For those of us confined to knowing just one language, learning an additional dialect can feel impossible.
Many bilinguals, however, marvel at the language skills of multilinguals (individuals fluent in three or more languages). Interestingly, a new Japanese study reports on some ground-breaking neurological evidence which indicates lingual skills are additive. In other words, the more languages you speak, the easier it will be to learn another.
These findings potentially explain why one person fluent in English and Spanish may be in awe of someone who can speak German, Russian, and English. Meanwhile, that trilingual individual can’t believe it when he or she meets someone else who can speak German, Italian, French, English, and Russian.
Researchers measured the brain activity of 21 bilingual and 28 multilingual study participants as each person attempted to decipher words and sentences written and spoken in Kazakh — a language no participant was familiar with at all. All subjects were native Japanese speakers, with most also being fluent in English.
Some of the multilingual participants could speak up to five languages including Chinese, Russian, Korean, and German. Sure enough, the more languages an individual knew well, the faster they learned Kazakh.