Why Your Native-Speaking Brain is Lazy—But Surprisingly Efficient
MIT scientists find new clues on how the brain processes multiple languages
I speak five languages and teach three: two modern ones and a dead one, Latin. Until recently, I thought my polyglot brain was always in overdrive, but a new study says otherwise.
There’s no consensus over how many languages you have to speak to be considered a polyglot. Some experts say three others argue at least five.
I’ll not get into that discussion, but what I can share as a linguist is that “polyglot” is a word derived from the Greek polyglōttos, with poly- meaning many and glōtta meaning language.
My linguistic background
I’m a native Portuguese speaker and my second language is English. I learned the latter by myself even before I had my first formal contact with the language at school at age 10.
It’s common knowledge that children’s brains are hard-wired to learn. However, the idea that “kids absorb language like sponges” should be taken with a grain of salt.
Children do not just “pick up” a language: They need a strongly supportive and rich environment.¹
Learning a new language doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a strenuous process that spans many years, but the secret here is to start as soon as you can.
All languages are complex, even if some are harder to tackle than others.
Did you know that a child’s brain grows approximately 80% in the first three years of life alone?
Even at such a young age, a human child is a Hyper-sensitive being, and it’s vital to provide the necessary stimuli to promote their full potential.
In an increasingly global world, being bilingual or polyglot can give your child an edge, so it’s crucial to provide them with a rich environment while all these changes are happening in the brain.
I taught myself English by watching subtitled cartoons on TV. Still, I first needed to learn how to read. As it required a proper formal education, that only happened after I was five.
So, I’m fluent in English, albeit with a slight Portuguese accent. This happens because, around the age of seven, children lose the ability to make completely new sounds.
That explains why so many of my non-native friends have trouble properly rolling the “R” in “Rui.”
Back in the 1980s, the doctrine said that children should not be exposed to a second language before age 11. Thus current thought has been debunked and now here in Portugal, our children start learning English in elementary school.
As a language teacher, I was among those who advocated for this change over the years. I firmly believe that a child who begin learning their second language even before they are six years old will still have time to phonetically expand their vocal cords potential.
Because language in the first 10 years of life is such an important basis for the achievement of academic and social skills, it is no luxury to reflect a little more on just what elements play an important role in learning a language, whether it is one, two, or more. (…) Investing in a child’s bilingualism or multilingualism, after all, should yield a high return.¹
The MIT research
With five languages under my belt, I’m at the low end of polyglots. Did you know some people can speak a plethora of languages?
Historically, Ziad Fazah once held the Guinness World Record for the most languages spoken by one person, capping out at 58 languages, and Sir John Bowring is known for having a linguistic range spanning 200 languages while being able to speak 100.
Recently, a group of 25 polyglots, (including 16 hyper-polyglots with knowledge of 10+ language) underwent an experiment using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they listened to passages in various languages.
The team led by Evelina Fedorenko, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was trying to understand how the central nervous system processes five or more languages.
What they noticed was how activity increased in the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in the brain’s language processing network when these polyglots listened to the languages in which they were most proficient, compared to those in which they were less fluent.
This happens because when dealing with a language we are quite fluent this opens new pathways to more “complex linguistic operations.”
The magnitude of the language network’s response scales with comprehensibility (except for the native language)²
“You can access all the meanings of words from memory, construct phrases and sentences from individual words, and access complex meanings at the sentence level,” added Fedorenko.
However, there was a striking exception to the rule.
Why is it that while listening to their native language, many participants observed their brains becoming lazy and displaying a slothful response
It’s interesting how, in some cases, only a small part of the brain’s language network was activated.
So, the answer to why this polyglot brain reacts differently to speech in its native tongue seems to be linked to a combination of expertise and efficiency.
Closing remarks
If you’ve read this story, you probably already know that the human brain operates on about the same wattage as a standard iPhone charger.
So being a native Portuguese speaker means I can take shortcuts or even skip steps with minimal expenditure on brain power.
The research doesn’t stop here, and it will be interesting to read more about this topic in the future. This research focused on polyglots who began studying their non-native languages as teenagers or adults.
However, the plan is to expand the study to people who learned multiple languages from a very young age, and this aligns perfectly with my reasoning in the first part of this piece, as this will help scientists “disentangle the effects of proficiency versus age of acquisition on brain responses.”
“You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.”
Geoffrey Willans
Meanwhile, if you are bilingual or a polyglot, I’d love to know more about your experience learning multiple languages.
Author’s note:
This piece was first published in The Academic.
Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, and Babel.
Main references:
De Houwer, Annick: Two or More Languages in Early Childhood: Some General Points and Practical Recommendations, 1999.
Fedorenko, Evelina, et al.: Functional characterization of the language network of polyglots and hyperpolyglots with precision fMRI, bioRxiv, 2023. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.19.524657
I was never much good at learning a new language, but I had excellent pronunciation. I think it's a fluke of being hared-of-hearing. French, German, Italian, American Sign Language. The last has been the hardest because I have to unlearn 'physical grammar rules.'