Hablas espanol? Parlez-vous français? Ni hui shuo zhongwan ma? If you answered, Si, Oui, or Hui, and you're ____ this in English, chances are you ____ to the world's bilingual and multilingual majority. And ____ having an easier time traveling or watching movies without subtitles, knowing ____ more languages means that your brain may actually look and work ____ than those of your monolingual friends. So, what does it really ____ to know a language? Language ____ is typically measured in two active parts, speaking and ____, and two passive parts, ____ and reading. While a balanced bilingual has near-equal abilities across the board in two languages, most bilinguals around the ____ 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 ____ Gabriela, whose family immigrates to the US from Peru when she was two years old. As a ____ bilingual, Gabriela 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 ____ bilingual. Working with two sets of concepts, learning English in school, while continuing to speak Spanish at home and with friends. Finally, Gabriela's parents are likely to be ____ bilinguals, who learn a secondary language by filtering it through their primary language. Because all types of bilingual people can become ____ in a language, regardless of ____ or pronunciation, the difference may not be apparent to a casual ____. But recent advances in brain imaging technology have given neurolinguists a ____ into how specific aspects of ____ learning affect the bilingual brain. It's well ____ that the brain's left hemisphere is more dominant in analytical and logical ____, while the right ____ is more active in emotional and social ones. Though this is a matter of ____, not an absolute split. The fact that language involves both types of languages and that language involves both types of functions, while lateralization develops gradually ____, has led to the critical period hypothesis. According ____ this theory, children learn languages more easily because the ____ of their developing brains lets them use both hemispheres in language acquisition, while in most adults, language is lateralized to one hemisphere, usually the ____. If this is true, learning a language in childhood may give you a more ____ grasp of its social and emotional contexts. Conversely, recent research showed that people who learned a ____ language in adulthood exhibit less ____ bias and a more rational approach when confronting problems in the second language than in their native one. But ____ of when you acquire additional languages, ____ multilingual gives your brain some ____ advantages. Some of these are even visible, such as higher density of the ____ 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 ____ receives throughout its life can also help delay the onset of diseases like ____ and dementia by as much as five years. The idea of major ____ 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 ____ by forcing them to spend too much energy distinguishing ____ 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 ____ 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 ____ a large role in executive function, problem solving, switching between tasks, and focusing while filtering out irrelevant ____. So, while ____ may not necessarily make you smarter, it does make your brain more ____, complex, and actively engaged. And even if you didn't have the good fortune of learning a second language as a ____, it's never too late to do yourself a ____ and make the linguistic leap from hello to hola, bonjour, or nihals, because when it comes to our brains, a ____ exercise can go a long way.

Bilingual Brain - Transcript

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