Posted by Rozenn Milin on January 10, 2011
 
By Rozenn Milin, director of Sorosoro

Following a captivating first series of articles on mother tongue-based education, we open this year with a new cycle devoted to the virtues of multilingualism.
 
While Westerners usually consider monolingualism as standard and polyglots a rare species, the reality experienced by the rest of the world is in fact quite different. It doesn’t take much of one’s curiosity or attention to find out that in numerous places of the planet, not only people are bilingual; they’re also actually multilingual.
 
No secret to those who have travelled through certain parts of Africa or Central Asia: in areas where distinct ethnic groups live next to each other, where cultural trends encounter, it is common to come across people who casually speak half a dozen languages simply because working, selling and buying implies mastering the language of others.
 
In other places of high linguistic density such as Vanuatu or Papua New Guinea, it can even become a domestic necessity: a father speaks one language, the mother another, the neighbors yet another, not to mention the national lingua franca… and all end up being able to communicate in 5 or 6 languages.
 
In Europe and North America, however, a large majority of the population is brought up as monolingual. No big deal, you might hear: you get by with English pretty much everywhere… Yet multilingualism, especially early multilingualism, bears virtues one should not ignore.
 
Science has published an outstanding account on the whole subject last October 15. The article reports recent studies revealing that a bilingual education for children triggers early mechanisms to become a cognitive asset, while for the elders, being bilingual provides protection against certain Alzheimer symptoms!
 
Researchers Kovacs and Mehler developed a number of games and exercises during which the rules were regularly changed in order to test toddlers’ abilities of adaptation to newer codes. The experiment clearly showed that frequent and unexpected change left monolingual children helpless and incapable of adapting, while the children use to hearing two homely languages had no problem following up.

As one moves on along the years, other studies revealed that a lifetime of active bilingualism could stand as a protection against degeneration due to Alzheimer’s disease. These studies, conducted mainly in Canada, show that the appearance of the disease for bilingual subjects happens in average five years later than for monolinguals. Sportspeople train their muscles to improve performance, likewise, brain cells should be trained to prevent decline. Exercises such as sudoku or bridge are often recommended to elderly people to maintain ability, though bilingualism is considered much more efficient as the mental gym it imposes is permanent.