Making Fun of My Accent? I'm BILINGUAL!!

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." -Nelson Mandela 

Often an accent can be seen as cute and even sexy, but the bad part is when someone is misunderstood and cannot express their message correctly. I facilitate this process by teaching Latinos and others in my community how to use the English language to empower themselves and to speak confidently without fear of being misinterpreted. My business, daSilva Services Inc, offers a multitude of English lessons as well as other services that assists in reducing the language barrier.

Speaking more than one language is a highly marketable skill in today's diverse workplace integrating talented people from all over the world. Better yet, it is good exercise for your brain as it has its benefits. Believe it or not, up until 1960 it was conventional wisdom that being bilingual was a disadvantage. However, thanks to science we now know that the opposite is true.

There are numerous benefits to speaking more than one language from being able to use information in new ways coming up with solutions to problems to having good listening skills and connecting with others. Below is a short list of a few benefits of being bilingual with a quick summary of what I read on other articles.

A second language forces you to do things differently.

Samuel Barclay Beckett (an Irish avant-garde novelist) was a native English speaker, but at on point he decided to write strictly in French. He would then translate his draft to English, reporting that this process "prevented him from slipping into his usual writerly habits" (Jonah Lehrer in The Benefits of being Bilingual). He was forced by his second language to reflect on what he actually wanted to express.

Bilinguals have been found to manifest a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important. There is a system in the brain, the executive control system. It's function is to keep people focused on what is relevant, while ignoring distractions. It makes it possible for people to hold two different things on their mind at once and be able to switch between them. Bilinguals use that system more, and it's that regular use that makes it more efficient.

This ability is also helpful in multitasking, which is also handled by the executive control system. When it comes to switching between tasks, bilinguals are generally faster. Their whole brain appears to rewire because of the bilingualism.

Bilingualism helps improve decision-making and reduce human bias.

Psychological Science published a paper in 2012 by a team of psychologists who "found that forcing people to rely on a second language systematically reduced human biases, allowing subjects to escape from the usual blind spots of cognition" (Lehrer). The results of the experiments showed that the reduced emotional valence - the words aren't so weighted with feelings - helped improve the decision-making process.

Being bilingual can help delay symptoms of dementia and Alzheimer's.

Bilingualism sharpens the mind and according to cognitive neuroscientist Ellen Bialystok  

(The Bilingual Advantage written by Claudia Dreifus), it appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease symptoms. In her studies, bilinguals showed symptoms on average 5-6 years later than monolinguals. What that means is that as the disease took root in their brain, they were able to continue functioning at a higher level, coping with the disease longer. Other studies have shown that bilinguals are diagnosed with dementia about 4 years later than those who speak only one language.

Sharing your native tongue is beneficial for your children.

Children raised in bilingual households show increased levels of self-control and appear better at learning abstract rules and ignoring irrelevant information. People should pass their heritage language onto children as it is beneficial in many ways to be bilingual. It connects them to their ancestry, and it makes the brain stronger.

"When you learn other languages you can then actually speak those languages, read those literatures, talk to new people in their native tongue, eaves-drop on their conversations on the bus, order off the menu, pick up that gorgeous stranger in the piazza..." -Lera Boroditsky, psychologist at Stanford.

Learning a different language is easier when younger, and brings a multitude of benefits not only to the brain but also making a person more marketable when looking for work. Technology helps in many ways with the various apps and translation services, but they are not always accurate and available. Read more about how Microsoft paired with Skype to hand this issue of technology and language barriers.

On Facebook, I came across an article titled Microsoft puts a wrecking ball to the language barrier. Microsoft Research’s new speech translation technology parses natural human languages in real time, turning Skype calls and chats into multi-lingual conversations. Since 2011, when Microsoft acquired Skype, there has been work done on the Skype Translator tool which aims to be something like the Universal Translator in Star Trek: one language goes in, and another comes out allowing two speakers who know nothing of each other's tongue to interact in normal conversation.

In developing this platform, Microsoft Research has solved a difficult computation problem and is on the way to drastically changing how the world interacts. Although not perfect, there may be slight hiccups, but for the most part the translations is correct and seamless. The more usage the tool gets, the faster the team at Microsoft can find and tweak the few kinks into place. The most intriguing part of this project is how we have smoothly integrated technology into how we communicate in a way that forces us to pay attention to our own language. This new tool can inspire curiosity in people about other languages, as well as give them a good reason to have a higher level of appreciation and use more effort when it comes to speaking their native tongue. The corporate vice President at Microsoft Research, Peter Lee agrees "The way people interact turns out to be really interesting... The whole process for us in research has been illuminating".

Everyone involved in this project is excited to get it out there and are working hard to ensure it does not take years. “Our goal is to have every human in the world able to use this tool on whatever device they have,” says Gurdeep Pall, corporate vice president for Skype. Cheers to the Skype and Microsoft on uniting people through the breaking down of language barriers!