Spanish (or Chinese, or Arabic) for Sanity

What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American. So goes the old joke. But now you can say that monolingual people are likelier to experience mental deterioration at a younger age. Scientists from the Rotman Research Institute, at Canada's Baycrest Research Centre for ...

What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American. So goes the old joke. But now you can say that monolingual people are likelier to experience mental deterioration at a younger age.

What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American. So goes the old joke. But now you can say that monolingual people are likelier to experience mental deterioration at a younger age.

Scientists from the Rotman Research Institute, at Canada's Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain, found that people who used two languages throughout their lives were able to delay the onset of dementia by four years.

The researchers determined that the mean age of onset of dementia symptoms in the monolingual group was 71.4 years, while the bilingual group was 75.5 years. This difference remained even after considering the possible effect of cultural differences, immigration, formal education, employment and even gender as influencers in the results.

So does this mean I would have started deteriorating at age 18 instead of 22, had my parents not inculcated me as a child?  In all seriousness, the Canadian study is another reason why more Americans need to learn foreign languages.

Christine Y. Chen is a senior editor at Foreign Policy.

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