5 Ways Bilingualism Strengthens Your Brain

4 min readMar 25, 2023

Learning a second language is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Though to some English speakers, it might seem pointless since English is the world’s lingua franca. Also, with AI becoming smarter, soon you won’t have to worry about Google Translate misinterpreting ‘excited’ for ‘aroused’ when you are innocently trying to converse with a barman in your latest vacation spot.

The truth is most people are multilingual. And it’s not just because they are trying to avoid face-reddening situations. Speaking another language is like looking at the world through a new lens. Besides discovering new cultures, accessing job opportunities, forming new relationships, or finally watching your favourite k-drama without subtitles, being bilingual might actually change your brain.

1. Improved Concentration

There is a lot of debate about our dwindling attention spans because of the evil social media. Where else can you go from scrolling through a heated political debate on Twitter to watching a tutorial on the best way to cut a cake into six equal pieces? Learning how to resist distractions is truly an invaluable skill.

And according to research, being bilingual can improve your focus. Let’s say you’re an English-German bilingual. Neither one of these languages is ever ‘turned off’ even if at the moment you’re only using one of them. Both languages are constantly competing with one another, and your brain learns to ‘silence’ one of them when needed. Therefore, your attention and inhibition skills are more developed than in monolingual speakers.

This is also why bilinguals are better at task-switching and multitasking.

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2. Better Memory

Research also suggests that this competitiveness between the two languages leads to a greater working memory capacity. Working memory is like a repository where we temporarily hold information needed for cognitive tasks like mental math, remembering a phone number, etc.

The bilingual brain is continuously using working memory while mediating the two languages, which naturally trains and enhances its capacity.

3. Boosted Creativity

Studies have also shown that bilinguals tend to be more creative than monolinguals. Researchers conclude that it’s because of enhanced executive functioning but also because bilinguals often have more experience with diverse surroundings. For example, children who speak one language at home and another in school are exposed to two culturally and linguistically varied environments.

Code-switching, which is the mixing of two or more languages during a speech, can also lead to creating novel and imaginative expressions or ideas. A study showed that bilinguals who frequently used code-switching did better at creativity tasks than bilinguals that didn’t combine languages as often.

4. Rational Decision-making

Speaking another language can help you be more sensible. A study conducted by the University of Chicago has found that thinking about problems in a second language can help prune your emotions a bit before making a decision.

The study found that people’s aversion to loss which normally stops them from taking attractive financial risks is much more diminished when thinking about it in a second language. They were able to distance themselves and make less emotion-based decisions.

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5. Slowing Down Cognitive Decline

With more and more candles on the cake, our brain, at some point, stops being as sharp. But there are things we can do to prevent our brain from becoming blunt too quickly, like eating healthy, exercising, being social (unfortunately), and speaking more than one language can also help.

Being bilingual contributes to our brain’s cognitive reserve. Our cognitive reserve is responsible for some major tasks like using new cognitive networks when some of them get damaged during ageing, etc. A study from 2019 also revealed that being bilingual can help delay the onset of diseases like dementia or Alzheimer’s by 4–5 years.

Being bilingual won’t necessarily increase your IQ points, even though it will definitely seem like it to your friends when you start casually chatting in French with a sommelier named Louis on your wine-tasting excursion. And even though there are some differences in results based on the age of acquisition, it will still strengthen your cognitive skills, keep your brain active, and illuminate new observations about your own language and culture.

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