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Bill Gates admitted recently that he felt " pretty stupid" for not knowing any languages other than English. To be fair to Gates, most native English speakers in the US (and the UK) are monolingual (despite the fact that most experts believe that bilingualism- or even multilingualism-is the norm). While nobody seriously thinks that Bill Gates is dumb, his remarks touched on a fascinating controversy in the scientific literature: are bilingual people smarter than monolinguals?

As Judith Kroll notes, until relatively recently, it was generally assumed-albeit without much evidence-that " young children will be confused by exposure to more than one language and harmed by delays in development." This view went hand-in-hand with the idea that monolingualism is somehow the norm, and that bilinguals constitute "a special group of language users, much like brain-damaged patients, children with language disorders, or deaf individuals who use a signed language to communicate."

Then along came Ellen Bialystok of York University in Toronto. In a series of studies, Bialystok and colleagues found that, although bilinguals perform worse than monolinguals on very simple tasks (e.g., naming pictures or generating words that begin with a particular letter), they actually show better performance on cognitive control tasks -those that measure participants' ability to exert deliberate control their mental processes. One example of a cognitive control task: a participant might be asked to listen to one set of words presented over headphones and see another set of words presented on a computer screen, before being asked to recall the words that they had heard, but not those that they had seen (or vice versa).

Why do bilinguals show an advantage over monolinguals on cognitive control tasks? Bialystok argues that bilinguals are better at suppressing irrelevant or interfering information, because this is exactly what they have to do every day. For example, when speaking Spanish, a bilingual Spanish-English speaker must access the relevant Spanish words for the objects and ideas s/he has in mind, while suppressing the corresponding English words.

This suggests that bilingual children, struggling to cope with two languages, are in fact giving their brain a workout, and end up smarter than their monolingual classmates.

Or so it seemed. This month, a group of psychologists based at the University of Edinburgh published a paper showing apparent evidence of publication bias in the bilingual-advantage literature. Before a study is fully completed and written up, many researchers choose to present their preliminary findings at a conference. In order to secure a speaking slot (which can be quite competitive), researchers must submit a short abstract summarizing the research. The abstracts for accepted talks are then published in the conference program. The Edinburgh team got hold of as many conference abstracts as possible on the topic of the bilingual advantage, and then looked to see how many of these were followed up by a bona-fide peer-reviewed journal article reporting the final detailed results of the research. What they found was that the conference abstracts reporting a bilingualism advantage generally made it into fully-fledged-article form, while those that failed to find such an advantage often sunk without trace. (If you're worried that this method sounds a bit informal, you can rest assured; a funnel-plot-the standard statistical analysis used in such cases-also found evidence of publication bias).

Now, when this JSTOR Daily post originally appeared last week, I concluded, on the basis of this Edinburgh review, that the claim of a bilingual advantage is "probably not true." However, as two readers-Dan Hirschman and Martino Comelli-pointed out on Twitter, I wasn't justified in leaping to such a strong conclusion. Since the overall bilingualism advantage across the published papers (0.3 on the scale explained in this paper) seems rather small compared to the fact that "63% of the studies supporting the bilingual advantage were published, compared with only 36% of the studies that challenged it," I assumed that the unpublished studies-were they actually to be published-would wipe out this difference. For what it's worth, I still think this is the most plausible interpretation of these data. But it was rather gung-ho of me to baldly present this conclusion without even explaining my reasoning, let alone backing it up with a mathematical analysis [1]. Indeed, as the authors point out, another possible interpretation is that, despite the existence of publication bias, "the cognitive bilingual advantage is genuine, albeit smaller and less stable than often presented in the literature."

So is there a bilingual advantage? Currently we just don't know. But two things are clear. The first is that researchers-and, perhaps more importantly, the journal editors who decide which papers to publish and which to reject-are people too, and people just love a good story. Now, "Bilingualism is good for your brain" is a great story. But it is for precisely this reason that we must be extra careful to ensure that findings that challenge this story are as likely to be published as those that support it. The second-and the other side of the same coin-is that those of us who set ourselves up as myth busters need to be just as cautious-and just as explicit when showing our working-as those who make the claims to begin with.

[1] There is actually a way to calculate the number of null-effect studies that would be needed to wipe out this effect-the "fail-safe N." But (a) it requires assumptions about the unpublished studies that we just don't have and (b) calculating it is way beyond my expertise. Still, if any meta-analysis experts reading this would like to try, I'd be fascinated to know the result.

JSTOR Citations

By: Judith F. Kroll

Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Vol. 10, No. 3 (DECEMBER 2009), pp. i-ii

Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Association for Psychological Science

By: Ellen Bialystok, Fergus I.M. Craik, David W. Green and Tamar H. Gollan

Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Vol. 10, No. 3 (DECEMBER 2009), pp. 89-129

Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Association for Psychological Science

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Are bilingual people smarter than people who speak one language? | JSTOR Daily

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Bill Gates admitted recently that he felt " pretty stupid" for not knowing any languages other than English. To be fair to Gates, most native English speakers in the US (and the UK) are monolingual (despite the fact that most experts believe that bilingualism- or even multilingualism-is the norm).

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Barack Obama is talking about foreign languages again:

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English - they'll learn English - you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], "Merci beaucoup." Right?

You know, no, I'm serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get a job. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they're 5, or 6, or 7 than when they're 46, like me.

The cosmopolitan in me says, "Right on." Americans are notoriously poor with language, and it reflects badly on us.

But my inner behavioral economist tells me that Obama has identified a solution in search of a problem. After all, Americans are just behaving rationally. Europeans need to learn foreign languages because they live much closer to one another, are more integrated economically, and come from smaller countries. If you're a young Swede, for instance, you need to learn English to be employable. As for romance languages, once you're fluent in French, it's relatively easy to pick up Spanish and Italian.

Most Americans, in contrast, don't really need to learn a foreign language: Many foreigners speak English, and the amount of bilingual jobs available is relatively small. It's a nice skill to have, but acquiring working-level fluency in a second or third language is expensive and time consuming, and often the potential payoff isn't worth it. My seven years of French has never been very useful, frankly, and I might have been better served learning more about microbiology or fluid dynamics.

In short, Obama shouldn't worry: Americans will start picking up foreign languages in larger numbers (think: Mandarin) when they really need to.

UPDATE: Blogger Dave Schuler comments.

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Barack Obama is talking about foreign languages again: Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English - they'll learn English - you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.

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There are also drawbacks to being bilinggual

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There are also drawbacks to being bilinggual

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A new research indicates that bilingual people may experience a disadvantage in metacognition

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The ability to speak more than one language certainly has its perks. It enables you to work in another country, for example, interact with people while travelling, or consume foreign media.

Bilingualism is very common - current estimates are that more than half of the world's population is bilingual and that this prevalence is rising.

Cognitive psychologists have been interested in how bilingualism shapes the mind for almost a century. There are those who suggest that in order to speak in one language, bilinguals have to suppress the influence of the other. Research from the past three decades has argued that this unique form of language processing "trains the brain" in the use of non-verbal abilities known as " executive functions " such as ignoring irrelevant information or shifting attention.

Bilinguals of different ages and cultural backgrounds have been shown to be faster and more accurate than their monolingual peers when performing cognitive tasks demanding these abilities. Furthermore, it has been argued that bilingualism may lead to a delayed onset of symptoms associated with dementia.

But the scientific community recently has become increasingly sceptical of the bilingual advantage hypothesis. One of the main points of criticism is that differences between monolinguals and bilinguals when it comes to executive function are not always apparent. This has generated a heated debate, especially in the Bilingualism Forum of the scientific journal Cortex, about whether bilingualism is associated with cognitive advantages or not.

Fresh challenge

It appears that research on bilingualism is at a turning point. We need to pursue a new approach to understand, beyond those individual examples of executive functions, how the bilingual mind works. We have attempted to address this challenge by testing whether bilinguals and monolinguals differ in terms of how accurately they can assess their own performance.

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This ability is called metacognition and is associated with, but separate from, other areas where bilinguals have been shown to have an advantage. Surprisingly, however, we found that bilinguals had less insight into their performance than their monolingual peers.

Joining the dots

In an effort to find out whether bilinguals also display advantages in other cognitive abilities (beyond executive function), we evaluated metacognitive processing in young adult monolinguals and bilinguals. Metacognition is the ability to evaluate one's own cognitive performance or simply to have "thoughts about thoughts".

This ability is a crucial function of everyday life, when we have to make decisions where the outcomes are not immediate. For example, when an entrepreneur reviews their company's performance, they need to take into account a variety of factors - including, for example, revenues and expenses - in order to evaluate whether the company is doing well. Confidence in their ideas and performance can be the determining factor in whether they decide to keep investing time in their company or give up and apply for another job (the so-called " exploitation exploration trade-off ").

In our research, we presented participants with a situation in which they had to observe two circles on a screen and guess which one contained more dots. Sometimes the difference was obvious, making the decision easy, while at other times the decision was very difficult (for example, one circle contained 50 dots and the other 49). Participants were then asked to determine how confident they were in their decision on a scale from less to more confident than normal.

Folkes et al, 2016, Author provided

Over the course of two experiments, we found that bilinguals and monolinguals were equally likely to choose the circle containing the highest number of dots. However, monolinguals were better able than bilinguals to discriminate between when they were right and when they were wrong. In other words, bilinguals had less insight into their performance than monolinguals. This went against our initial predictions, as we expected to find a bilingual advantage in metacognitive processing. These results indicate that bilingualism may be associated with cognitive disadvantages as well as benefits.

What's next?

The Multilanguage & Cognition lab (MULTAC) at Anglia Ruskin University is currently undertaking a three-year project funded by the Leverhulme Trust to enhance our understanding of the bilingual mind.

The lab has already published evidence of cognitive advantages associated with bilingualism, suggesting that bilinguals are better at filtering out verbal interference as well as visual attention, specifically spotting the difference in a visuo-spatial working memory task.

This new research indicates that bilingual people may experience a disadvantage in metacognition. We hope that this new direction in bilingualism research will encourage further attention and enable us to resolve theoretical debate through the adoption of open-minded, empirically driven exploration of cognitive effects (both positive and negative) that may be associated with learning more than one language.

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There are also drawbacks to being bilingual

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The ability to speak more than one language certainly has its perks. It enables you to work in another country, for example, interact with people while travelling, or consume foreign media. Bilingualism is very common - current estimates are that more than half of the world's population is bilingual and that this prevalence is rising.

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Another view on the bilingualism's real benefits.

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In 1922, in " Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus," the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." The words that we have at our disposal affect what we see-and the more words there are, the better our perception. When we learn to speak a different language, we learn to see a bigger world.

Many modern language researchers agree with that premise. Not only does speaking multiple languages help us to communicate but bilingualism (or multilingualism) may actually confer distinct advantages to the developing brain. Because a bilingual child switches between languages, the theory goes, she develops enhanced executive control, or the ability to effectively manage what are called higher cognitive processes, such as problem-solving, memory, and thought. She becomes better able to inhibit some responses, promote others, and generally emerges with a more flexible and agile mind. It's a phenomenon that researchers call the bilingual advantage.

For the first half of the twentieth century, researchers actually thought that bilingualism put a child at a _dis_advantage, something that hurt her I.Q. and verbal development. But, in recent years, the notion of a bilingual advantage has emerged from research to the contrary, research that has seemed both far-reaching and compelling, much of it coming from the careful work of the psychologist Ellen Bialystok. For many tasks, including ones that involve working memory, bilingual speakers seem to have an edge. In a 2012 review of the evidence, Bialystok showed that bilinguals did indeed show enhanced executive control, a quality that has been linked, among other things, to better academic performance. And when it comes to qualities like sustained attention and switching between tasks effectively, bilinguals often come out ahead. It seems fairly evident then that, given a choice, you should raise your child to speak more than one language. Indeed, papers touting " Creativity and Bilingualism," " Cognitive Advantages of Bilingual Five-Year-Olds," " A Bilingual Advantage in Task-Switching," " Bilingualism Reduces Native-Language Interference During Novel-Word Learning," and " Good Language-Switchers Are Good Task-Switchers"-and the resulting books with provocative titles such as " The Bilingual Edge" and " Bilingual Is Better "-suggest that raising a bilingual child is, in large part, a recipe for raising a successful child.

From the age of eleven, Angela de Bruin spoke two languages. Born in the nineteen-eighties in Nijmegen, a small town in the Netherlands, de Bruin spoke Dutch at home, and, in school, immersed herself in English. She became fascinated by bilinguals, and read avidly about the cognitive advantages that being fluent in more than one language was supposed to provide. In college, she took up linguistics and neuroscience. And, in 2012, de Bruin enrolled in the psychology graduate program at the University of Edinburgh to further pursue the link between bilingualism and cognition.

She came to the program fully expecting to study the extent to which her bilingual brain was adapted to succeed. "I had the impression that there's a really strong effect of bilingualism on executive function," de Bruin told me recently. Then, she carried out her first study. Normally, to test for an edge in executive function, you give a version of a task where people have to ignore certain stimuli while selectively focussing on others. For instance, in the commonly used Simon task, you are shown pictures (often arrows) on either the left or right side of a screen. If you see a right-pointing arrow, you press the right key. It doesn't matter on which side of the screen the arrow appears; the only thing that matters is the direction in which it points. Typically, people have faster reaction times on congruent trials-when the right-pointing arrow actually appears on the right, and vice-versa. Bilinguals are supposed to have an advantage in the incongruent trials: when the left arrow appears on the right, and the right arrow appears on the left.

When de Bruin looked at the data, though, in three of the four tasks testing inhibitory control, including the Simon task, the advantage wasn't there. Monolinguals and bilinguals had performed identically. "We thought, Maybe the existing literature is not a full, reliable picture of this field," she said. So, she decided to test it further.

Systematically, de Bruin combed through conference abstracts from a hundred and sixty-nine conferences, between 1999 and 2012, that had to do with bilingualism and executive control. The rationale was straightforward: conferences are places where people present in-progress research. They report on studies that they are running, initial results, initial thoughts. If there were a systematic bias in the field against reporting negative results-that is, results that show no effects of bilingualism-then there should be many more findings of that sort presented at conferences than actually become published.

That's precisely what de Bruin found. At conferences, about half the presented results provided either complete or partial support for the bilingual advantage on certain tasks, while half provided partial or complete refutation. When it came to the publications that appeared after the preliminary presentation, though, the split was decidedly different. Sixty-eight per cent of the studies that demonstrated a bilingual advantage found a home in a scientific journal, compared to just twenty-nine per cent of those that found either no difference or a monolingual edge. "Our overview," de Bruin concluded, "shows that there is a distorted image of the actual study outcomes on bilingualism, with researchers (and media) believing that the positive effect of bilingualism on nonlinguistic cognitive processes is strong and unchallenged."

De Bruin isn't refuting the notion that there are advantages to being bilingual: some studies that she reviewed really did show an edge. But the advantage is neither global nor pervasive, as often reported. After her meta-analysis was complete, de Bruin and her adviser ran an additional series of studies, which they have just submitted for publication, hoping to find where the limits of bilingual advantage lie, and what the real advantage may actually look like. To test for a possible boost, they examined three different groups (English monolinguals, active English-Gaelic bilinguals who spoke Gaelic at home, and passive English-Gaelic bilinguals who no longer used Gaelic regularly). They had each group take part in four tasks-the Simon task, a task of everyday attention (you hear different tones and must count the number of low ones while filtering out the high ones), the Tower of London (you solve a problem by moving discs around on a series of sticks to match a picture of what the final tower looks like), and a simple task-switching paradigm (you see circles and squares that are either red or blue, and must pay attention to either one color or one shape, depending on the part of the trial).

In the first three tasks, they found no difference between the groups. On the last, they thought they'd finally detected an advantage: on the switch trials-the trials immediately after a change from shape to color or color to shape-the bilinguals, both active and passive, seemed to be quicker. But when the researchers dug deeper, they found that it wasn't so much a case of switching faster as it was being slower at the non-switch trials, where shape followed shape and color followed color.

So does that mean that there's no such thing as a bilingual advantage? No. It's just one study. But it adds further evidence to the argument that the bilingual advantage is sometimes overstated. "I'm definitely not saying there's no bilingual advantage," de Bruin says. But the advantage may be different from the way many researchers have described it: as a phenomenon that helps children to develop their ability to switch between tasks and, more broadly, enhances their executive-control functions. The true edge, de Bruin believes, may come far later, and in a form that has little to do with task-switching and executive control; it may, she says, be the result of simple learning.

One of the areas where the bilingual advantage appears to be most persistent isn't related to a particular skill or task: it's a general benefit that seems to help the aging brain. Adults who speak multiple languages seem to resist the effects of dementia far better than monolinguals do. When Bialystok examined the records for a group of older adults who had been referred to a clinic in Toronto with memory or other cognitive complaints, she found that, of those who eventually developed dementia, the lifelong bilinguals showed symptoms more than four years later than the monolinguals. In a follow-up study, this time with a different set of patients who had developed Alzheimer's, she and her colleagues found that, regardless of cognitive level, prior occupation, or education, bilinguals had been diagnosed 4.3 years later than monolinguals had. Bilingualism, in other words, seems to have a protective effect on cognitive decline. That would be consistent with a story of learning: we know that keeping cognitively nimble into old age is one of the best ways to protect yourself against dementia. (Hence the rise of the crossword puzzle.) When the brain keeps learning, as it seems to do for people who retain more than one language, it has more capacity to keep functioning at a higher level.

That, in and of itself, is reason enough to learn a second, third, fourth, or fifth language-and to keep learning them as long as you're able. The bilingual advantage may not appear in the exact guise researchers think of it today. But, on a fundamental level, bilingualism's real benefits could be far more important.

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In 1922, in " Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus," the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." The words that we have at our disposal affect what we see-and the more words there are, the better our perception.

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This article outlines the ways bilingualism can improve one's life and the lives of those around.

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Learning a language is a little like going to the gym. Everyone says you should do it. You tell yourself you should do it. The difficulty lies in actually getting motivated to follow through, to sign up for that spin class, to hit the weight machines, to open your language learning app.

But here's the difference. Your motivation for going to the gym is clear: You want to lose weight, destress, gain muscle, or simply keep healthy. Language learning can be more abstract. Why should you bother going through the effort of learning a new language? What's really in it for you? The goal of this article is to bring your motivations into focus and to outline the ways bilingualism can improve your life and the lives of those around you. Without further ado, here it is: Your comprehensive guide to the benefits of being bilingual.

Cognitive benefits - Training your brain

Fostering improved cognitive function is one of the fascinating ways language learning can cultivate a better you. Speaking a new language can be challenging, which is why mastering it is so good for your brain.

It all comes down to your brain's executive functions - mental processes used in concentration and paying attention. Inhibitory control is one of these executive functions, and it involves controlling your thoughts and behavior in order to do what is necessary or appropriate, rather than reacting based on old habits, conditioned responses or external lures. For example, it helps us suppress the urge to touch a particularly appealing sculpture in a museum or to curse when we hurt ourselves in the presence of a child.

Inhibitory control is what enables a bilingual individual to effortlessly switch between languages. When asked a question in their secondary language, they may impulsively want to answer in their native language, but their brain can override that impulse and instead answer in the language appropriate for the situation. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), located in the brain's frontal lobe, plays a key role in this process. And because bilinguals have to use their ACC a lot more than monolinguals, they often have significantly more gray matter in their ACC. In turn, bilinguals can more easily multitask, solve problems and focus on the task at hand.

That extra gray matter (or cognitive reserve) has another benefit as well: Delaying the effects of dementia. A study by psychologist Dr. Ellen Bialystok found that bilinguals show symptoms of dementia four years later than monolinguals, all other factors being equivalent. The results suggest bilinguals have built up a cognitive reserve, which helps their brains compensate for mental decline for several additional years.

Finally, an American Heart Association study analyzed the recovery of monolingual and bilingual stroke patients. The research found that the percentage of bilingual patients with their cognitive functions intact post-stroke was more than twice that of monolingual patients. These studies suggest that bilingualism can provide a valuable form of protection for your brain in various situations.

Financial benefits - The payoff

From choosing a career to deciding whether to cook dinner or go out to eat, money is a common motivator in many aspects of our lives. And the bottom line is: bilingualism can increase your bottom line.

These economic advantages can come in a few different forms. First, speaking a second language fluently opens up career opportunities that are unavailable to monolinguals. Translators, language teachers, and certain health care professionals are just a few of the occupations that require fluency in two or more languages. Even when applying for jobs in which bilingualism isn't a necessity, your ability to speak another language will give you a leg up on the competition.

A second financial benefit affects you more directly - by increasing your pay. According to Salary.com, bilingual employees make between five and twenty percent more per hour than monolingual workers. It's a wide range that varies depending on the languages you speak and the field you're in, but even on the conservative end, that wage bump adds up over time.

Lastly, research suggests thinking in a second language can lead to smarter financial decisions. A study from the University of Chicago discovered this link: "Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases," which can lead people to be less risk averse in their investment and savings choices.

"We propose that these effects arise because a foreign language provides greater cognitive and emotional distance than a native tongue does," the researchers wrote in their report.

Interpersonal benefits - Becoming a social butterfly

If getting smarter and making more money doesn't do the trick, perhaps the opportunities for social connection will motivate you to learn a new language. Humans thrive off of interpersonal relationships, and bilingualism opens the door to countless additional connections.

On a basic level, speaking another language can help you connect with members of your community and sometimes even family members. The evidence in this area is mostly anecdotal, but it makes sense that being able to speak with people you wouldn't have been able to communicate with before would allow for social growth. Maybe your hairdresser speaks a different language much more fluently than English. Being able to have a conversation in their native tongue would not only help you better explain the hairstyle you want, but would also enable you to forge a closer friendship with them.

Let's take these friendships one step further and get to the good stuff: romance. Bilingualism can turn your dating pool into an ocean. It gives you the opportunity to meet and chat with lovely people who happen to speak a different language. But being bilingual can also help you step up your romance game in another way. A Babbel survey found that 71% of Americans and 61% of Brits believe speaking more than one language makes a person seem more attractive. And 9 out of 10 people polled said they would learn a new language in the pursuit of love.

In addition to expanding your relationship opportunities, bilingualism can make your existing (and future) relationships even stronger. Another University of Chicago study measured levels of empathy in bilingual and monolingual children. About 75% of the kids who were bilingual (or had exposure to a second language) completed a task in a way that showed heightened understanding of another person's perspective. This natural knack for empathy is probably related to the cognitive advantages described in the first section. A strong mind gives you the ability to see things from someone else's point of view.

Experiential benefits - Taking travel to the next level

Traveling is an incredible way to explore other cultures and geographies, and if you have the opportunity to do so, take advantage of it. While it's certainly possible to enjoy a trip to another country without knowing the language, being able to speak with locals can make a good experience unforgettable.

Imagine visiting Italy, for example. You don't speak a lick of Italian. When it's time to order dinner at a restaurant, you select a pasta dish with a familiar-sounding name. You make a wild guess on the wine. You say "hello" to a friendly looking couple on the train, but they don't speak much English so the conversation doesn't go beyond a greeting and a smile. Or worse yet, you're met with a blank stare.

Now, picture this: You've learned some conversational Italian before you go. At dinner you discover a dish that's brand new to you - and it's delicious. You're able to study the wine list and ask the server for a recommendation. On the train you make friends with a genial couple, chatting with them in Italian and learning their favorite hidden gems in the city.

Simply taking some time to learn the language before your trip has made all the difference, giving you an experience that's more authentic and more rewarding. As Nelson Mandela once said, "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."

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Learning a language is a little like going to the gym. Everyone says you should do it. You tell yourself you should do it. The difficulty lies in actually getting motivated to follow through, to sign up for that spin class, to hit the weight machines, to open your language learning app.

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The Bitter Fight Over the Benefits of Bilingualism

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For decades, some psychologists have claimed that bilinguals have better mental control. Their work is now being called into question.

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"The 5 Worst Things About Being Bilingual"

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"The 5 Worst Things About Being Bilingual"

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This article discovers if there are any negatives to being bilingual.

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Real-life conversations start with stories that inspire.

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What does it mean to be bilingual? | Babbel Voices

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Choose the language you would like to learn: https://go.babbel.com/awy-engall-bv20/default Read the article here: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-bilingual-brain What does it mean to be bilingual? Do you have to grow up learning two languages from a young age, or speak without an accent to be considered bilingual?