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How does speaking multiple languages ​​change the brain?

2025-05-20 21:24:55Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA HUSSNA MOHAMED
How does speaking multiple languages ​​change the brain?
How speaking multiple languages ​​changes the brain

Learning new languages ​​physically changes your brain and increases your cognitive abilities. But what actually happens in the brain, and does speaking multiple languages ​​really make you smarter?

There are many reasons to learn a new language. It could be for work, a love interest, or a personal interest in the culture or people of a region. Research shows that learning languages ​​also benefits your overall brain health.

Learning a new language is like training your brain. Just as muscles become stronger with physical exercise, the neural pathways in your brain are reshaped when you learn a new language.

This is what neuroscientists mean when they say that people who speak multiple languages ​​process information differently than those who speak only one. But what really happens in the brain when you learn a new language, and does it make you smarter?

What are the language areas of the brain?

Before we move on to these questions, here's some basic information about how language requires many different parts of the brain.

Language processing involves two main circuits – one for the perception and production of sound, which forms the foundation of language, and another for selecting which language sounds to use, said Arturo Hernandez, a neuroscientist at the University of Houston, US.

"These circuits reconnect as we learn and switch from one language to another. It's about mapping sounds and deciding which language we're going to operate in," Hernandez told DW.

We need sensory areas like the auditory cortex to process speech sounds, and we need the brain's extensive motor networks to coordinate the muscles involved in speech, such as those for controlling the tongue, lips, and vocal cords.

This is true for all languages, but changes in the 'higher processing' areas of the brain are necessary to learn a new language.

For example, Broca's area, located in the frontal lobe, is primarily responsible for syntax - the way we structure sentences. It helps in constructing grammatically correct sentences and understanding sentence structure.

Broca's area is also key to speech production and facilitates the motor control needed to articulate words. Other brain regions such as Wernicke's area play an important role in vocabulary comprehension and word retrieval. It helps in understanding the meaning of words and storing them in long-term memory.

How does a new language physically change the brain?

A German study in 2024 measured the brain activity of Syrian refugees before, during, and after they learned the German language.

He found that people's brains rewired as they became more proficient in German.

'Brain rewiring' means that the neuronal structures of the brain have physically changed. This process – called neuroplasticity – is the mechanism underlying learning.

Therefore, learning a new language required new ways for the participants' brains to encode, store, and retrieve new linguistic information.

“Structurally, [learning a language] increases gray matter structure in areas associated with language processing and executive function,” said Jennifer Wittmeyer, a cognitive neuroscientist at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, US.

Structural changes in the brain also change the way the brain works, as it physically changes the way neurons communicate. This so-called 'neuronal plasticity' helps you remember words faster, recognize new sounds better, and improve pronunciation by controlling the muscles in your mouth.

"Functionally, [language learning] increases connectivity between brain regions, allowing more efficient communication between networks involved in attention, memory and cognitive control," Wittmeyer told DW.

Why is learning languages ​​as a child an advantage?

Studies show that we use the same brain networks for all languages, but the brain responds differently to our native language. One study found that brain activity in language networks actually decreases when participants listen to their native language.

This suggests that the first language you learn is processed differently in the brain with minimal effort, the researchers say.

Research also shows that it is much easier for young children to learn new languages ​​than for adults.

Young children's brains are still developing and are more adaptable to neural plasticity and learning. Unlike adults, they don't need to translate from their first language, so they learn sounds, grammar, and words more easily.

"At a young age there is not as much rigidity in the brain. The adult brain is already structured around their first language, so a second language has to adapt to existing knowledge rather than develop independently as it relies on previously established neural networks," Hernandez said.

Does learning a language make you smarter?

Some studies show that being multilingual improves cognitive skills like memory and problem-solving abilities. But does this mean that polyglots are smarter?

It's complicated, but maybe not, Hernandez said. "If someone speaks more than one language, it increases their verbal repertoire. They have more words across all languages, more articles, necessarily more concepts," Hernandez said.

But it's unclear whether having a larger vocabulary is due to a greater cognitive reserve or simply having more words stored in the brain's memory banks. And that's not the same as intelligence.

To truly test whether polyglots are more intelligent, scientists would need to “find a task that is not related to language,” Hernandez said.

So far, the evidence is not very clear that polyglots perform better on tasks that are not related to languages.

And scientists aren't sure whether the differences in cognitive abilities in polyglots are due to language learning, or to other factors like education or the environment they grew up in. There are too many factors involved in cognitive abilities to isolate them to a single factor like language learning, the researchers say.

But whether better cognitive skills equal intelligence, it's clear that learning new languages ​​opens up new cultural experiences in your life./ DW


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