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“New research into the neurobiology of bilingualism has found that being fluent in two languages, particularly from early childhood, not only enhances a person’s ability to concentrate, but might also protect against the onset of dementia and other age-related cognitive decline.
Scientists have discovered that bilingual adults have denser gray matter (brain tissue packed with information-processing nerve cells and fibers), especially in the brain’s left hemisphere, where most language and communication skills are controlled. The effect is strongest in people who learned a second language before the age of five and in those who are most proficient at their second language. This finding suggests that being bilingual from an early age significantly alters the brain’s structure.” (Society for Neuroscience, 2008)
That's a long quote but it does say quite compactly what other sources confirm - that  learning another language, early and well, improves brain structure and function permanently, in a way that learning other things may not. Surely enhancing the ability to concentrate is something which will have benefits in every area of learning. Rather than being a distraction from "Key Competencies", "Basics" or "Core Subjects", early bilingualism can be seen as "sharpening the axe" before spending the day chopping down a really big tree!

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Of course, it doesn't help to be vague about the practicalites of providing early bilingualism.
This chart shows what can be achieved in the first 100 hours of  education, using different target languages.*
As you can see, the benefits of bilingualism - improved concentration and resistance to dementia in later life - are fully realized by schools offering 100 hours of Esperanto, but not by the other choices.
After the first hundred hours, the choice is wide open again - more so than it was, but that's tomorrow's post!

*The figures are derived from a number of sources including Alex McAndrew, former director of Sydney University's language learning unit, and the US department of defense. They are for motivated adults, and children take a little longer (wonder why? ask me in the comments below!)

 


Comments

Sinjoro ENG
12/14/2011 04:15

Saluton.

It is a very wonderful article. But there is no comparison of learning English with 100 hours. Though people know the major language in Australia is English, many still do not know how much for English for 100 hours of learning,especially those live outside the English speaking countries.

I would appreciate the new picture of that so that it is easier for me to promote Esperanto in my country, Malaysia.

Thanks for the article.

Regards

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Penny Vos link
12/14/2011 12:33

Saluton Sinjoro Eng,

Thanks for your comment :-)
The pie charts show how long various languages take for monolingual English-speakers to learn.

How long English takes to learn as a second language depends on what the first language is.

As a rough guide, you could assume that the linguistic distance is the same in either direction so that the graphs give an indication of how much English can learned in 100 hours, by speakers of the other languages.

If your first language is Mandarin, I would expect that English would take over 2000 hours to learn to the basic working level shown in these graphs.

Unfortunately, I don't think that learning Esperanto first will reduce English-learning time to as little as 100 hours, because Esperanto is quick to learn by design, not just by a symmetrical similarity to English.

Researchers at Asian University in Bangkok may soon have more to tell us about how much Esperanto helps Thai children to learn English.

Best regards,
Penny

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Keith Bowes link
12/15/2011 20:02

I've read that an English speaker can learn Esperanto in one year, a Chinese speaker can learn Esperanto in two years, and a Chinese speaker can learn English in ten years. I'd assume that part of the extra time it takes for a Chinese speaker to learn Esperanto is related to the alphabet, which wouldn't plague a speaker of Malay (which AFAIK uses the Latin alphabet, same as Esperanto).

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Sinjoro ENG link
12/17/2011 04:14

Saluton

Thanks for the info.

Here would like to share with the readers that the Chinese speakers now do not have problems with the Latin alphabet a,b,c etc because the Chinese mainland had changed the pronunciation symbols from zhuyin ( 注音) to hanyu pinyin (汉语拼音). The hanyu pinyin is using the a,b,c etc.

It is the Taiwanese have to learn the a, bo, co and of course the Tamil users in my country or Thai language users etc that they have to learn the a, bo, co ktp.

Even learning this simple a.bo,co. I think it would take more than one month, perhaps, not more than 20 hours.

Good luck to the Esperanto users and hope that more research would surface. I am still keeping my fingers crossed on the research of Esperanto could help the autism kids learn better. It was reported by the ex Chicogo Esperanto Association President Tony in the change dot com.

Regards

SE

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