DEMENTIA

I have just read an article that says that people who constantly switch from one language to another have a greatly reduced chance of getting dementia in old age. Since I am one such person (I speak English at home and to some of my classes, and Danish the rest of the time), that cheered me up enormously.

Switching in this context is not the same as being bilingual. You could. for instance, be bilingual, but never (or hardly ever) speak the second language. An example would be if you were an adult, bilingual in English and Greenlandic, lived in London, and were married to a Brit though without children; in that case, you would be unlikely to speak much Greenlandic.

The idea is that in speaking one language and switching to another, you are constantly choosing between two ways of saying something, picking one and rejecting the other. This rejection is similar to shutting out background noise such as traffic, drilling, other conversations etc. It requires concentration and mental effort. And it is this effort, over many years, that reduces the chances of getting dementia. The brain is like any other muscle, it needs exercising; and the more exercise it gets, the more healthy it is likely to be.  

So there.

Walter Blotscher