The benefits of being bilingual

It doesn’t matter if you are 5 or 85 years old, learning a new language can give your brain a major power boost.

In addition to helping you become a global citizen, learning to speak another language can help you avoid dementia and help kids concentrate in the classroom.

As a family, it creates its own unique set of memories.

Master multi-tasking

People who speak more than one language are better multi-taskers, according to research. This may be because they have to juggle languages, and determine which one to use, when.

Those same skills multilingual people use when switching back and forth between languages—identifying and ignoring irrelevant information—helps with prioritizing everyday tasks.

“Bilinguals become very good at negotiating between conditions in competition with each other, even if it has nothing do with language,” says Judith Kroll, a linguistics professor and director of the Center for Language Science at Penn State University.

Delay dementia

Being multilingual also helps protect your brain against cognitive aging, Kroll says. A study by Ellen Bialystok, a developmental psychologist at York University in Toronto, shows that being bilingual may help delay symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

“It’s not an antidote to Alzheimer’s, but (bilinguals) seem to report their symptoms four or five years after monolinguals with Alzheimer’s,” Kroll says.

“Bilinguals are able to compensate for their cognitive losses, and they are able to get by for longer before they are actually diagnosed.”

Improve concentration

Experts say the best way to learn a language is through immersion, which means learning in an environment where only the new language is spoken. It also helps if you learn it young, says Leslie Lancry, founder of Language Stars, which offers immersion programs for children in the Chicago and Washington, D.C. areas, as well as interactive classes online.

Kids who learn a second language develop a number of cognitive skills that will help them throughout their lives.

Children who are raised multilingual tend to have smaller vocabularies initially.

But later, the dual-language nature translates into cognitive benefits like the ability to switch more easily between tasks, and the ability to concentrate and ignore irrelevant information, Kroll says.

“Between birth and adolescence, children have a unique window of opportunity to learn any language if immersed in it, just like their native tongue,” Kroll says.