The Science of Bilinguals | Sci Guys Podcast

There's some evidence that langauges can impact the way your brain works, but what happens when you know more than one? Thanks to our patrons, that's exactly what we're chatting about this week! Exclusively in English, unfortunately...
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References & Further Reading
Language
www.britannica.com/topic/lang...
Bilinguals
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti....
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...
How Language Affects the Brain
www.theguardian.com/science/2...
www.newyorker.com/science/mar...
www.theatlantic.com/science/a...
ilabs.uw.edu/sites/default/fi...
www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/20...
www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/arti...
www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
www.bbc.com/future/article/20...

[@SciGuys]

How many (and which) languages do you speak?

[@JescaHoogendijk]

I speak three: Dutch, English, and French

[@widmawod]

I would say I speak three: Italian, English and Sicilian (yes, it's a language). I am learning two and I wouldn't say I speak them: Irish and Finnish.

[@Meeko4eve39]

I speak German and English pretty fluently. I have dabbled in a lot of others, but I am not conversational in those, unfortunately.

[@seanluzdeluna8153]

I speak English and Spanish fluently.

[@jae_ace]

I speak English natively and am slowly progressing in Japanese and Korean

[@geektrash180]

All Indians pretty much grow up multilingual, specifically after they start school. Other than learning English and/or Hindi, if you live outside your home state, you also learn the language of that state.

[@ecoonrad4753]

Corry saying that left and right are basically ingrained in the minds of English speakers is so interesting to me, because up until I was about 16 and took 2 years of French (I barely learned the language then, I know maybe 5% at best now) I only ever knew English, and yet I constantly get left and right mixed up, which I attribute to my kindergarten teacher because she kept saying that you write with your right hand, which wasn't very helped for me as a left handed child (this was in the 2000s so that shouldn't have still been standard procedure) Now, whenever someone or I have to use left or right I have to rub the calluse on my left hand to remind me which side is being talked about

[@iteeparx]

same thing happened to me, I’m also left handed, so now I lift my left hand up or make the gesture of writing whenever I have to give someone directions. i grew up speaking spanish in mexico tho so that’s different

[@nastjuschechka]

I am bad with left and right in every language I speak! 😂

[@aylen7062]

0:34 Luke says in Spanish "I really like to eat". It was so unexpected I had to go back and listen to it again (or I just struggle with switching languages unexpectedly).

[@ayv3552]

here in finland everyone learns finnish, swedish, and english in school. i've no english heritage whatsoever but it became my special interest since childhood and now it's better than my native language, i even surpassed my teachers in english at 11 years old. i'd say i'm bilingual because i can't speak swedish fluently.

[@konzertina9685]

My uncle was raised bilingual and he was severly mentally disabled. He rarely mixed them when people who did not speak both was present.

[@thiel_spencer]

56:02 on the topic of not knowing left from right: I do, but it takes me a hot minute, I have to remember which hand I write with (I'm a lefty, sorry, Corry), then I orient myself based on that. I got much better at distinguishing since I learned to drive as a teenager. However, it's still A Thing for me. I used to think it was because I'm left-handed and the world is built for right-handed people, so I mix up directions to compensate for the world expecting me to be right handed but with a dominant compulsion for favoring the left. Although, I've also been told it's because I'm dyslexic 💀💀 so who knows at this point

[@dovestone_]

I WAS bilingual (English and German) until I was 4. When my sister was born, my mum stopped speaking to me in German (due to stress of a new born/ too busy / she now says my vocab was progressing too much and she didn’t know the words for all the things I wanted to talk about, which at the time was dinosaurs / fairies) I used to watch German tv and film and my mum and Oma only spoke to me in German and then it just stopped completely and I forgot all but about 5 words Now I’m re-learning and have been doing German on Duolingo for a year and a half Progress is slow but I’m getting there I’m realising, by far the worst thing about losing German is losing an innate grasp of the syntax That’s definitely not something I’ll ever get back 💔

[@dovestone_]

@@elizabethfailure I’m not a natural linguist so I find that side of it it very hard now. But I won’t give up!!

[@iteeparx]

in Mexico we do the “the donkey calls itself first” too, my sister is growing up in the US and she mixes English grammar when she speaks Spanish so times when she says me and… I always say to her el burro por delante which translates to the donkey in the front and she laughs every time and corrects herself

[@AnnekeOosterink]

I remember taking part as a subject in the research of a friend of mine. She was studying gestures, and gestures referring to time specifically. (Gestures, so not sign language, lots of people think the two are related, they are not) So she asked people questions about their lives, past, present, future, and had people read a story that had past, present, and future events in it, and then tell the interviewer about that story. All while being filmed so she could record the gestures. I can't remember the exact outcome, but I do know that she noted before she really analysed all the data that a lot of people gestured in front of them when talking about the future, and sort of waved over their shoulder towards their backs to refer to the past. This was her personal observation, and not the actual analysis though, so grain of salt etc. But it does track with the rest of the research that I read. I remember she had a really hard time having people actually gesture as they chatted, so she had to do pretty long conversations for very few gestures. And of course, sitting in small bare room in a language lab while being filmed isn't exactly a natural environment, so people were more likely to be nervous or slightly uneasy and use fewer gestures. Her hypothesis was that people who speak different languages might use different gestures because the languages conceptualise time differently, so they might use gestures from their first language in their second language, or vice versa. A hypothetical Mandarin speaker might point up when referring to the past in Mandarin, but would they point up when speaking English as well? Or would they adjust their gestures as well as their words? Basically she wanted to see if people would code switch in gestures as well as in vocabulary. I know she had a really hard time finding people who spoke languages (as their first language) that had different time concepts, or ways to refer to time passing etc.

[@Coccinelf]

Adults do code mixing too. I don't want to use the approximation of the word I want to use, I want to use this exact meaning that doesn't exist in the language I'm currently speaking in. Of course, most people do that just when talking to people who understands both languages but your brain wants to do that so hard, all the time. But that's only Luke (and many other people). When I'm indoor, like in a building with many wings, I still always know (very roughly, not like that 5 year old girl) where North is. All my life, I was astonished that people were pointing at a direction while talking about a restaurant or their flat and it was like 180° from the real thing. Most people don't do that outdoors, but indoors? It confuses so many people!

[@JennaGetsCreative]

I'm Canadian (originally from British Columbia on the west coast, not a French area) and my mother tongue is English. Where I grew up we started studying French in 5th grade (age 11ish) and had a second language education requirement up to 11th grade (17ish) but around grade 9 options opened up and it didn't have to be French. I did French for that full run, plus electives here and there in university, plus Duolingo lessons when I'm not fixated on something else, and I still feel like I haven't truly progressed past what I could do with the language when I was 16 (which was not being conversational.) On the other hand, I grew up listening to my grandfather tell us nursery rhymes in Norwegian and singing Norwegian Christmas carols at folk dancing class and hearing Norwegian conversation around me at the heritage club meetings my grandparents would go to, but nobody made an effort to teach me Norwegian. I started learning it myself 3 years ago, purely on Duolingo. Not only do I feel like I have more of a grasp on Norwegian than I do French, but I can see text written in the other Scandinavian languages and also figure out what those say.

[@TheCuriousCaprine]

I really like Corry's jumper. Also, great episode! I love learning about languages and how they affect our experience.

[@sebastian-oq9be]

Keep practicing your Spanish, Luke! Don't be discouraged! Learning another language is such a beautiful thing, being able to immerse yourself in the culture & interact w people & help those around you if needed. El español siempre ha sido una parte de mi corazón, es de mi cultura mexicana. Es la manera en que puedo hablar con mi familia y hacer más amigos y por eso, tengo mucha pasión por él. No es mi lengua materna, aprendí el inglés primero, y todavía hago errores, pero es normal. Cada persona hace errores a veces. Tenemos que hacer errores para hablar y comunicarnos y desarrollarnos. Entonces mi mensaje es continuar aprendiendo, Luke, aunque haces errores, es parte del proceso de aprender. Sugiero que hagas amigos hispanohablantes para que practiques, porque necesitas trabajar en tu acento, pero está bien, es un proceso :). Y pa' mi gente, hola!

[@FrozEnbyWolf150]

I studied Spanish in university, have read Spanish literature, and have written and translated poetry from Spanish to English and back. However, I cannot speak Spanish fluently. It's the lack of exposure and lack of practice.

[@pixie7349]

I’m not surprised you said people don’t like autistic people naturally, my little sister, uncle and husband. Diagnosed by an MD. With my uncle you can tell easily due to his problems socializeing so we knew it would effect him in that way but outside my sister having problems with her clothes and the usual little quirks of someone mildly autistic you can’t tell. It’s the same with my husband, and they both can make friends but those “friends” often ghost them after a while. Usually because they start to find them weird or think they’re being rude because they’re so blunt. I’m sad for them that this is the case, my sister especially works so hard on her social skills.

[@AnnekeOosterink]

Direction with cardinal directions doesn't need to be related to actually feeling the magnetic field. If you (subconciously) keep track of where North is all the time (or any one of the directions) you will always know which way is which. I know in my house where East is, so I know where the other directions are based on that, but if instead I always remember where East is in relation to my body I will be able to point East. So right now, my right shoulder is pointed east, if I stand up and walk to the door, my back is pointed east, if I then walk down the stairs, I will end up looking east at the bottom of the stairs, if I walk to my car my right shoulder will be pointing east again. I'm pretty sure that if you start learning that from a young age you will always know which way is which because you will keep track of how your body has turned.

[@karinelfwing9095]

I speak three languages comfortably (by which I mean that I can express anything I want and be understood by native speaker even if my grammar and proniciation is not perfect); Swedish (my mother tongue), English and Spanish. I can speak a bit Germam and Icelandic (tourist level) and sign a bit Swedish sign language. I am trying to learn Japanese now.

[@henhenhenhenhenhen]

First to answer the question, I speak Finnish, English, Swedish and a little bit of German and Japanese. But I had an interesting thought based on my own experience. In Finland we don't ask "What time is it?" we ask "Kuinka paljon kello on?" which translated yo english is "How much is the clock?". Needless to say, while visiting a multilingual camp in Germany I confused a lot of people 😂

[@danielaaguilar2269]

Español (native) and avanced english, but i honestly feel like instead of knowing two languages I know 50% of each one 😂

[@michaelpitman8617]

I speak English and japanese around the n4 and n3 levels. Just of a few days ago i started chinese as well. My goal is eventually adding korean and french to the list too. Learning languages is really just fun for me not sure why. I'm gonna be a transfer student in japan in a few years too. Never could learn Spanish in school but japanese and chinese comes pretty easy.

[@Geejermo]

While Spanish is my first language, by now I feel more comfortable with English. I can read some French from taking a couple courses in college, but am not fluent.

[@thetheatricallinguist]

I don't know if it's true of Hebrew, but despite words being read right to left, numbers are read left to right. So, for example, 1000 is written the same way in both English and Arabic

[@imtired5297]

Another really interesting thing about how language can affect the way you think about things is the example of the Piraha tribe whose language doesn't have any number terms, so instead they would say things like "large quantity" or "small quantity". As a result, when they were given tasks where they were shown a certain number of objects to put in a jar, they struggled to get the exact number when the example objects were hidden but were fine if the example objects remained. The general conclusion is that while the Piraha understand numbers, they don't have words for them which means that memorization is difficult. There's a really interesting paper by Frank et al about it if anyone is interested in learning more about it!

[@bibibee871]

my mom is Brazilian, my dad Vnezuelan, i was born in Australia and now we live in Germany. So yeah, 4 languages.

[@threeofeight197]

German ppl also get super pissed if you wish them happy birthday before their actual birthday. Something in the culture says that you can’t necessarily count on tomorrow. They don’t even bother giving tomorrow a separate grammatical structure. 😂😂😂.

[@AB-qt6uw]

I speak English, but am currently learning French and Chinese

[@Drawoon]

I used to live in the Netherlands, so I learned dutch and a decent bit of english. Now I live on the internet. My english is almost as good as native speakers I think, but my Dutch is getting worse. Often I'll use english words and phrases directly translated to dutch, which sound a little clunky, or I'll use figures of speech that just do not make sense in dutch.

[@paolap6802]

So i speak 3 languages fluently, and i struggle with left and right will all of them. Like i know, but i guess it takes me a bit longer than most people to identify it

[@bridgetmoreno9411]

About the "ut" "out" thing, yes there is probably a relation between them somehow, but thats not always the case. There's a limited number of sounds and syllables in the world, so occasionally there will be coincidences. Although this example doesnt seem like one to me.

[@Levidavi03]

I speak English, Hungarian (sometimes) and a little Japanese

[@nagyesszep]

submliminal message at 38:24

[@CamCamCamCamCamCamCamCamCammmm]

As an immigrant to the UK I‘d like to say that I can‘t for the life of me figure out which side people cross each other here… To my mind it would also be how you drive, I have always gone to the right, and here tried left and that wasn‘t right, but neither was right…

[@aylen7062]

omg my country's flag is on the thumbnail

[@ko-lq7vu]

01:03:01 so what do you call it when someone breaks a rule and instead of feeling an “off” vibe from them you have this internal alarm going “you can’t do that stop something bad will happen!!”

[@hound8801]

i speak french, english, and romanian fluently :)

[@nastjuschechka]

3,5 . Russian, English, German and b1 Japanese. Some others at a1 but they do not count.

[@adamalkhawaja2003]

I speak two languages, English and Arabic

[@chantelleyt22]

I speak English as my first language, I also speak irish, French and a pitiful amount of German and Portuguese

[@mostazezo]

im bilingual in french and English

[@Dhdjksjsnsnsnnsnsna]

Not having tom scott come back is the best and worst choice you made for this episode!

[@Dhdjksjsnsnsnnsnsna]

Re: the babies study that corry cited w the familiar vs unfamiliar sounds,,,,,,, i think it’s also got smth to do w mutual exclusivity? Theres this study (Davidson et al., 1997, iirc) that found out that bilingual children are more likely than monolingual babies to accept a nonce label for a known named object. For example, if u show a bunch if bilingual and monolingual children a picture of a tree and say it’s called a bing bong in now, then ask them “who lives in the bing bong?” bilingual children are more likely than monolingual to correctly say “monkeys live in the bing bong!” That’s bc monolingual children have a mutual exclusive bias for words that bilingual children lack. So, like,,,,,,, a monolingual knows a tree only as a tree, one word for the thing and nothing else. BUT, in contrast, a bilingual baby knows tree and 树 and 木 and whatever other languages they speak! Bilingual babies are just more like to accept that there can be more than one label word for the same object. So maybe bilingual babies reacting to an unfamiliar language is just them gg like “oh shit, that’s not a set of sound im familiar with, is that smth i gotta pay attention to from now?” Whereas a monolingual baby has recognised and concretised that it has one single set of sounds to pay attention to, and that (and that ALONE) is language; everything else is just noise and music. Sorry for the long ass comment but this is exactly why it’s a great idea not having tom scott on. Edit: paper i cited.

[@LetsTryVlogging365]

The commercials on Spotify suck so hard. It feels very bad to pay for a service and still be fed commercials 😔 to be clear I do not mind your own ads bell and sponsors, it's the radio style junk that gets pushed in there

[@SciGuys]

Unfortunately the only way to turn off ads on Spotify would be to turn off ads on all podcasting platforms, but we wouldn't be able to make this show without that revenue.

[@LennySpring]

Guys I live in Germany and speak German but I don't understand a word of Dutch

[@SciGuys]

Skill issue

[@yohanrives3752]

Sorry Luke but it's Et toi, not Et tu...

[@DeeDeeMandark]

Russian English Tatar

[@DeeDeeMandark]

Learning French

[@saraho5488]

I hate to break it to you guys but your French at the end wasn't even correct 😂 it should be 'et toi?', not 'et tu?'