Multilingualism

[20] This device, according to Chomsky, wears out over time, and is not normally available by puberty, which he uses to explain the poor results some adolescents and adults have when learning aspects of a second language (L2).[23] Foreign students who have mastered syntactic structures have still demonstrated an inability to compose adequate themes, term papers, theses, and dissertations.Receptively bilingual persons, especially children, may rapidly achieve oral fluency by spending extended time in situations where they are required to speak the language that they theretofore understood only passively.Sequential acquisition is a more complex and lengthier process, although there is no indication that non-language-delayed children end up less proficient than simultaneous bilinguals, so long as they receive adequate input in both languages.Students who receive bidirectional bilingual instruction where equal proficiency in both languages is required will perform at an even higher level.The most important factor in spontaneous, total L1 loss appears to be age; in the absence of neurological dysfunction or injury, only young children typically are at risk of forgetting their native language and switching to a new one.[44] Individuals who are highly proficient in two or more languages have been reported to have a certain very marginally enhanced or no different executive function,[45][46] and older onset for dementia.[62] Several investigations have compared auditory processing abilities of monolingual and bilingual individuals using tasks such as gap detection, temporal ordering, pitch pattern recognition etc.As human reasoning is shaped by two distinct modes of thought: one that is systematic, analytical and cognition-intensive, and another that is fast, unconscious and emotionally charged, it was believed that a second language provides a useful cognitive distance from automatic processes, promoting analytical thought and reducing unthinking, emotional reaction.[66] A study published a year later found that switching to a second language seems to exempt bilinguals from social norms and constraints, such as political correctness.[67] In 2014, another study showed that people using a foreign language are more likely to make utilitarian decisions when faced with moral dilemmas, such as the trolley problem and its variations.For the related Switch Track dilemma, however, the use of a foreign language presented no significant influence on the choices participants made.[40][69] Some studies have found that groups of multilingual individuals get higher average scores on tests for certain personality traits such as cultural empathy, open-mindedness and social initiative.[39][78] The term savant, in a general sense, may refer to any individual with a natural or innate talent for a particular field; however, people diagnosed with savant syndrome are specifically individuals with significant mental disabilities who demonstrate certain profound and prodigious capacities or certain abilities far in excess of what would usually be considered normal,[79][80] occasionally including a prodigious capacity for languages.[81] In 1991, for example, linguists Neil Smith and Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli described a man, named Christopher, who learned sixteen languages even with a non-verbal IQ between 40 and 70.[82] Despite being institutionalized because he was unable to take care of himself, Christopher had a verbal IQ of 89, could speak English with no impairment, and could learn subsequent languages with apparent ease.[citation needed] To a certain extent, this situation also exists between Dutch and Afrikaans, although everyday contact is fairly rare because of the distance between the two respective communities.For example, in Czechoslovakia, it was common to hear two people talking on television each speaking a different language without any difficulty understanding each other.According to Hewitt (2008)[full citation needed] entrepreneurs in London from Poland, China, and Turkey tend to use English for communication with customers, suppliers, and banks but their native languages for work tasks and other social purposes.Meanwhile, Japan ranks 53rd out of 100 countries in 2019 EF English Proficiency Index, amid calls for this to improve in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.In Singapore, bilingualism is embraced in the education system with English as the medium of instruction and the official mother tongue taught as a second language.A study directed by Hill and van Zyl (2002) shows that in South Africa young black engineers used English most often for communication and documentation.The expansion of the European Union with its open labour market has provided opportunities both for well-trained professionals and unskilled workers to move to new countries to seek employment.[101] The bilingual song cycles "there..." and "Sing, Poetry" on the 2011 contemporary classical album Troika consist of musical settings of Russian poems with their English self-translation by Joseph Brodsky and Vladimir Nabokov, respectively.[106] An often quoted passage, from her collection of stories and essays entitled Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, states:"Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate.[107]Multilingual novels by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie display phrases in Igbo with translations, as in her early works Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun.[107] The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is an example of Chicano literature that leaves Spanish words and phrases untranslated (though italicized) throughout the text.[108] American novelists who use foreign languages (outside of their own cultural heritage) for literary effect include Cormac McCarthy, who uses untranslated Spanish and Spanglish in his fiction.Contemporary multilingual Latino American poets include Giannina Braschi, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña.[112] The 2021 Indian documentary film Dreaming of Words traces the life and work of Njattyela Sreedharan, a fourth standard drop-out, who compiled a multilingual dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages: Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu.