, the more languages I learn, the more doors

open up, the more things I learn.

And going back to this Iraqi Christian, what's the history

of the Christians in Iraq?

Well, it turns out they're one of the oldest Christian churches in the

world, which is not surprising since Christianity began in the Middle East.

And spread eastward before it spread westward.

Also, when you talk about Iraqi Christians, you're talking about Iraq.

You're talking about a part of the world that was under the Sasanian or

Persian empire for a long, long time.

So it brings you into that Persian world, which I've also been learning about.

So I'm just kind of stressing the fact that discovering different languages

is about discovering so many different things that obviously the more you

have, the more languages you have, the more different things you learn about.

Even though you may not get into tremendous depth in any of them, but

by, you know, the connection to Arabic.

So we have Christian Arabs.

We also have Muslim Arabs.

And of course, as we learn about the Muslim world, as I do, I learn

about Khorasan, for example, which was an area in central Asia where

there was this tremendous flowering of culture, uh, in the sort of.

8th, 9th, 10th century to some extent in Baghdad, but more so

in what is now Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Eastern Iran.

They in turn influenced and had a large amount of power within

the, uh, Abyssinian, you know, uh, Caliphate in, in Baghdad.

And there are elements of Turkish culture there.

And so I'm also learning Turkish, the Turkish language.

So not to mention the fact that that part of the, uh, Muslim world was

translating Greek science, uh, science from India, uh, Arabic science.

So there was a great blending of cultures taking place there.

Something that I was completely unaware of.

And I should add that because of their work and translating these

ancient texts, it contributed to the development of science in

Europe in the Renaissance period.

So we access this, or at least I do.

So for me, from that perspective, the more the merrier.

However, what about from the point of view of learning languages?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of having many languages in your

brain or trying to learn them?

First of all, I want to address the issue of whether.

We should learn many languages at the same time or concentrate on one.

I kind of vacillate back and forth.

I think there are some pros and cons there.

Obviously, if you focus on one, if you're in a hurry to learn it,

you're going to learn it faster.

On the other hand, if you have two or three on the go, you're enjoying

that experience of exploring and being able to refresh, moving

from one language where you might feel you're not getting anywhere.

You start up that other language and you discover new things.

So it's simply a matter of taste.

So I won't address the issue of whether.

It's best to study one language, you know, for a period of time, concentrate,

focus, or to, you know, have two or three on the go at the same time.

I'm inclining now towards the first solution, but I think people should

experiment, but rather in terms of the ease or difficulty of learning.

So to my mind, if you have a lot of languages, I think the

brain becomes more flexible.

So in an extreme case, you only have your native language, then

the brain, your brain has sort of solidified around pronunciation,

around structures, vocabulary that are part of your native language.

So the new language is strange.

When you have more languages, you have a wider range of knowledge.

Sounds, call it phonemes, in your brain, you have a wider range of

structures, things are not so strange.

And therefore, you can accept them more easily, you don't

resist them, you're more flexible.

So to that extent, I think that's a big advantage of having lots of languages.

I also think that, uh, we become more confident as we have learned.

You know, more and more languages.

We have now more and more sounds, more and more structures.

We're more confident that we can do it.

We're more convinced that we can do it so that our attitude is more

positive than with our first language, when we're not entirely sure we can

ever get fluent in another language.

So to that extent, it's, it's, you know, the more, the merrier.

But having a lot of languages is not without its problems.

So we sometimes hear people say, beware of cognates.

In other words, words that look the same as in another language,

but have a different meaning.

I have never found that to be a problem.

Overwhelmingly, the cognates are going to have more or less the same meaning,

uh, because you know, the words in the new language that are similar

to words that you know, I find it easier to remember them, even if they

have a slightly different meaning.

So the word in.

Turkish means but, whereas in Persian and Arabic it means only, but it's

an easy one to remember because you're familiar with that sound.

It has a slightly different meaning.

So cognates to me is not a problem.

The bigger problem though, is the interference from languages you know.

So when I am struggling to say something, I find myself in my Turkish discussions.

I often say, and very often I'll say enfin.

From French, which is kind of like, you know, so often, and I'll just say

often because there's some pressure to say something in a foreign language.

I say often, I found, uh, based on my research that if we have many languages

in our brain, they're there all the time.

So this one researcher pointed out that, and he's Belgian.

So if he's speaking English and he uses the word dog, but

the word chien is still there.

So there is a need.

When we're speaking a new language to suppress the words

or structures that don't belong.

And apparently that's a big part of what we do.

When we go to speak in a new language, we trot out words that come to mind.

We trot out structures that we're confident that we can use because

we've used them before, but at the same time we have to suppress.

We have to suppress things that don't belong.

Those things might be from our native language, but very often

they're from an unrelated language.

I sometimes find my brain going to Korean when I'm trying,

trying to say something and.

Persian or, you know, totally unrelated and for no good reason,

but I have no real control over the, what, what the brain is doing.

So this need to suppress things that don't belong could be a bit

of a pitfall when you have a lot of languages bouncing around in your brain.

On the other hand, it turns out that our ability to learn languages and

even our sort of executive function in the brain is Very much improved by

the sort of learning many languages.

So apparently this connectivity between different parts of the brain, and

again, I will leave the link so you can research it yourself because it's

full of abbreviations and acronyms and terms that I don't understand.

But the general idea seems to me to be that if you have two languages or even

more languages that, That is increased connectivity in the brain, which is good

for the executive function of the brain.

It's good for learning languages.

In other words, it improves your ability to learn languages.

So over and above what I said earlier about my experience that I have more

flexibility when it comes to sounds, more flexibility when it comes to structures,

more willing to accept new ways of saying things, more confident that I can learn.

There's something that happens in the brain that is very positive

when it comes to learning.

And in fact, if you look up these links, you'll see that

it is positive also in terms of maintaining the health of your brain.

And if that is true for bilinguals, I, I assume it's got to be at

least true and perhaps more so the case with multilinguals.

So if you have a lot of languages in your brain, yeah, there could

be some interference, maybe more interference because you have more

languages there, but it does improve your ability to learn languages.

Yeah.

to produce the utterances in the new language.

And it has a, you know, a healthy effect on your brain, it turns out.

However, you know, as with so much in language learning, I can't prove

that learning many languages makes you a better language learner,

that it's better for your brain.

Obviously, if I see studies that come to those conclusions, I feel

happy and I share them with you and it may or may not be the case.

It doesn't affect my attitude when I learn a language.

When I learn a language, overwhelmingly, I'm going to learn it.

I try to enjoy what I'm doing.

So if I feel like moving to a new language, I move.

If I feel like spending more time, say, uh, at LingQ, this morning, for

example, I was going through the, uh, sentence mode and rearranging the

sentences, the words in sentence mode.

And then, because it's easier to write Turkish than to write Arabic, and where

I have sort of resisted writing in Arabic or Persian, in Turkish it's not

difficult because it's the Latin alphabet.

So I found myself now trying to write by hand those very sentences that I

had gone through in sentence mode.

So, again, I found it enjoyable.

So if it's enjoyable, I'm happy doing it.

I'm, you know, acquiring fewer words.

And I've always said that the, the, the Key battle is to acquire more

words, but you also have to focus in on, you know, getting better at the

language, how the language works.

And, uh, I was very much enjoying, you know, by hand writing out the sentences.

And I think there, again, the message is do what you like to do.

If you enjoy your involvement with the language, you're going to learn.

If you prefer to stay with one language, that's fine.

If you want to explore many languages, that's fine.

But I did feel I should share with you what I consider to be the.

Uh, advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages are that you can explore more worlds, discover more about our world.

Possibly you're more open to new sounds and new structures.

On the other hand, you have to be a little careful that you don't lose your focus.

That you might find a little more interference from the

languages that you have learned.

But overwhelmingly, I think having a lot of languages is a positive thing.

So for listening.

Bye for now.