Working with a globl workforce, I have had plenty of opportuniy to discuss various aspects of learning and working in multiple languages. Sometimes when I am speaking my native language (English), something I want to say seems to fit only with a German word rather than the one I would normally use. And once when I was learning German, all of a sudden in the middle of a German sentence I injected a Spanish word. Yes, it fit the context, but I didn’t realize for a moment what I had done.
I have had many conversations with people who are bringing up children in a multilingual environment. Some parents worry that a child learning two laguages in parallel from the very start will have a harder time speaking properly in either language. And what about chilren in trilingual environments. It happens more and more frequently that parents who each have a different native language are on assignment or living in a country with yet another different language.
Now I can direct those people — and you — to a very information TED presentation of less than five minutes which talks about learning languages at different stages in life. Communications consultant Mia Nacamulli put this video together entitled The Benefits of a Multilingual Brain. She details the three types of bilingual brains and shows how knowing more than one language keeps your brain healthy, complex and actively engaged. Watch it here.