The Complexity of a Multilingual Brain

Rabat – As a university translation graduate, I have always marveled at and tried to untangle how the brain stores multiple languages.

I have been reflecting a lot recently about this magical capacity of the human brain, as I focus currently more on learning Fusha, also known as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and on getting a much firmer grasp on how my other languages (English and Spanish) impact each other.

Research suggests that our brains keep all the languages we know as active languages, so even when you are trying to communicate in one of your languages there is always a chance of interference from the other language.

A situation I have compared to relay this difficulty to monolinguals is when you are writing a message and someone else is talking in your ear at the same time, and you begin to type what they are saying instead of what you wanted to write.

How does the brain process language?

A Cambridge study used brain scans to identify which parts of the brain were showing levels of functioning during a translation task. The results showed that the parietal cortex was activated whilst the participant was switching between languages.

Located in the upper back half of the skull, the parietal cortex is the part of the brain that deals with information from the outside world, such as temperature and taste. Language is therefore processed by our brain as something that is processed by our outside environment.

There are discrepancies between studies as to the amount of impact this part of the brain has on language processing. However, it is clear that it plays a role in sensory processing and that it is vital to transcode information from sound.

Similarly, it is clear that language learning and processing of information is not limited to this one area.

An article by Unbabel states, “It has long been established that humans’ capacity to use their native language is stored in the left hemisphere of the brain in over 90% of the normal population.”

Train your brain

A multilingual person needs to train their brain to language-switch at speed. Some scientists believe that the brain stores words in the native and foreign language in different locations, and when the memory that links foreign and native words becomes stronger the speaker’s language proficiency also increases.

As it is well known, you can train your brain through repetition. I am currently studying a legal interpretation course, and one of the activities students are asked to do is to listen to a speech in a chosen language and simultaneously interpret it into the target language, whilst writing the numbers in order from 1-100.

This may seem a bit of a bizarre practice, but the aim is to make the brain faster at problem-solving. Writing out the numbers 1-100 makes your brain practice the act of using its stored memory while listening and speaking.

This is essential when you are faced with the dilemma of quickly searching for a synonym in the target language, without breaking fluency or falling behind and missing out on further information.

Using multiple languages at once

I am currently living in Rabat, Morocco’s capital city, which is home to many multilingual speakers. However, being immersed in a multilingual community has also presented some drawbacks.

For one thing, as you notice others switching between languages you subconsciously end up doing the same. This habit is not a good practice when you are trying to improve your fluency in one language without relying on other vocabularies to cover up your lack of knowledge.

A daily issue I face is when people greet me here, I prefer to speak in MSA, to practice; however, they nearly always initiate the conversation in French.

I have no knowledge of French, which for some reason triggers my memory to respond in Spanish.

As Spanish is not a predominant language in Rabat, most people whose French greetings I respond to in Spanish usually then resort to communicating in English. This causes me to automatically respond in English, without making a conscious decision to do so.

The whole ordeal is very taxing on your brain and leaves you reeling over what you have managed to communicate.

Read Also: Languages and Love

Code-switching

Normally code-switching is very useful; it allows you to rely on other languages that you know to fill gaps in your knowledge.

A paper from New York University (NYU) studies how a bilingual brain prefers to code-switch as it struggles to differentiate between words across two languages. The brain is helped by bilingualism in a sense that alleviates the pressure of having to depend on just one vocabulary.

This was evident in a study NYU carried out on Korean-English bilinguals, where scientists mapped neural activity by recording the magnetic fields generated by the electrical currents in the brain.

The participants were shown a series of words and images that were either in one language or a combination of both English and Korean, and they had to say whether the words matched the images.

The results showed that the left anterior temporal lobe was “insensitive to whether the words it received were from the same language or different languages,” stated Sarah Phillips, a doctoral candidate from NYU.

The research shows the words that are being processed in each language do not cause a change in brain activity, therefore implying language is being processed as a whole and not separated depending on the language to which you are exposed.

Consequently, the brain works overtime in language processing as it fails to note the difference between the languages in the initial processing phase. Considering this implication, it is easier to see why the code-switching phenomenon comes into play.

Whatever the minor drawbacks and occasional inconveniences of speaking two or multiple languages, the ability to communicate more than one language is a skill in itself when you appreciate how fast your mind is racing to select the right vocabulary at that moment.