{"id":350,"date":"2009-08-24T10:12:22","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T10:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=350"},"modified":"2009-08-23T20:09:53","modified_gmt":"2009-08-23T20:09:53","slug":"bilinguals-cant-turn-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/24\/bilinguals-cant-turn-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Bilinguals can&#8217;t &#8216;turn off&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/greenberg-art.com\/.Illustrations\/.Humorous\/Bilingual.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/Bilingual-300x178.jpg\" alt=\"Bilingual kids\" title=\"Bilingual kids\" width=\"300\" height=\"178\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-351\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/Bilingual-300x178.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/Bilingual.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>I found an interesting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2009\/08\/090818130435.htm\">article<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/\">ScienceDaily.com<\/a> reporting on research that says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/bilingual\">bilingual<\/a> people can\u2019t \u2018turn off\u2019 their second language when not using it. <\/p>\n<p>Not being bilingual myself, I have always assumed there is some kind of switch in the brain when you choose to speak in a different language. This appears not to be the case: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>According to a recent study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, it appears humans are not actually capable of &#8220;turning off&#8221; another language entirely. Psychologists Eva Van Assche, Wouter Duyck, Robert Hartsuiker and Kevin Diependaele from Ghent University found that knowledge of a second language actually has a continuous impact on native-language reading.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article goes on to say:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>According to the psychologists, it is the overlap of the two languages that speeds up the brain&#8217;s activation of cognates. So even though participants did not need to use their second language to read in their native-language, they still were unable to simply &#8220;turn it off.&#8221; It appears, then, that not only is a second language always active, it has a direct impact on reading another language&#8211;even when the reader is more proficient in one language than another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I\u2019d be interested to hear any anecdotes from bilinguals about their experience with this. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found an interesting article on ScienceDaily.com reporting on research that says bilingual people can\u2019t \u2018turn off\u2019 their second language when not using it. Not being bilingual myself, I have always assumed there is some kind of switch in the brain when you choose to speak in a different language. This appears not to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,1],"tags":[192,51,193,154,191],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-acquisition","category-uncategorized","tag-bilinguals","tag-language","tag-psychology","tag-research","tag-science-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":353,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions\/353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}