9 Amazing Benefits Of Learning Two Languages At Once
an uplifting, inspiring and not-at-all depressing end-of-year list
The other night, I dreamt that I was being interviewed to get admitted into a Finnish kindergarten (which makes sense considering that my knowledge of Finnish comes mostly from children’s cartoons). The interview was conducted by another five-year-old. I don’t remember if I passed it, but I do remember that I spoke Finnish in that dream. It was exhilarating.
When I’m awake though, I’m not always entirely sure why I’m doing what I’m doing.
Sometimes, especially in light of the world’s events, this whole “12 languages in 12 months” thing feels like the most meaningless project in the history of meaningless projects.
And sometimes — especially in light of the world’s events — it feels like the only sensible way forward.
So in the interest of training myself to look at the bright side of things (and to give me a boost of motivation for the remaining 11 months of this project1), I decided to take a moment and list all the benefits (that is, in addition to being able to speak fluent Finnish in my dreams) of learning two languages at the same time.
All the Amazing Things that Have Happened Since I Started This Journey
I now routinely spell “finish” with two n’s (as in “I’ll just finnish watching this Thai video and then come to the dog park.”
I started saying wang instead of “one”. As in “You can only have…..err… wâng more minute of screen time!”… and I, like, have to pause before I say it to decide what’s the right tone in this case.
I started speaking Russian to Maya more. Russian is my mother tongue but I made the decision when we moved from the UK to Israel four years ago to speak English to her at home because it’s important to me that she be able to read Mo Willems in the original language and watch South Park without subtitles when she grows up. But it’s always been a little weird. Even though English is the language I write in (and mostly think in), with my kids I prefer to speak Russian. Whenever I’m too tired or too annoyed, I switch to Russian. I have been doing it more in the past month. I think it’s my brain rebelling from spending all this energy on all these foreign languages. (I’m not sure how or why this is a good thing — Maya certainly doesn’t think it is — but I’ll just put it here.)
It comes in handy when communicating with my 14-year-old. He took me on a trip to Tel Aviv (yes I’ve reached the age when my kid takes me places) to show me the new subway line built earlier this year. It was one of those rare one-on-one bonding times that don’t happen that often anymore. We talked. His special talent is being able to say any sentence backward (he can sing backward too, it’s real creepy) but since I don’t understand anything he talks into an app that then plays it for me in reverse. I replied in Thai, and let Google Translate translate for him. It’s a really good system and I highly recommend it to all parents of teenagers. It creates just enough of a language barrier to safely breach uncomfortable topics. Also, it makes you look crazy enough that people don’t sit next to you on the train. Win-win-win.
They don’t fight. Finnish and Thai I mean. Not my kids. I thought they would but somehow, they’ve decided to peacefully settle into different regions of my brain.2 Maybe that’s because they don’t have much in common.
When I just started learning Thai, somehow speaking Finnish became easier. I tried to find some research on this phenomenon but I couldn’t find anything (if anyone has any pointers I’d be curious to know). It was almost like my brain couldn’t afford to be stressed about two foreign languages at the same time so it downgraded Finnish into “a language that’s not foreign to us but that we just happen to speak very badly.”
Random Oji-Cree words started popping into my head. Oji-Cree is an Algonquian language (unrelated to either Finnish or Thai) that I studied for my doctoral and postdoctoral work. I haven’t had a chance to use it in at least 10 years but something about those long Finnish vowels (Oji-Cree also has long and short vowels) must have reactivated it.
I have found conjugation tables to be a natural alternative to anti-anxiety meds. Just look at this:
I barely read the news anymore. I’ve been too busy trying to understand how and when to use the gazillion different forms of the Finnish interrogative pronoun kuka ‘who’ (see above). If I do read/listen to anything at all on the internet, it’s usually to figure out how things are being said rather than what is being said. My rule of thumb is: if I can understand it too easily then it’s probably detrimental to my mental health.
That’s it. This is all the great stuff that happened to me and will likely happen to anyone who ventures to learn two languages at the same time.
If you’re curious about the practical side of things (as opposed to the purely inspirational side), maybe I’ll write a longer post about it later. For now, all I can say is:
I don’t have a system that I’m aware of. I don’t track my time or activities and I have no idea how much time I spend on each language. I do whatever I feel like doing at any given moment. Which sometimes means watching the same 3-minute video about Grace’s pet budgie over and over again, for two days in a row. Possibly memorizing it (more on that later).
I was going to say that I’m so happy that this horrible year is almost over, but then I realized it would be too optimistic of me. Because let’s not kid ourselves, it will only get worse.3
Might as well learn all the languages before it’s too late.
OK, I know, I totally started learning both Finnish and Thai more than a month ago, but whatever. I hereby officially declare December to have been Month One.
That’s not technically true. I just like to imagine them settling in separate appartments in my head.
Way to ruin everyone’s holiday mood, right? No no, this is my way of saying let’s all enjoy the moment while it lasts (or carpe diem as we say in Latin), and Merry Christmas if you celebrate! (No, seriously.)
Love the bit about you and your teenager. That's a great essay! :-)
"I don’t have a system that I’m aware of. I don’t track my time or activities and I have no idea how much time I spend on each language. I do whatever I feel like doing at any given moment." --> basically my system :).