BBC future - How our brains cope with speaking more than one language

[rdearman]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2022 ... your-brain

[iguanamon]

Since rdearman hasn't provided a description or an excerpt, here's what his link goes to:
How our brains cope with speaking more than one language

Speaking a second or even a third language can bring obvious advantages, but occasionally the words, grammar and even accents can get mixed up. This can reveal surprising things about how our brains work.

I'm standing in line at my local bakery in Paris, apologising to an incredibly confused shopkeeper. He's just asked how many pastries I would like, and completely inadvertently, I responded in Mandarin instead of French. I'm equally baffled: I'm a dominant English speaker, and haven't used Mandarin properly in years. And yet, here in this most Parisian of settings, it somehow decided to reassert itself.

Multilinguals commonly juggle the languages they know with ease. But sometimes, accidental slip-ups can occur. And the science behind why this happens is revealing surprising insights into how our brains work. ...

[Le Baron]

it seems like they inhibit the dominant language so much that they actually are slower to speak in certain contexts," she says.

I suffer from this periodically. Sometimes it happens a lot, then goes away for a while. Probably when I'm actively reading in English, a book or something, and focusing on English and have watched more media, it subsides. However if I've been doing a lot of things in Dutch or French, English suffers badly. Clicking my fingers for words - often happens on the telephone to my brother - and also speaking and writing sentences with somewhat foreign-like grammar, like this sort of thing: It seems to me not true (Het lijkt mij niet waar).

When writing posts on here I often have to go back and remove multiple instances of 'of' and replace it with 'or' and words like 'huis/house', 'beter/better'. Dutch is the most interfering language for me. I almost never mix up French/English. One thing happens between all three though, when an idea can be expressed in a single word rather than a string of words or a phrase, from any language, it's often the first to come to mind.

However, automatically responding in a different language to the one in which I've been addressed rarely happens, if ever.

[rdearman]

Since rdearman hasn't provided a description or an excerpt, here's what his link goes to:
How our brains cope with speaking more than one language

Speaking a second or even a third language can bring obvious advantages, but occasionally the words, grammar and even accents can get mixed up. This can reveal surprising things about how our brains work.

I'm standing in line at my local bakery in Paris, apologising to an incredibly confused shopkeeper. He's just asked how many pastries I would like, and completely inadvertently, I responded in Mandarin instead of French. I'm equally baffled: I'm a dominant English speaker, and haven't used Mandarin properly in years. And yet, here in this most Parisian of settings, it somehow decided to reassert itself.

Multilinguals commonly juggle the languages they know with ease. But sometimes, accidental slip-ups can occur. And the science behind why this happens is revealing surprising insights into how our brains work. ...

Sorry, I was on my phone when I saw this.

[Iversen]

What's the problem?

[Le Baron]

What's the problem?

I was hoping you'd have the answer to the problem. I feel cheated!

[leosmith]

What's the problem?

The brain is not perfect. But AI will have it covered shortly.

[Le Baron]

Where did I put my Google glasses...?

[Henkkles]

I studied psycholinguistics and cognitive science at the university a while back and if memory serves, L1(s) are acquired and integrated into the brain quite deeply, whereas additional language learning and processing remains quite cortical. This means that additional languages make use of many of the same structures, and the right language coming out at the right time depends on suppressing the irrelevant language(s). Sometimes this suppression fails and you get the situation the author describes. Suppression is a very active and cognitively demanding process, analogous to focusing intently (that is, actively suppressing irrelevant information as well) and when it falters you get "leaks".

You can get "leaking" between L1 and additional language as well. I was just on the phone with my mother while shopping and I said "kiitos" to the cashier instead of "tack" heh.

[Iversen]

I can't give a solution if I can't see the problem. But maybe I owe you some more details about the lack of a problem.

The situation is as follows: I know x languages at different levels, and through these I can also access materials in some that are related to the ones I know - like Faroese through Danish and Icelandic or Sardinian through Italian and other Romance languages. If I run through the program list on my TV or a video list in Youtube I see items in different languages, and if I choose to watch SuperQuark on Raiuno then I'll hear Italian and read Italian subtitles, and my brain will switch to Italian mode. If I watch QI on BBC then it will switch to Anglophone mode. I can choose to search for Youtube videos in for instance Dutch if I feel I have neglected that language, and hurray, it also has a Dutch mode available. If I choose to watch a video in Albanian then it won't switch because my Albanian is too rudimentary. However in all those cases where I use materials in a certain language for which I have a fully functioning mode ready it will switch to that mode, and it won't complain - so where is the problem?

Possible problem: my brain may complain a little bit if I choose to watch something in Greek because I haven't thought enough and listened enough yet to have a fully functioning Greek mode in my brain, and that is of course a problem because other languages then will try to step into the semi-void - but as I have understood the topic investigated by BBC it has to do with competition between languages where you do have functional modes ready. And whenever that's the case I experience that they step in and out of function as the situation requires without causing problems.

The situation these days is that I probably think as much in English as in my native Danish. That can be seen as a problem because I see myself as a proud Dane who ought to think in Danish, but I can still tell the English apparatus to shut its f***ing mouth up up and leave me alone to think in Danish. With other languages they step into function according to the materials I'm using at a certain moment, but I can also decide to think in a certain language, for instance during the hour and half it takes to drive from my home to that of my mother - however this will generally be a conscious decision, not something that suddenly takes over my poor ailing mind. In other words I'm still in control so once again: where is the problem?

Could interference between different languages be a problem? Well, in principle yes: if I don't remember a word in for instance Catalan then I might use a Castilian or Portuguese one instead, and then my Catalan would be polluted. But if this happened during a conversation I doubt that anyone would object, and the conversation would not come to a screeching halt because of one missing word. And if it happens in my head no one will ever know. So yes, I have to study to minimize such cases, but if it's a problem it's not one that causes me to lie sleepless at night. I just have to study some more, and I already do that. So where is the problem?