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TWO LANGUAGES ARE
A BRILLIANT WAY TO GO
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I remember it well. I was 20 years old, and I had met my
soon-to-be wife while travelling in Greece. She was a French-Canadian from
Quebec, and I was a gringo from California.
When I got home, I was telling my wise father about this new
love of my life. "She's beautiful, fun and sweet," I gushed. And
then, as icing on the cake, I added, "and she's smart-she's fluent in
both English and French!"
He looked at me with a strong hint of skepticism. "Do
not," counseled my wise father, "confuse someone who is bilingual
with someone who is intelligent."
Oh. That put a bit of a damper on things. He hadn't met her
yet, but he was already bursting my bubble. Maybe she wasn't as brilliant as
I thought.
But then an article came out that proved my wise old father
wrong. The article claimed that bilingual brains are simply more efficient
than monolingual brains (like mine) because "there is constant toggling
that comes from having to choose between two words for every object or
concept. Learning a second language can produce a nimbler mind."
I couldn't wait to tell my father. Unfortunately, I just read
the article last week, 44 years after our conversation and 18 years after my
father's death. On the other hand, my wife was still around, so I figured I
should let her know.
"You're smarter than I thought!" I said, slapping a
copy of the article down in front of her the other day. "And my father
was wrong about you."
She looked up from her crossword puzzle, which she was
struggling with, poor girl. "What did your father say?"
"He said just because you spoke two languages didn't mean
you were smart," I answered, motioning again to the headlines of the
article, which proved otherwise. "If it's any consolation, he hadn't
met you when he said it."
"That's comforting. And now you think I'm smart because of
this article?"
I may not be smart, but I'm not stupid. I wasn't about to fall
in her trap. "I always thought you were smart. But this article makes
you seem even smarter, just like I thought when I met you 44 years
ago."
She figured out 16 down on the crossword puzzle while I talked.
Brilliant. She was multi-tasking, just like bilingual people are supposed to
do well, according to the article.
Finally, she glanced at the article, skimming it quickly. I
could see she was realizing her potential as she flipped the page and read
about bilingual seniors being faster and more accurate than monolinguals at
familiar task-switching tests. And she beamed when she read that being
bilingual could reduce the chance of developing dementia.
"Looks like I'm going to leave you in the dust as we get
older," she remarked.
I saw an opening. "Speak French to me," I pleaded.
"Show me how smart you are."
She went back to her crossword puzzle. "Nice try."
I'm always trying to get her to speak French. I don't
understand much of it from my two years of high school classes, but I sure
love the sound. And like most husbands, I'm not always listening to the
content of what she's saying in English, anyway. So if I miss most of the
translation, it's kind of par for the course.
"Come on, throw me a bone. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"
I asked, hoping to get her started.
"Non," she replied, in perfect French. "And will
you come up with some other phrase that doesn't come from a song, please.
I'm tired of that one."
It looked as though I'd have to wait for our annual trip to
Quebec to hear her string together those melodic French words in sentence
after sentence, leaving me once again mesmerized by the language of love.
But I wasn't giving up. "Je t'aime," I purred in my
best French accent, which sounds Chinese.
"Same to you," she replied, knocking out 62 across
and finishing the crossword puzzle.
"Tu es tres intelligente," I said, hoping I had the
grammar right. For once.
"You should have started learning French at birth, like
me," she answered as she left me at the table. "Then maybe you'd
have a working brain."
If I was bilingual, I'm sure I would have come up with a good
retort. At least I would have had double the chance.
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