We’ve heard a lot about the cognitive benefits of bilingualism. But then we’ve also seen a lot of the supposed benefits get walked back.
What are the facts? Does being bilingual provide any cognitive advantage? What factors does this depend on? What is bilingualism anyway?
We’re talking to researcher Iryna Khodos on this episode of Because Language.
Listen to this episode
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Become a Patron!Show notes
Washington Redskins name change imminent: report
https://www.fox5dc.com/sports/washington-redskins-name-change-imminent-report#
Washington Redskins name change: ‘Warriors’ leading contender for new name ahead of 2020, per report – CBSSports.com
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/washington-redskins-name-change-warriors-leading-contender-for-new-name-ahead-of-2020-per-report/
History of the word ‘redskins’ and how it became a source of controversy – The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/07/03/redskins-name-change/
Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/dthought
WA Government confirms King Leopold Ranges to be renamed the Wunaamin-Miliwundi Ranges – ABC News
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-03/wa-king-leopold-ranges-renamed-wunaamin-miliwundi-ranges/12416254
Scrabble Bans Hundreds Of Offensive Words From Competitive Play
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/07/scrabble-bans-hundreds-of-offensive-words-from-competitive-play/
Scrabble’s ban of offensive words has infuriated players.
https://slate.com/culture/2020/07/scrabble-offensive-words-ban-player-reaction.html
Slurs | NASPAWiki
https://scrabbleplayers.org/w/Slurs
Why Hong Kongers take the risk – The Signal – ABC Radio
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/the-signal/protesting-in-hong-kong/12418446
The Bitter Fight Over the Benefits of Bilingualism – The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/the-battle-over-bilingualism/462114/
Even ‘Wholesome’ Games Can (And Should!) Make You Feel Terrible
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4aya9d/even-wholesome-games-can-and-should-make-you-feel-terrible
Phage therapy: An alternative to antibiotics in the age of multi-drug resistance
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5547374/
‘Irregardless’ is too a word; you just don’t understand dictionaries | COMMENTARY
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/mcintyre/bs-ed-mcintyre-20200704-tniwdnrhnjdp3dsijd6327l7zm-story.html
Regardless Of What You Think, ‘Merriam-Webster’ Says ‘Irregardless’ Is A Word : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/887649010/regardless-of-what-you-think-irregardless-is-a-word
Fritinancy: Word of the Week: Grammando
https://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/2015/02/word-of-the-week-grammando.html
Does “kowtow” have racist connotations? – English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/314900/does-kowtow-have-racist-connotations
Hidden Harmonies China Blog » My pet-peeve racial slur, and a small every day insult.
https://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2010/12/23/my-pet-peeve-racial-slur-and-a-small-every-day-insult/
Ableist Language in Code: Sanity Check · GitHub
https://gist.github.com/seanmhanson/fe370c2d8bd2b3228680e38899baf5cc
Why People Are Rethinking The Words ‘Crazy’ And ‘Insane’ : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739643765/why-people-are-arguing-to-stop-using-the-words-crazy-and-insane
“That’s Crazy”: Why You Might Want to Rethink That Word in Your Vocabulary – PR News
https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-blog/2018/september/that-crazy-why-you-might-want-to-rethink-that-word-in-your-vocabulary
Better Words To Use Instead Of “Crazy” – Dictionary.com
https://www.dictionary.com/e/s/better-words-to-use-instead-of-crazy/#1
Transcript
[THEME MUSIC]
DANIEL: Welcome to this episode of Because Language, a podcast about linguistics, the science of language. I’m Daniel Midgley. Let’s meet the team! The much-better-than-adequate Hedvig Skirgård.
HEDVIG: Oh! I’m that! Oh, okay, yes. Hi!
DANIEL: Yes, yes, you are.
DANIEL: And the unexpectedly amazing Benjamin Ainsley.
HEDVIG: I approve.
BEN: [SOUND OF EXASPERATION] This is becoming a thing now, and I realise that I was an agent in it becoming a thing, but I only realised that after my agency in it becoming a thing had happened. So…
DANIEL: A man! Well, more than a man! A god!
BEN: I’m just a quivering ball of regret right now. It’s… it’s a great feeling.
DANIEL: And it’s quivering ball of regret, Ben Ainslie. Hi, Ben.
BEN: Hi, everyone. Pleasure to be here. As always.
DANIEL: We have a very special guest co-host. It’s soon-to-be Dr Iryna Khodos from the University of Newcastle. She’s doing research on bilingualism. Ira, thanks for coming on the show.
IRYNA: Oh, thanks for inviting me! And thanks for hosting the show. It’s nice that all of you were able to join the show, actually!
BEN: [LAUGHS] For listeners, that was a subtle shade throw in my direction, because Daniel texted me the time for the show earlier in the week and I just ghosted him! Because that’s the kind of person I am. [LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: But then he shows up, ladies and gentlemen! He always shows up. No, he doesn’t always show up.
BEN: That’s also not true!
DANIEL: Never mind, we’re just going to move on from that!
BEN: Yeah. Are we talking about Australian Newcastle, or UK Newcastle?
IRYNA: Yeah, Australian Newcastle. That’s what made people confused in the States once I went to the conferences, so they were considering me from, like, at the time from the University of Newcastle which is in the UK.
BEN: I wonder which castle was the original castle, that all the “new castles” were new and different from.
DANIEL: Well, Oldcastle, obviously.
BEN: Touché. I should’ve seen that coming, shouldn’t I?
DANIEL: Back in the old days, we heard a lot about how bilingualism was magically good for your brain. It would stave off dementia, it would help with executive function, make your breath fresher. And now we’re having to walk a lot of that back and it’s confusing. So I’m looking forward to having you tell us a bit about your work with bilingualism from a cognitive perspective.
IRYNA: Yeah, it’s definitely confusing for lots of people, including scientists, right? So we’ll try to figure out it today.
HEDVIG: Great!
DANIEL: Oh, boy! And then it’ll be settled!
BEN: Yeah, you heard it here first! We’re just going to sort bilingualism out on the show!
HEDVIG: Sa-weet!
BEN: Next week, peace in the Middle East, everyone? Should we just bop that on the head? [LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: I’m ready.
BEN: Okay.
DANIEL: We tried racism.
BEN: But before we do that, we need to get into the news items, do we not?
DANIEL: Yep. Just a few quick news items. This part will involve a few slurs. I’m really sorry, that seems to be what we do. The sports team, the Washington Redskins — there’s an update. By the time you hear this, they will have probably renamed the team.
BEN: Oh, wow.
HEDVIG: That’s quick going.
BEN: That is. That is really interesting. That is a significant about face from their pretty staunch stanny position of all of a couple months ago.
HEDVIG: Yeah, we were just discussing last episode that they’ve made it part of their identity that they’re just never going to change.
DANIEL: Yeah, well, the word has come down: they’re going to have a new name over the next 24 to 48 hours. The name is probably going to be — you in the future will know this already — but it looks like at this stage, at the time of recording, the new name is probably going to be the Warriors.
HEDVIG: Okay.
BEN: Oh yeah, that… you know, the Warriors also has a pretty significant brand capital with the Golden State Warriors just, like, one state to the south, or two states to the south, so… you know.
DANIEL: Right, okay. What should they have gone with instead?
BEN: No, no, no… I think that’s a good decision. The Warriors is… I mean, look, I don’t know about anyone else currently on the show with me, but I am about as far from a sports fan as it’s possible to be.
DANIEL: Oh, I can out un-sports you any day.
BEN: I don’t know if that’s true necessarily.
DANIEL: Mm.
BEN: Look, let’s not turn it into a c… this is how unsporting I am, Daniel. Let’s not compete about it — let’s be… let’s co-op hate sport.
DANIEL: Damn, you win.
HEDVIG: I grew up with a family that… my parents weren’t very into sports and I always wasn’t very interested in it, but now with my new… my partner, Ste — he’s into sports and I’ve sort of found an interest for it. Now we’ve sat through several Zoom quizzes with his family, where about a fourth or a fifth of the questions are, like, super-specific sports related. So I’ve sort of been… I am now starting to think that I’m into… vaguely into sport.
BEN: Look, that’s not hugely surprising to me, Hedvig. Your sort of brand identity, over the last however long I’ve known you, has basically been like “I want to do and like and engage in all of the things.”
BEN: Yeah.
DANIEL: That’s cool.
HEDVIG: I’m considering getting a mullet.
DANIEL: Awesome.
BEN: [LAUGHS] Oh, no! No! Please, no!
HEDVIG: Yeah, no, I’m very into it.
BEN: Oh, dear.
DANIEL: Ira, are you a sporty person?
IRYNA: I wouldn’t say so, right? So the only kind of physical activity I’m into is Body Balance.
IRYNA: ???
HEDVIG: I love Body Balance! I love Body Balance.
IRYNA: Yeah, it’s so nice.
DANIEL: Cool.
HEDVIG: I thanked my Body Balance instructor in my PhD acknowledgements.
BEN: Good one! That’s a good thanks to throw out there.
HEDVIG: Yeah, I just really appreciate her, yeah.
DANIEL: You know, as far as team names, I kind of of wish that they would have gone with the Americans.
BEN and HEDVIG: The Americans??
DANIEL: Yeah, and the reason is because…
BEN: Oh, the OG Americans.
DANIEL: …because there used to be this segment on Saturday Night Live by comic writer Jack Handey called Deep Thoughts, and one of the deep thoughts was “I hope in the future, Americans are thought of as a warlike vicious people because I bet a lot of high schools would pick ‘Americans’ as their mascot.” And I’m just trying to continue Jack Handey’s comedic vision.
BEN: I find all sports teams names inherently silly. Right? Like there’s no non-silly version, because what is being done is inherently silly. Not in a bad way — silly things aren’t bad.
DANIEL: Silly things are fun!
BEN: Yeah, silly things are heaps of fun. But, like, the idea that, like, a bunch of — usually, if we’re talking about mainstream popular sports — a bunch of sweaty dudes in extremely colourful uniforms, like, smashing into each other, but then being like “We are the warriors!” is just inherently a very hilarious…
HEDVIG: Yeah.
BEN: …kind of proposition to me. And so, like, The Warriors is as silly as — I don’t know — the Bears or the Eagles or, like, the Sonics or whatever.
DANIEL: I don’t see any weapons anywhere.
HEDVIG: Ste’s home team in England are the Wanderers. And there’s two more teams in the UK that are the Wanderers.
BEN: I’ve got to say: that actually… I don’t know if it’s just the Dungeons and Dragons nerd in me, but that is hell good!
DANIEL: No, I bet it’s because they didn’t have a home field.
HEDVIG: Yes!
BEN: Ohh…
DANIEL: YES! Oh! Picked it!
HEDVIG: Yeah, good.
BEN: Hey, Daniel, you know how we were competing of who’s less good at sports? You just lost, mate. [LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: You win again! Oh, man!
BEN: You lost.
DANIEL: That wasn’t about sports, that was about etymology, so…
BEN: Ohh…
HEDVIG: You had to know that there are home fields!
BEN: Yes, exactly, Daniel. Exactly. Thank you, Hedvig. Thank you.
DANIEL: Fiiine. Let’s move on to the next thing.
BEN: Yes.
HEDVIG: Okay.
DANIEL: In other renaming, the King Leopold Ranges have been renamed. We talked about them a while ago, yeah?
BEN: I saw this, yep. This one popped up in my in news feeds, as well.
DANIEL: So, just for anybody who didn’t know, King Leopold of Belgium was a genocidal maniac who murdered up to ten million African people and despite never coming to WA, somehow had a mountain range named after him.
HEDVIG: That still gets me. That’s so weird.
IRYNA: I was really actually confused when I came across the pictures of the beautiful ranges, like, a couple of years ago. I was really surprised to know that they were named after the tyrant, and I was, like: no, it’s not the kind of place I would love to visit, so it’s definitely great to know that they have renamed the place.
DANIEL: Yes. This is now known as the Wunaamin Miliwundi Range, because there are two groups of people that the range crosses over their country, and that’s the Ngarinyin and the Bunuba people, and those names — Wunaamin and Miliwundi — those are the two names that they call those ranges. So that’s the name.
HEDVIG: Well, that’s very fair enough! So they just called it what other people have called it. Yeah! Fair enough.
BEN: Yeah. And I like that it sounds good in the mouth. Like, when you say those names: Wunaamin Miliwundi. There’s just… ooo, it’s nice! I like it. It sounds good in my tongue and my lips.
DANIEL: It’s velvety.
HEDVIG: Yeah, it sounds nice. I like it.
DANIEL: Okay. Next: other words are getting canceled as well. For example, Scrabble or…
BEN: [SUDDEN CRY OF ALARM] Daniel! We’ve spoken about this!
DANIEL: Scrabble.
BEN: DANIEL!
DANIEL: Scrabble, Scrabble, Scrabble.
BEN: DANIEL! We have spoken about this!
DANIEL: Ben hates Scrabble.
BEN: FUCK
IRYNA: Oh, really?
DANIEL: Yeah.
BEN: Just… goddamn… it’s just… look, okay? It’s such a shit game. It just is. I don’t mean as in: inherently intrinsically, because all games, like we said, with sports are just, like, silly and dumb. But from a game design perspective, it’s a shitty game!
DANIEL: Oh, interesting. What qualms?
HEDVIG: See, that’s not true.
BEN: It IS true and Hedvig, I know that you know this, because I know that you have played good games. Right?
HEDVIG: Yeah.
BEN: You have definitely played Catan, you have definitely played games that exercise great game design. This is just bad, old, English gaming at its wooooorst.
DANIEL: [MARGE SIMPSON VOICE] I just think it’s fun!
HEDVIG: I think it’s fun.
BEN: Okay, fine. Let’s talk about Shit Game.
DANIEL: The word that you just said, Ben, would no longer be playable in Scrabble…
BEN: Interesting.
DANIEL: …because the because the NASPA — the North American Scrabble Players Association — has removed about over 200 words that are slurs or obscene. Gone from play.
BEN: Interesting.
HEDVIG: What? Why?
BEN: Is this also a BLM thing?
DANIEL: Kind of. Yeah.
BEN: Okay.
DANIEL: A lot of them are slurs, but a lot of them are…
HEDVIG: But they removed SHIT?
DANIEL: Yeah, I don’t think you could play SHIT. Couldn’t play SHIT.
HEDVIG: Huh.
DANIEL: So there is a list. The NASPA has published their list of slurs and nasty words that are no longer playable. But in a nod to being helpful, they have rather unhelpfully alphabetised the individual words on the page. So, in order to figure out what they are, you have to re-un-alphabetise them.
IRYNA: Oh, wow.
DANIEL: For example, STIFFY is now F F I S T Y. F-Fisty!
BEN: Oh, god.
DANIEL: Which isn’t much better.
BEN: Wait, hang on. So, is this actually a relatively — and I hate to say this about anything to do with Scrabble — but is this a relatively smart marketing ploy to get people talking about Scrabble?
DANIEL: You mean, like, having the words alphabetised on their page?
BEN: Well, like, having them jumbled.
DANIEL: That I don’t know. I think they were just trying not to publish heaps and heaps of slurs on their page.
BEN: Oh, okay. Fair enough.
DANIEL: You can imagine. But I thought it would be fun to try a contest…
BEN: Oh, yessss.
DANIEL: Can you put the naughty words back in order?
BEN: Great.
DANIEL: You’ll need a writing implement and some paper for this one.
BEN: You’re all going to hear me typing!
DANIEL: Okay, all you have to do is be the first one to shout out the — I’m not going with any racial slurs, but I am going with naughty words.
BEN: Great.
HEDVIG: Okay.
DANIEL: So under the category “prurient”, here are the letters: F M O O. Put ’em back together. What’s the word?
[PAUSE]
HEDVIG: MOOF.
BEN: FOMO?
DANIEL: No, no.
BEN: MOFO?
DANIEL: Ben gets it! MOFO is the word.
BEN: [SPUTTERING] That’s not… But that’s like… 😡 Okay, this is why I hate Scrabble. That’s not even a… that… that is an acronym!
DANIEL: It’s a word!
BEN: At best!
IRYNA: I agree with you!
DANIEL: Aw, for heaven sakes. Next one: B B J L O O W.
BEN: [INSTANTLY] BLOWJOB.
DANIEL: Very good, Ben again. Next one: this is from the scatological category: D E E M R. D E E M R.
BEN: Oh… um…
HEDVIG: REM…
DANIEL: This one took me a long time.
BEN: REEMD?
HEDVIG: M
DANIEL: Nope.
BEN: Oh…
DANIEL: The first letter is M.
BEN: MREED?
HEDVIG: MERED?
DANIEL: It’s French.
BEN: Oh, MERDE.
HEDVIG: Oh, you said… I wrote down when you said . I’m not good with English names for letters.
BEN: Oh, my goodness!
DANIEL: Ben…
BEN: They’re… Yeah, but, like, now this is, like, a crazy crossroads of shit I hate! French and Scrabble!
DANIEL: This is fun! Okay, next one in the scatological category: H I S T T Y.
BEN: [IMMEDIATELY] SHITTY. Good! Ben, you’re on 4. Everybody else, c’mon! Let’s boost it here.
BEN: What can I say? I swear a lot.
HEDVIG: I’m bad at English names for letters and anagrams.
DANIEL: Oh, no!
BEN: Oh, yeah! Okay, this is not your day.
DANIEL: Oh, no! Okay. Maybe this isn’t really fair. Next one: anatomical! Here’s the letters: A O O W Z.
HEDVIG: A O O W Z.
DANIEL: Usually occurs in an expression: out the…
BEN and HEDVIG: WAZOO.
BEN: There we go.
DANIEL: Very good — one for both of you! It’s a tie. Okay, last one, for the game. In the anatomical category: A A B D S S.
BEN: BADASS.
DANIEL: All right! Ben wins. All right, so that was fun. But the weird thing about this story was that a piece in Slate says that people are really upset about this. And one of the Scrabble fans is on record saying, “At the moment, all the fun is being sucked out of Scrabble.” What kind of person would you have to be to think that Scrabble was no longer fun, just because you couldn’t play a slur? You know what I mean?
BEN: Look, I’m going to be honest. I guess… no, yeah. I was about to say: I guess playing swear words on the board is the closest I could come to having fun with the game. But that is still very far away from having any fun with Scrabble, so no, I’m not one of those people.
DANIEL: Okay.
HEDVIG: So I don’t know if this helps you, Ben. Let me know if this satisfies some of the things you hate about Scrabble, but the Swedish Scrabble is a bit different — I think the rules are slightly different — and we just use the dictionary.
BEN: Oh, that’s not, no, that doesn’t solve the badness for me. But it’s good to hear that it’s not as sort of loosey-goosey as the sort of American version, so that’s fun.
HEDVIG: Yes so… well, you can’t do abbreviations and proper names in the dictionary either, but you just have that as a rule.
BEN: There you go.
DANIEL: Swedish people are nice.
IRYNA: Mhm. [LAUGHTER]
BEN: Suck up!
HEDVIG: We also call it Alphapet, which is cute, I think.
DANIEL: Let’s move on to our last story. Hedvig, you brought us this one. You want tell me about it?
HEDVIG: Yes! I was listening to ABC’s ‘The Signal’, which is a brilliant radio show and podcast. If you want to keep up with world news and Australian news, I really really recommend ‘The Signal’. It’s really really good. And they were interviewing some protestors in Hong Kong talking about how why they still go to protests if they do, and what it’s like. And one of them said that, when at the end of a protest, when police are present and checking people and potentially arresting people, you have to try and pretend that you’re not a protester. Right? And she said that if she just speaks Mandarin instead of Cantonese — so the majority language in Hong Kong is Cantonese, and Mandarin is common in the rest of China — then the police just excuse her and think that she obviously can’t be from Hong Kong.
BEN: Interesting. Does anyone here feel confident in being able to speak to how prevalently or how easily a sort of native Hong Konger… Hong Kong… what’s the demonym for someone from Hong Kong?
DANIEL: Hong Konger.
BEN: … a sort of native Hong Konger is likely to be fully bilingual in both Mandarin and Cantonese? Like is it a… tricky thing? Is it easy?
HEDVIG: I looked it up a bit. So I looked up a bit, and apparently there’s been an increase of, like, native Mandarin speaking families in Hong Kong.
BEN: Mhm.
HEDVIG: It’s kind of hard to find numbers, and I don’t know this for sure, but if you live in Hong Kong and if you’re that close to China, I think it’s gotta be probable that you’d learn Mandarin, like…
BEN: I guess the thing I wonder and think about would be: if Ste goes to London, everyone knows he is not from London, right?
HEDVIG: Ah… he mellows out his dialect a lot.
BEN: Oh, really?
HEDVIG: Yeah.
BEN: Okay, well, maybe that answers my question. If Ste can, like, pass for a Londoner, then surely a native Hong Konger can just sort of pass for a relatively conformist mainland Chinese national.
HEDVIG: Well, yeah, I mean, they do have a lot of their own media things, so I think you can grow up in Hong Kong and not be great at Mandarin. You’re right, we should ask someone who knows a lot about it. But what I do know about Cantonese and Mandarin is that there’s different amounts of tones.
BEN: Yeah, okay.
HEDVIG: Like, a lot of, like, grammar and phonology are different so, like, I’ve heard Cantonese and Mandarin spoken and they definitely sound quite different.
BEN: Should we just put the call out to our listeners? Anyone from Hong Kong who feels like they could just either come on the show or send us a message and let us know, like, what is the deal in terms of the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese, and the relative ease of code switching or not between the two?
DANIEL: It seems to me that Cantonese is under tremendous pressure already, and this is just one more thing. I don’t know what kind of influence it’ll have toward acceptance or rejection of Cantonese, but it’s just one more way in which things are not great for Cantonese.
BEN: I mean, I wonder if there’s going to be some sort of — what’s the word I’m looking for — solidarity strength that comes out from it. Like, the classic thing of, like, the one way to guarantee a teenager is going to do something is to tell them not to do it, kind of thing. Like, is this going to result in a bunch of people from Kong being like: “Hell no, can you take my language. That’s my identity. I’m going to, like, dig in hard.”
HEDVIG: Yeah, I think that is possible to happen.
DANIEL: Well, I would like to know. If anybody has any insight on this, you can get in touch with us hello@becauselanguage.com. We’d love to hear from you.
BEN: It would be really awesome, and I like the idea of someone, like, just recording an answer and sending it to us and then we can play it.
DANIEL: Mm.
HEDVIG: Oh yeah. I like that.
[TRANSITIONAL MUSIC]
DANIEL: We are speaking with Iryna Khodos. Ira is doing research at the University of Newcastle in bilingualism. and so I want to talk a bit about bilingualism from a cognitive perspective. But Ira: what got you into studying bilingualism?
IRYNA: I would say it happened when I was teaching English to speakers of other languages while I was working overseas, right? When you’re teaching, you’re often asked, like, a variety of questions, as like when it’s better to start learning the other language? Are you able to start speaking fluently the other language when you start late in life? And which other language would you suggest learning? And different kinds of things. So that made me start thinking about the nature of bilinguals, and what are the effects and consequences of bilingualism, and either, like, a certain scenario, or there are options — so to say — and they do depend on certain factors or life experiences. And you know, the best way to figure it out, or something out – right? – is to do your small inspection or investigation research. That’s what I did actually during my PhD at the University of Newcastle.
BEN: I love that your ‘small investigation’ was a PhD thesis. [LAUGHTER] That’s real tiny, Ira!
IRYNA: Yeah, it’s just the beginning! [LAUGHTER]
BEN: Can I jump in just really quickly?
IRYNA: Yup.
BEN: Just as the dummy non-linguist in the group, I always ask questions like this. Can we just clarify what everyone tends to mean when they say bilingual? Right? Is it simply being able to speak two languages fluently? Is it having grown up speaking two languages as, like, at the same time, as a mother tongue? Like, what are we talking about? IRYNA: Actually, it’s not a dumb question, right?
HEDVIG: I wrote it down as one of my questions! [LAUGHTER]
BEN: YES! I asked a smart linguist question that sounds like a dumb non-linguist question.
IRYNA: Well done! Yeah, so, it’s actually interesting because at first, people were talking in terms of positions, right? So they were thinking: “Oh, all right, so if you’re able to communicate and people are able to understand you in two languages, right, so you’re bilingual.”
BEN: Okay.
IRYNA: Then people started thinking about a certain degree of proficiency which you need to have in order to be considered bilingual. But what is happening right now, it’s not a matter of your knowledge — right? as well — but a matter of your language behaviours. How you use two languages, right? How often and in what context. So if you’re able to communicate and you communicate in each of the two languages — let’s say on a regular basis, right? It’s still kind of broad, right? So it means that you’re bilingual. So you can grow up bilingual, you can become bilingual, there are different, let’s say types.
BEN: Can I ask, as a clarifying question for me, when does a person stop being bilingual, and start being just a person who knows a second language kind of thing? Like, what’s that distinction?
IRYNA: I would say from my perspective, I used to speak French and German as well, right?
BEN: Mhm.
IRYNA: But, like, let’s say for ages I haven’t spoken those languages. So I have, like, passive knowledge of those languages, which means that I’m still able to understand people a little bit, right? But I’m not able to speak fluently.
BEN: Okay.
IRYNA: So I would say when you have active knowledge of that particular language, when you’re able to use and speak in that language, I would consider that person a bilingual, as opposed to the person who has, like, let’s say stupid passive knowledge, to the extent that they’re able to understand or, like… to understand, I would say.
BEN: So, the threshold is not that, say, a German speaker needs to be able to come up to you, ask you something, have you answer, and have you sort of “pass” as a… like, a German national kind of thing. That’s not what “being bilingual” is.
BEN: Yes, so you are not able, let’s say… like, if you’re acquiring or learning the second language, you’re still… It’s tricky to become as fluent or as proficient as a native speaker, you’re able, right? It depends on a number of factors: when you start learning the language, and in what environment you learned that particular language. But for you to be considered bilingual, you don’t have to be a monolingual in each of those languages, if that makes sense.
BEN: Right. I get you, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that’s good, that helps.
HEDVIG: I sometimes feel like I’m not enough of a native speaker of English because I sometimes don’t know words for things, and I ask people “Oh, you know, what’s the word for this in English?” But then I saw this meme being spread around right now, which is just other native speakers not remembering words for things, and trying to come up with… [LAUGHTER] Have you seen the one about “Niece Boy”? Someone is like: I don’t remember what the word for “boy niece” is, so people…
DANIEL: Hey, Niece Boy! [LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: No, they said “Boy niece” and also: niece/nauce, like N A U C E.
BEN: [LAUGHS] Cause they couldn’t think of NEPHEW?
HEDVIG: Yeah. And I thought: I’m not crazy. Other people struggle with this as well!
BEN: Yeah, totally.
IRYNA: You know, I would say, for example: It’s all right not to know all the words, for example, in the second language, or the third language, because when we consider a bilingual… like, when we think about a bilingual person, right? they are more likely to use each of their two languages in a slightly different way. Like, each of the actual languages will have a slightly different function, which means that you’re more likely to have a larger, more extensive vocabulary. For example, in English when it comes to — I don’t know, like — medicine, or…
HEDVIG: Linguistics, for me.
IRYNA: Yeah, or linguistics, right? But when it comes to some general items — the ones you use at home, right? — basic ones, probably you’re more likely to use, like, your native language and you won’t have any issues with naming, labelling those things.
HEDVIG: Well, that was true for a while, but then I got engaged to a British guy. So now all my household items are also English! [LAUGHTER]
BEN: But here’s the crucial question, Hedvig. What is the Swedish word for a cleric healer?
IRYNA: Oh my goodness.
HEDVIG: Oh, no idea. No idea.
BEN: Oh, really?? I figured you would have started playing D&D in Swedish when you were younger, so you’d have, like, the full suite of…
HEDVIG: No, I started playing role playing games in Swedish that weren’t D&D.
BEN: Oh, okay — oh, sorry! What’s the Swedish word for werewolf assassin?
HEDVIG: No, but I still don’t know! That was also fifteen years ago! So like: 😬.
BEN: Okay, fair enough.
DANIEL: Well, I feel like the impression that we’re getting here is that bilingualism looks a lot of different ways, which I guess must increase the difficulty of testing.
IRYNA: Yeah, it’s true. So that’s probably one of issues with testing — something I mentioned in terms of functions of each of the languages. So if each of the two languages which are being spoken by a bilingual person perform a slightly different function, right? it makes it really tricky to test a person and to figure out their proficiency level in each of the two languages.
DANIEL: Okay.
HEDVIG: What are some examples of people reaching a great fluency in two languages, and it not coming from speaking it at home when they were little at all?
BEN: I’d have to imagine work would be one, right?
IRYNA: Mhm.
BEN: Like, are there instances, Ira, where a person sort of maybe had a working understanding of, say, Japanese for whatever reason, but then they got a job where they would have to regularly interact with Japanese nationals and then their Japanese knowledge just, like, skyrockets to a level of fluency that’s really really good?
IRYNA: I would say yep. So it’s really important to interact with native speakers, especially if you can be placed in that environment, it would definitely benefit you. But it would be nice still to be able to speak your first language. And I was also thinking about work. Probably this is, like, a perfect way because it was… for some time it was my case as well , right? So when I would speak English only when I taught, like, other people, right? So, at work. And I wasn’t able to use English at home, or even when I was outside with friends, so it was more work-related thing. But once again, it depends how often do you have to use it at… like, at work, right? Whether it happens once a week or whether it happens every day.
HEDVIG: Probably also if your work requires you to move to a different country.
IRYNA: Mhm.
DANIEL: But even then, some workers don’t interact with people enough at a job to make it a good learning experience, so it really does depend on the kind of work you do. So my frame of reference for this is the work by Ellen Bialystok…
IRYNA: Uh-huh.
DANIEL: …and some other work that other people have done. Like I alluded to earlier, in the early days it was said that learning another language, being bilingual, was super good for your brain, that people with dementia were able to do more, even though they were more impaired. But other work has, sort of, not found those same things. Just from the long view, where are we at right now? Before we even get to your work?
IRYNA: No, it’s like… it’s definitely, I would say, even a battle, right? And I actually find it interesting. So for example, you mentioned Bialystok, right? A couple of her colleagues as well, they published a paper too, like, supporting the view that bilingual is beneficial, right? In terms of, like, from a cognitive perspective. And, like, the next year, the other person who is kind of opposing her perspective, right, published the other article, kind of smashing, like, her ideas. So it’s like, it keeps on happening. So there are people who are bilinguals and people who are, I would say, sick and tired of this idea of bilinguals fitting to any advantages, right? Cognitive advantages, I mean. So at this stage, I would say, from my perspective, people figure out that finally we cannot speak about bilinguals as a kind of unique — how to say — straightforward experience, right? It’s really diverse, and if you want to figure out the consequences of bilinguals, you cannot but consider those factors that would allow you to have a clear understanding. So now there’s definitely a switch from comparing monolinguals and bilinguals like, as two groups, right? But other people are trying to look into bilingual people and trying to figure out which aspects of your bilingual experience can actually help you to perform better in terms of language control, as well as cognitive control. So then you will get a better understanding.
DANIEL: Well, I guess that brings us to your work. So tell us about what you were trying to do and how you did it. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
IRYNA: Yeah, I can tell briefly. So, I was actually trying to figure out… I was actually targeting certain aspects of language behaviours. So in particular, • language use: the extent to which two languages… each of the two languages is used, including the context. Then we were looking at • onset, so-called onset age of active bilinguals. To make it easier and clearer, it’s the age when the person started using both languages on a regular basis, as opposed to the age when you started learning or acquiring two languages. Then, we were also looking at • language proficiency in each of the two languages and • typological proximity distance — how similar or different two languages are. And what we actually figured out [is] that each of the factors which I have just mentioned — they did affect the performance of participants, but the extent to which they mattered was affected by the process which we targeted. So for this particular research, we used a non-verbal switching task. Maybe you have never heard about this task, but like, it makes sense if you pay attention to the name because it’s all about names! So switching means that you have to shift between options, right? At the same time, “non-language” means that those are options outside language. In our particular case, those were options related to colour and shape. And there is also the word cue, which means that you don’t make those decisions randomly, but there is an indicator pointing out which option you need to consider, right? So you have some cues on the screen, and then you have stimula, and you have to press one of the buttons depending on the cue and the stimula you see on the screen.
DANIEL: Okay, so I’d like you to walk me through that a little bit, if you could.
IRYNA: Yep.
DANIEL: So I’m sitting down in the chair. I’ve got a computer screen in front of me. What am I seeing?
IRYNA: So imagine, right, there is first condition, when you are just presented with shapes. So the whole trial, you will be given only shapes. But it can be either circle or triangles. So you’re pressing A, L, A, L, dependent on the shape you see.
HEDVIG: Okay.
IRYNA: Then the second block, you will have only colours, so it’s either red or green. So once again, you’re pressing A, L, depending on the colour you see.
HEDVIG: Hm.
IRYNA: And then comes the most challenging part: when you see both a colour and a shape on the screen. But before you see a shape and a colour, you will have a word or a letter which will tell you “colour”. Imagine you have the word “colour”, and what you see on the screen is a red circle. So in this case, you have to ignore circle and to press the right key, depending on the colour you see. Does it make sense?
BEN: It’s a little bit like a video game progression.
IRYNA: Yes!
BEN: Right? You have each element introduced to you individually. There will be a bit in a stage that shows you how to jump well, then there’ll be a bit in a stage that shows you how to shoot well, and then there’ll be an enemy that’s like: you got to jump and shoot at the same time, buddy!
IRYNA: Yeah, exactly! That’s a good analogy.
DANIEL: So you’d think that, if somebody were bilingual, that they would be better at this test because their executive function is helping them switch between different languages, so maybe they’d be better at switching between colour and shape.
IRYNA: And let’s say — this task: why is it frequently used? Because it allows you to create the condition, the context of language management which actually happens in the brain of a bilingual person, right? So if you want to succeed in this particular task, you need to constantly monitor the cue, right? Once you see that cue — that word “colour” or “shape” — you need to apply reasoning to make the right decision.
HEDVIG: Okay.
IRYNA: So you have to switch to one… the right response key, right? And you have to block the other stimula and response key, as well. So it’s actually same when you’re a bilingual person, right? So you constantly… imagine that you’re in the environment where you are able to apply each of the two languages. So you need to constantly monitor the context once you hear someone saying something, right? You’re: right, oh, okay, he’s speaking English, right, so I need to block my Swedish or Ukrainian or whatever, right? And you are switching to English option. So, like, this one, like, this kind of procedure which recreates, as much as possible, the conditions of bilingual language use, but it targets non-language domain, right?
HEDVIG: So the idea is that doing the switching between colour and shape and correctly paying attention to it is similar to switching between two languages and blocking the other, so that if you tested monolinguals and bilinguals on this shape/colour task, then if bilinguals are better at it, they should be better at this task as well.
IRYNA: Yes, so…
HEDVIG: Is that the idea?
IRYNA: Yep, so but yeah, in my particular study, we were not looking at monolinguals. We were looking at which aspects of bilinguals actually affect their performance on these particular tasks.
BEN: Oh, interesting.
IRYNA: And as it appeared, right, what really mattered was…
DANIEL: Can we guess? Can we guess?
IRYNA: Yep. So there was • proficiency, • language use, • typological proximity, and • age at which you started using two languages actively.
BEN: Sorry, just run them through again, just slowly? Proficiency?
IRYNA: • Proficiency, • language use, • age… let’s call it age, when you started speaking two languages actively on a regular basis, and • typological proximity and distance between two languages — how similar or different two languages are.
BEN: Okay.
HEDVIG: Can I ask…
BEN: I got a couple of guesses. What do you guys want to do?
HEDVIG: I was going to ask if you could tell me what the difference is between language use and proficiency. I can imagine, but yeah.
IRYNA: All right, I can say a little bit. So in terms of language proficiency, we just measured how proficient, so to say they are, right? in terms of speaking, writing, listening, and reading, right? So, when it comes to language use, what they were asked… they were given a number of questions where they have to respond which of the two languages they use in different contexts.
BEN: Oh, right.
IRYNA: And we actually differentiated between dual context and single context. To make it probably clearer, single if you use two languages separately. Like, I would use English at work, and for example Swedish at home, right? So separately. Separate contexts. And dual when you are able to use both languages in the same context, dependent on the speaker. So, you would speak, for example, Swedish when interacting with your father, right, but you would switch to English when you’re talking with your partner.
HEDVIG: Yeah. Okay, so I — given what you just said — I both think that some of these factors are going to correlate with each other? A bit? [LAUGHTER]
IRYNA: Yeah, you’re right!
HEDVIG: But I think that the language use one is going to be the most important.
BEN: I guess that the more dissimilar the two languages that a candidate speaks are, the better they will be at this task.
DANIEL: Oh, interesting!
BEN: And by that logic, I also guess that proficiency is negatively related to how well they do at this task. I.e. the more proficient you are in your languages, the less well you do in this task. Those are my two guesses.
IRYNA: Oh, that’s interesting.
DANIEL: That is interesting. I think the distinguishing factor is also going to be typological similarity of the languages, but in the opposite direction that Ben said!
BEN: Ooo, interesting!
DANIEL: Because I think that if the languages are really similar, you have to do more work to suppress one language, and allow the other. Your monitor is really really active and I’m thinking…
HEDVIG: I know which university Daniel comes from! [LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: Hedvig is alluding to work by Luisa Miceli and Mark Ellison about doppels, which I know a lot about. But I also think that age is going to be negatively correlated.
BEN: Interesting. The older you are, the shitter you are?
DANIEL: I don’t think that’s going to matter.
BEN: Oh, okay — so you… right, it will be… it will not be relevant.
DANIEL: It will not be relevant.
BEN: Okay.
DANIEL: Okay! I’m ready.
IRYNA: Let’s go for it! So actually, guys, it depends which process we’re talking about. So when we’re talking about creative processes, like creative processes which actually allows you to keep those two opposing options in brain, so it’s more… it has more to do with memory. You know what I mean, right?
BEN: Like, working memory, active memory, kind of thing?
IRYNA: Yeah, working memory, right? So when you keep two options in mind, so it has to do with memory, and also blocking or interference, it is called. So in this case actually, typological proximity or distance appear to be important, appear to affect the participants’ performance. And who is right, who is wrong in terms of my particular study, what happened?
BEN: YES
IRYNA: Actually, Daniel was right. So the… [GENERAL UPROAR AND CONSTERNATION] …the closer two languages were, the faster people were. But it wasn’t the major factor, but it contributed — right? — as well, when we speak about the same process, like creative processes, in addition to this typological proximity distance. Also, age at which people started using two languages on a regular basis appeared to be important. So the earlier you started to use two languages, the better you are at blocking the other option, and keeping those two languages in brain. And as for the second — probably this is the most important component which we were targeting: reactive processes. Reaction. Right? So it has to do with the way you actually perform that switching between option. So, in this case, language use was important. So, the more, let’s say, the more frequently, the more often you use each of the two languages on a regular basis, and people who were able to use two languages within the same context depending on the speaker — so I’m talking about your language context — they performed faster on those trials. So it’s all about, like, language behaviour. And it just makes sense, right? So once you’re training your ability to switch, so like, once you have an option to practice switching, right? You’re more likely to have these upgraded switching processes to make it easier.
HEDVIG: So were they tested on how fast they were, or how accurate they were? or a combination of the two?
IRYNA: It’s a good question. So, right, usually both options are being recorded, like accuracy and reaction times.
HEDVIG: Mhm.
IRYNA: I would say in most studies I have come across, there are usually no differences in terms of accuracy. It’s, like, minor differences. So usually, people — for some reason I don’t know — would spend more time, but they would try to produce an accurate answer, rather than trying to be faster and to make a mistake. So usually, even if you look at monolinguals and bilinguals, usually they produce the same number of accurate answers, all with the same minor difference. It’s usually more a matter of trials, like which trial you’re comparing to. And of course, reaction times: it’s more about reaction times, so how fast they were able to perform a certain task.
HEDVIG: I like that because I’m trying to use Duolingo now, and I know that Duolingo isn’t a speed test. But I’m running it as one! [LAUGHTER]
BEN: Everything’s a competition, if you want it to be!
HEDVIG: Because I’m stuck in this beginner zone where I just keep… they just keep… I have to put the right gender on jungen and mädchen and I’m really bored by this by now! So I’m just trying to push through it, like, as quickly as I can. Which has reduced my accuracy.
DANIEL: I think that’s really funny, because once you’ve solved Duolingo the first time, then you do it again, but as a speed run. Woo! Let’s go! [LAUGHTER]
IRYNA: Yeah.
BEN: I can get from the Resurrection Shrine to defeating Ganon… I mean, Duolingo in 20 minutes!
IRYNA: Perfect. I actually find how because, like, there was a couple of experience when people were given an option to undergo some training, right? Even training with colour/shape switching or other similar task. So they actually perform better once they have the training option, which once again brings us back to the importance of having the opportunity to practice and use and switch between the two languages.
DANIEL: So, do you feel like your results on this test are generalisable to results in the real world?
IRYNA: Yeah, so like, I would say what comes from recent findings in relevant studies like this is true for them, as well, because of course a couple studies pointed… even when they use a widely different task, right? So they were saying that it’s a matter of language use, as what I was saying, right? And in terms of switching, and when it comes to switching between the languages, what also matters is the way you switch and why you switch, right? The reason, whether you’re doing it randomly, or it comes out like it’s an necessity, right? So, you don’t have an option, but you’re forced to switch. And whether it’s switching between the sentences or within the sentence. So even those factors do affect the performance, so it’s consistent. In terms of typological proximity and distance, it’s something which is worth exploring because, like, the problem with that is: even with my study, it would be super, like, honest, right? The problem’s that we didn’t come up with a continuous variable, but if you want to have a clear idea, you would need to come up with a scale or whatever, which will allow you to say whether some language pairs are more closer or more distant, right? And it probably requires an additional PhD for someone to do, to be able to classify the languages.
HEGVIG: It may be a chapter of someone’s PhD in the…
IRYNA: Maybe! [LAUGHTER]
BEN: I love that this is yet another “small investigation”, which is to say: “yet another PhD thesis”!
IRYNA: Yeah, it’s true.
HEDVIG: I have a measure like that, if you need it!
IRYNA: Oh, yeah? You do?
HEDVIG: Yeah!
IRYNA: Oh, perfect! [LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: Cause I work with typological databases and distances, so…!
IRYNA: That’s nice because…
HEDVIG: I don’t know exactly what you need, but…
IRYNA: Yeah, but it would be interesting. Yeah, I would love if you could share that with me.
BEN: This is how academics forge friendships: Oh yeah, no, I know how to do that on the database! Oh, you can? You can help my thing? Oh, that’s so good!
DANIEL: No, this is the part where Ira says: I am so sick of this topic and I never want to see it again. [LAUGHTER]
IRYNA: No more small investigations!
BEN: No, I’m for big investigations now! Large reference texts is the next thing I’ll write!
DANIEL: So, in general — bilingualism: good for your brain, kinda, in some ways?
IRYNA: Yeah, so… to sum everything up, right? So I would say that bilingualism is a kind of diverse experience, and there is no single scenario for you to predict the consequences of bilingualism. So, it’s more… it’s not just about your knowledge of more than one language. It’s about the way you use each of the two languages, so and I would say at this point that it’s a unique mental exercise or training, yeah? So if you practice regularly, you will definitely have benefits rather than disadvantages, and it comes to every experience, to every training, whether you’re driving or whether you’re doing any particular sport. If you’re practicing, you will definitely reward yourself at the very end. So, same applies for bilinguals.
HEDVIG: Mm.
BEN: There you go. It sounds like that most quintessential of academic answers: it depends.
IRYNA: Yeah. Yeah, I found myself… like, it was weird for me as well, but I have to say that, right? Because now it’s first of all, difficult to — as we were saying — to figure out who’s bilingual, right? But as I was saying, it’s not just that you know a language, but that you are able to communicate in both of the languages, and you’re able to be understood, right? And to understand others as well. So that’s important for you to be bilingual. And once you are able to practice each of the two languages, so it can’t but reward you in terms of language performance, as well as non-language performance. But it’s still a nice area to explore, and probably this is something I’m excited about right now but going deeper, like, not just to have behavioural data but also brain-based measures. So it would be nice if the person gives you a deeper insight in terms of language behaviours and mind.
HEDVIG: And what about, just — you know, it’s a controversial topic, but are there any disadvantages?
DANIEL: Oh, yeah.
IRYNA: All right, before I answer this question, what are your ideas, in terms of disadvantages?
HEDVIG: Disadvantages…
DANIEL: I just think that it’s just good! I can’t see any downside, really, except just confusion sometimes. But that’s not bad.
IRYNA: Mhm.
DANIEL: That’s the human condition.
HEDVIG: [MUSING] Confusion sometimes…
BEN: Disadvantages… disadvantages… Having to play Scrabble in other languages?
IRYNA: Yeaaah!
DANIEL: Oh, that sucks.
IRYNA: It’s all about Scrabble!
DANIEL: With English tiles!
HEDVIG: I actually… I was thinking about this because there’s a very new computer game that’s come out that… Aargh! I’m going to look up the name. I’m going to look up the name in a bit, but it’s a game where…
BEN: Describe the game to me; I bet I can name it.
HEDVIG: Okay, you have a bunch of cards and they have like circles or squares, and when you make a conversation, you have to, like, connect them like dominoes with the other person.
BEN: Ooo, a bunch of… oh, cards, did you say?
HEDVIG: Yeah, cards. So your card has, like, two sides, and it’s a square or circle. And the other person has a deck of cards.
BEN: Oh! No, I don’t know this one.
[It’s “Signs of the Sojourner” — check the show notes for a link. — D]
HEDVIG: And when you interact with a person, and you try… the game is based on trying to have successful conversations. So you talk to someone, and you put the cards down, and if you do it successfully, then your interaction with that person is successful, and you do something in the game.
BEN: Right right right.
HEDVIG: But as you travel from your home village, you encounter people who have different things. They have crosses instead of squares and circles.
BEN: Ah, interesting. Okay, I get you.
HEDVIG: And you switch out the cards in your deck, but your deck is only a certain amount of numbers. And as you go further and further away…
BEN: Right, so you’ve got a working memory, basically. Like a working list.
DANIEL: That’s right! That’s right.
HEDVIG: Yeah! So at one point in the game, you kind of have to choose between being able to talk to your family in your village…
BEN: Oh ho ho ho! [LAUGHS]
DANIEL: Dang!
HEDVIG: …or being able to talk to outsiders.
BEN: Oh, this is fun. I like this.
HEDVIG: Yeah. Austin Walker of the Waypoint Radio podcast was talking about this, and talking about, like, how, like, traumatic it is to play it, because you…
BEN: Goodbye forever, Mum! [LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: Yes! Yes. And if there’s any disadvantage potentially to being, like, part of two different cultures, it could be that you don’t feel like your emotional connection… That’s not really about language or cognitive skills, but your emotional…
BEN: That’s about feelings. Ew. [LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: Like, when I come home to Sweden, I mean, I feel less Swedish now! I do. And I don’t… you know.
BEN: But is it also not true, Hedvig, that… certainly on the show before, you’ve talked about how you’ve gone home to Sweden, felt less Swedish, but also felt, like, a little sense of, like: Ugh! All of YOU should be less Swedish, too! [LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: Oh — cuts deep!
HEDVIG: Uhh — yeah, sometimes! God, now you put it like that, that’s awful!
BEN: Well, that… I’m just reflecting back to you something that I remember you saying to me!
HEDVIG: No, it’s just… I’m trying to think of how you’re capturing my inner state very well, even though I don’t think I’ve ever said exactly that!
BEN: Oh, okay, sorry!
HEDVIG: Which is creepy!
BEN: Whoops. I saw you too well!
HEDVIG: Yeah.
DANIEL: I feel that way with Americans.
BEN: Oh, true, yeah!
HEDVIG: And I don’t think that’s something that Ira has researched, or linguists tend to research!
IRYNA: Yeah, no. I would say…
HEDVIG: But that’s the only, like, disadvantage I can think of.
IRYNA: Ah, I would… I don’t know. Like, it’s not only just because you’re exposed to different language, you’re exposed to different culture, right? And you change your environment where you used to live? Because definitely, for example, if you have moved to a different country and you’re being surrounded by different people from different culture, you cannot but, like, change because of their influence as well. And once you’re going back home probably, you will find certain things weird, right? And that can’t but make you feel uncomfortable, at least a little bit, emotionally. But it’s probably not a matter of your being bilingual. It’s more a matter of, like, the cultural or social effect you have.
DANIEL: So, what disadvantages did we come up with?
IRYNA: Yeah, so I think that’s what makes people challenge all the time, right? So, once you ask: what are the disadvantages, they’re usually struggling to figure out the disadvantage. So that’s what I’m trying to say, right? It’s difficult. Like, once you are starting just learning or acquiring the second language, of course it’s unavoidable. You will have this confusion between two languages and it will be more cognitively consuming, right? So I just remember myself when I started learning English, right? It was definitely challenging for your brain, like you felt really tired, mentally tired, once you had to speak or to listen to English speakers. But once you’re getting to the extent that you’re fluent in that other language, actually it’s not that mentally consuming and so which means that your brain gets adjusted to the demand, right, which you’re posing. Which means that over the time it cannot but… and you don’t have that confusion anymore. Maybe from time to time, yeah, but not quite really, I would say. So at early stages, yes — you can have confusion between two languages. It can carry some definitely, like, extra demands on your cognitive performance, but with practice it’s getting more thorough, so which means that you’re upgrading those processes. And, from what we see right now, we have this kind of strategy which is being used for bilinguals to manage their two languages, because the way they manage their two languages, they have a special strategy and they start applying that strategy when involved in different other tasks. So which can help them to perform them better.
DANIEL: Soon-to-be Dr Iryna Khodos, thank you so much for talking about your work with us!
IRYNA: Thank you! It was a pleasure!
BEN: You’re going to stick around for the worst part of the show though, right?
IRYNA: Yeah! So, what is happening afterwards?
[TRANSITIONAL MUSIC]
DANIEL: It’s time for Word of the Week! This is where we talk about words that are new, that are breaking, that are interesting, or that are on our minds. And you know, you’ve got a Word of the Week for us. What is it?
IRYNA: That’s tricky! If I were to choose just a particular word, I would go for PHAGE. I was just having a conversation with my partner this week and he mentioned about phage therapy, and I was confused because I had never heard the word before, like PHAGE was… what is it?
BEN: Spell it?
DANIEL: PHAGE?
IRYNA: PHAGE.
DANIEL: [SPELLING] P H A G E?
HEDVIG: PHAGE, as in, like, pandemic?
IRYNA: [SPELLING] P H A G E S. Once again, two letters!
DANIEL: PHAGES. Okay.
HEDVIG: Yeah!
IRYNA: It’s almost like PAGE, but with letter H after P.
BEN: PHAGE has… yeah, I know what Hedvig means. It has a biological term, right?
IRYNA: Yeah, yeah!
BEN: Like, it can be a component in a virus or something?
IRYNA: Yeah.
DANIEL: Like eating.
IRYNA: Yeah, so you’re all right. So when I googled the term, so it appears that’s actually it’s translated as “eater”. Eater. To eat something, right? From Greek language.
HEDVIG: Oh! Like… someone who’s a COPRAPHAGE is someone who likes to eat poop.
BEN: Oh! Right, right, right.
DANIEL: Why did I go to that same example? Oh my gosh. [LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: Because it’s one of the few words I know like that. Yeah.
IRYNA: Yeah. So, this was interesting because I actually, it’s — how to say — sort of hunt and kill virus. Why it’s called hunt and kill virus: because it actually hunts for bacteria, and then it’s injected its kind of… it injects its DNA into bacteria cells, and that makes bacteria burst and die. So it’s a kind of therapy that people or scientists are hopeful will help to deal with superbugs that are currently operating in public health.
HEDVIG: So it’s like a parasite, in a way.
IRYNA: Yeah, it’s true. And one parasite is given the other one, so to say.
DANIEL: Yeah, that’s cool.
HEDVIG: Oh, so it’s a virus that’s specifically targeting bacteria.
IRYNA: Targeting. Yes, certain bacteria, right.
HEDVIG: Oh, right.
IRYNA: And actually is able to kill those bacterias. That’s why the full title is bacteriophage. Which means bacteria-eater.
BEN: Right.
IRYNA: But people probably will refer to it as PHAGE.
DANIEL: Let’s go on to our next Word of the Week. This one was on linguists’ minds.
HEDVIG: Ugh.
DANIEL: It all started with David Burge @iowahawkblog.
HEDVIG: I know what this is going to be! [LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: This tweet was: It was a good run, English language. And there was a screenshot of Merriam-Webster’s entry for IRREGARDLESS.
HEDVIG: What a… yeah. Okay, yeah. No, it should be Word of the Week, definitely.
DANIEL: Yeah. Not a fan, Hedvig?
HEDVIG: I just…
BEN: Can I guess that Hedvig is, in fact, not a fan of the fact that this is news?
HEDVIG: I’m just… no, no! I’m a fan of it… that it’s news because I think… I think Daniel is right. It was talked a lot about by linguists and non-linguists. It’s a word that was in the news of the week. I’m just… I don’t like bullying words.
DANIEL and BEN: Bullying words?
HEDVIG: Like, I don’t like when people bully words.
IRYNA: Ah, bully words.
BEN: Oh, you don’t like when people look down on certain words and their uses, kind of thing.
HEDVIG: Yeah, unless there’s, like, an actual good reason.
BEN: Yeah… well, I mean, you’re a descriptivist! Like, this isn’t… this isn’t, like, surprising to us, surely!
HEDVIG: I mean, I do look down on some words if they’re actually, like, hurting people, for example, like various slurs we’ve talked about. But, like, IRREGARDLESS…
DANIEL: [IN ANGUISH] Leave IRREGARDLESS alone!!
HEDVIG: Yeah, exactly.
DANIEL: Well, people on Twitter started doing a lot of hyperventilating. And I’ve noticed that this kind of word hatred is actually quite performative. Have you noticed?
HEDVIG: Yes.
BEN: Yes, I have. I have noticed that. Okay, hold on. Let’s pause. What could a prescriptivist… what…. Are there reasons — linguists of the show — are there reasons why people could be — if not emotionally compromised — but at least have legitimate criticisms to level at a word like IRREGARDLESS? Let’s take some of the histrionics away of people who are performatively expressing it, because, like, to be funny about language is part of their identity for whatever bizarre reason. Is there linguistic grounds for why IRREGARDLESS should be maybe — if not resisted, at least you know, like there’s rules for a reason. What would a prescriptivist say about this? A linguistic prescriptivist?
DANIEL: Oh, I can tell you that one, because I’ve had a… one of my linguist friends just said: “Yeah, I’m not a fan. I just don’t like it.” So, I guess, aesthetics?
BEN: Okay, so, I mean, that for me is a valid criticism to level at just about anything.
DANIEL: Yeah, you could do that. You know.
HEDVIG: Can we, for the listeners at home, explain why people don’t like it?
DANIEL: Well, okay, the usual objection is that the IR- prefix, which is like the IN- — NOT, right? — is redundant. This is the kind of thing that people say all the time: oh, it’s redundant, you don’t need it.
HEDVIG: Except you already have less.
DANIEL: Yeah, so… and I don’t think that’s a good criticism because I don’t think it is redundant. I think it is doing something.
BEN: Okay. Tell me more, Daniel. What do you think the extra negation prefix when there’s already a sort of negation suffix — what’s it doing?
DANIEL: Well, I think what’s happening — the way that it got this way — is that people took IRRESPECTIVE — like, this is happening irrespective of your desire — and they combined it with REGARDLESS — this is happening regardless of your desire — and you combine IRRESPECTIVE and REGARDLESS and you get IRREGARDLESS. Okay?
BEN: Okay, so it’s a portmanteau.
DANIEL: Yeah, kinda, yeah!
BEN: Okay.
DANIEL: But what I think also might be happening is that people are using the negative prefix IR- as kind of an intensifier.
BEN: Oh, that was… Actually so, patron of the show and patron of my heart, Ayesha, guessed that!
HEDVIG: That’s very cute! Sorry.
BEN: When I mentioned that this was coming on to the show as a — shall we say — slightly more prescriptive person than I am when it comes to language use, she guessed that IRREGARDLESS tends to get used when you want to be more intense then REGARDLESS.
DANIEL: Okay. But now what we need to do is find other words in English where double negatives are used as intensifiers.
BEN: Oo!
DANIEL: Where you got a negative prefix used as an intensifier. Anybody?
BEN: I’ve got… I don’t know why this came to my mind, but in terms of aesthetic preferences, I have always liked DISORIENTED and really dislike DISORIENTATED.
DANIEL: Okay.
BEN: So is that one?
DANIEL: I’m not sure about that one. But I can give you…
HEDVIG: I think that just has one.
BEN: Okay.
DANIEL: Yeah. but I can give you another DIS-. I can give you a few disses.
BEN: You DISS me all you like!
DANIEL: This’ll be my DISS track.
BEN: Okay.
DANIEL: To DISEMBOWEL.
BEN and HEDVIG: Disembowel…
BEN: Oh, true!
DANIEL: To EMBOWEL actually means “to remove the bowels out of”, and the DIS- is kind of superfluous. But we do it anyway.
BEN: Is that because we don’t use EM- as a negator anymore in basically anything? That’s pretty archaic, right?
DANIEL: Not-bowel. I’m just guessing.
BEN: Gimme more. Gimme more. I’m putting that on the maybe pile.
DANIEL: DISANNUL.
BEN: Oh, yes.
DANIEL: Which… you ANNUL something, but if you DISANNUL it, you really really annul it. Or at least the DIS- isn’t detracting. It’s not changing it.
BEN: I’ve never heard DISANNUL, I’ve got to be honest.
DANIEL: Okay. And then my favorite — you’re going to love this one — DISGRUNTLED!
BEN: Aaaah! Yes.
DANIEL: So a lot of people have removed the DIS-, and think: oh well, if I’m GRUNTLED, I must be happy, right? But no, it’s not. Imagine that you’re really unhappy, and you’re grunting about it. [GRUMBLING NOISES] Okay. Now add to the GRUNT an -LE. That actually is doing something as well. That’s what’s known as — get ready! — a frequentative that you’re doing something a lot. Isn’t that great? [LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: Uhh, yeah.
DANIEL: You’re really really grumbling!
BEN: Frequentative! I like that.
DANIEL: Yeah! And then you add DIS-, which you would think would mean “not” but it doesn’t. It’s just an extra little bit of oomph. You’re DISGRUNTLED.
BEN: Really! How did DIS- also pull this double duty of being an intensifier, as well as a negator?
DANIEL: We just do it with words that have a slightly negative valence, like EMBOWEL, ANNUL and GRUNTLE.
BEN: Yeah, right!
DANIEL: We also do the same thing with UN-. For example, UNRAVEL — you know, to RAVEL means to take something apart and string it all over the place.
BEN: Yeah, right.
DANIEL: UNRAVEL does the same thing. By the way, I’m pulling this from a tweet by Ariel Cohen Goldberg. There’s also UNLOOSEN, which means to LOOSEN, and UNTHAW, which means to THAW. So we do it all the time with many different words. We add negative prefixes as a way of sort of…
IRYNA: Intensifying.
DANIEL: At least not detracting from the meaning, but maybe giving it a little bit of oomph. And so if somebody complains about IRREGARDLESS, but they use the other words, their outrage is phony and selective.
BEN: Look, I also don’t particularly like IRREGARDLESS. I don’t like how it looks, I don’t like how feels, I don’t like anything about it, in the same way that I don’t like DISORIENTATED. It just doesn’t make sense to me. We have DISORIENTED. Why would you add a -TATE- to it? It doesn’t make any sense! But that’s the limit of the intensity of my caring.
HEDVIG: Yeah, exactly.
BEN: I have a preference not for that thing. I’m now going to think about literally anything else!
DANIEL: Excellent.
HEDVIG: It’s like… I think it’s good to view this as sort of similar to, like maybe, fashion. [LAUGHTER] There’s a particular shade of greenish yellow, yellowish green that I don’t like.
BEN: Lime green?
HEDVIG: Yeah, yeah.
BEN: Yup. And that’s fair enough, because that is a horrendous colour! Yeah! Fair!
HEDVIG: I don’t like lime green. On anything. It doesn’t fit anyone. I’m a blonde now, so it’s even worse if it was to be put on me. We have a blanket that is that colour, and it’s a good blanket… and I struggle! [LAUGHTER]
BEN: ~The colour is touching me~ [LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: But I also don’t walk up to random people in the street when they’re wearing it.
BEN: And just start breathing heavily: [HYPERVENTILATING] How could you? How could you wear that?
HEDVIG: Yeah, exactly.
DANIEL: Ira, any language preferences you have? Or dispreferences?
IRYNA: Let’s say, yeah… I’m not that picky in terms of languages. I would say IRREGARDLESS seems weird, right? But I can understand if people want to kind of intensify or whatever, and they add in that extra one. But I would not think too much about that, as well. Probably I would join Ben in particular, what he was saying, right? [LAUGHTER]
BEN: Right, yeah, like, there’s a momentary BLUURGH and then you just… your brain moves on to a million more interesting things.
IRYNA: Unfortunately! Or fortunately.
DANIEL: Finally, we have… In our last episode, we were trying to think of something better than GRAMMAR POLICE. I was trying to go with GRAMMAR MONITOR.
BEN and HEDVIG: Mm.
DANIEL: But Nancy Friedman got in touch on Twitter. She’s @fritinancy, and she pointed out that in 2012, @lizzieskernik came up with an alternative, and that is: GRAMMANDO.
BEN: Ooo.
HEDVIG: Oh.
BEN: I don’t know. I don’t like it, simply because it’s too cool sounding!
DANIEL: Yeah, that was my objection.
HEDVIG: I think commando soldier, like military style?
BEN: Yeah. Yeah.
HEDVIG: I’m not… I’m not sure I want to… if we think that the police is problematic… [LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: We haven’t solved that at all, have we?
BEN: We’re making enemies left, right, and center. Yeah, look, do commandos do secretive clandestine extrajudicial work? Mmm, yeah, kinda.
DANIEL: It reminds me also of “going commando”, which suggests a freewheeling nature that doesn’t seem consistent with self-proclaimed grammar mavens.
HEDVIG: Ah, yeah, yeah.
BEN: True true true. What about — I’ve just come up with this on the spot. Right?
DANIEL: Ready.
BEN: WORD WANKER.
HEDVIG: Woo.
DANIEL: Hey, I like it. Oh, shut up, word wanker!
BEN: Exactly.
HEDVIG: But that… yeah. I like it, but then I thought about it and WORD WANKER could just be someone who really likes words.
BEN: Well, surely that is how most people who are intensely prescriptivist would describe themselves. Like, why do you care about this so much?
HEDVIG: But I like words!
BEN: You would assume one of their go-to answers is “I just like words so much! Language matters!”
HEDVIG: Right, yeah. I just guess… I like words, so… yeah. I want something that specifically comes to the, like, the… in lack of a better word, policing nature.
BEN: Right.
HEDVIG: The behaviour of, like, going out and that’s why I kind of like Daniel’s “monitor” epithet, because it sort of has that, like, behaviour of it, I think.
BEN: True.
DANIEL: All right, well, I don’t feel like we solved this one.
BEN: No.
DANIEL: But: PHAGE, IRREGARDLESS, and GRAMMANDO: our Words of the Week. Let’s just take a comment or two from our last episode… feedback we got. This one’s from Bryn Hawk PhD. “Hello Because Language team! I had a couple words to suggest for future discussion. One is KOWTOW. Not to pick on Ben, but he did use that word in the latest episode’s discussion of his ongoing learning and growing with respect to language use. I’m not sure if I’m right, but I have the impression that KOWTOW has racist roots? Could be interesting to look into!” Any comments?
BEN: Well, I saw this, and the very first thing I wanted to do, 100 percent not from a defensive point of view, like, I wasn’t looking for evidence to, like, “No, Bryn, you’re wrong!” Like, I literally was, like: “Oh wow, I did not know that. Let’s go look.” I couldn’t find evidence of that. I mean, I know what kowtow is in the cultural heritage, right? It’s like a very very prostrative display of respect to a person senior to you, right? in Mandarin cultures. I couldn’t find anything that would suggest that the usage of kowtow is racist. I would assume that Bryn is thinking that maybe just the fact that it has been appropriated from another culture and is being used outside of that culture could have a sort of insensitive aspect and I would be super receptive to anyone from a Mandarin-based culture speaking to that and letting me know if that’s true.
DANIEL: Yeah.
BEN: You do see it used a lot in, like, journalism, especially. I found a lot of results coming up of, like, someone kowtowing to some nation-state, or something like that.
HEDVIG: I bet that, like — how do I say this? — I bet that, like, Make-America-Great-Again Americans who consider it inappropriate to… yeah, you know, who don’t like cancel culture, who complain about snowflakes, who don’t like what they call political correctness culture. They, I think, use KOWTOW to mean “becoming subordinate to someone when you shouldn’t.”
BEN: Right. Like, a shameful thing.
HEDVIG: Yeah.
BEN: Right.
HEDVIG: And I think that that’s separate from the actual usage in — like you said — like, in Chinese culture. I think that’s how they perceive it.
BEN: Right.
DANIEL: I feel like it does carry a negative valence. Wouldn’t that be right?
BEN: In English, I would agree. Absolutely. The way it is used in English as a loan word has a deeply — I wouldn’t say deeply — but definitely a negative valence or affect, for sure. And that’s not what it is in its original cultural, sort of, mother culture. So yeah — do you know what, Bryn: maybe. Maybe, I think you’ve got something there, possibly.
DANIEL: Yeah, I think so.
HEDVIG: Maybe that’s it: that it is the stereotyping and saying, like: Oh, you know, having to do this to an authority in this country… in China is to, like humiliate yourself.
BEN: To debase yourself, yeah, absolutely.
HEDVIG: Yeah. And that is where the, sort of, the problematic racism sort of creeps in.
BEN: Interesting! I really think that’s really awesome to bring to our attention, Bryn. Thank you very much.
DANIEL: Let’s go on to her next suggestion, which we didn’t say, but she just wanted some suggestions. Bryn says: “My other suggestion is SANITY CHECK for a potentially hurtful term that has no readily available equivalent.”
BEN: I will be honest: I’ve not come across this. Has anyone else?
DANIEL: I haven’t either.
HEDVIG: That people say SANITY CHECK?
BEN: Yeah. I’ve heard REALITY CHECK, definitely.
HEDVIG: Oh! No, SANITY CHECK happens actually a lot in what I do with, like, typological databases and programming.
BEN: Oh, it’s an IT word.
HEDVIG: Yeah, like, you update your database, and… we had a workshop meeting where we talked about, like: oh, here are some sanity checks. When we add new languages to our dataset, we shouldn’t see… like, we shouldn’t see this kind of, like, unexpected dramatic behaviour.
BEN: Oh! Okay, so it is a thing.
HEDVIG: Yeah.
BEN: Would INTEGRITY CHECK not be just as appropriate?
HEDVIG: Yeah, sure! Yeah, or like, CONSISTENCY CHECK.
DANIEL: Yeah, that’s good.
HEDVIG: Like, something like that. Yeah. But people do say SANITY CHECK, yes.
BEN: Okay.
DANIEL: In a similar vein, Peter on Patreon and says “Y’all asked about words that we can’t find a good replacement for. I for one — not about race — CRAZY. Really wish I could take it out for the mental health stigma implications but it’s just too stuck in. Any suggestions?” You got any? Instead of: That’s crazy!
BEN: Do you know what I use?
HEDVIG: WILD?
DANIEL: WILD’s good.
BEN: I use BANANAS. That’s bananas!
DANIEL: I use BANANAS. I use BIZARRE or WEIRD.
IRYNA: Oh, WEIRD, definitely.
DANIEL: That’s weird.
HEDVIG: I saw someone tweet the other day about, like, women in academia, using certain patterns in emails, and there was one thing that was written, and I was like: oh, I do that. And it’s: does this makes sense?
BEN: Oh
HEDVIG: And I use that a lot.
IRYNA: Yeah.
HEDVIG: And I was thinking that when I talk, if I talk to my partner, I might actually say, “Is this crazy?”
BEN: Interesting.
HEDVIG: But I don’t have a… yeah.
BEN: I know that… I think I know… because there’s a whole, like — what’s the word I’m looking for — like, spectrum of language use typically used by, like, women in academia and in business and that sort of stuff, right? Like, you can read memes and posts about, like: Do you use language like this? You know, like: guys don’t speak this way, that sort of thing.
HEDVIG: Exclamation points.
BEN: And I can’t… I read that as well and I was like: Oh, man, I’m glad I have an overtly male name, because anyone reading my emails would 100 percent assume I’m a woman based on this, because I am doing every single one of these things! [LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: Yeah! Maybe it’s a generational thing. You know, women tend to sometimes be ahead of various cultural curves, so maybe it’s just an age thing.
BEN: Yeah, maybe younger people are just a bit more conciliatory.
HEDVIG: Yeah.
DANIEL: Let’s just take a second and point out why this is a thing. Because people with mental health issues have pointed out to me that this stigmatising language, like: That’s crazy! or: That’s insane! is unhelpful. It can cause people to delay getting the help that they would otherwise get, because if CRAZY means WEIRD or bad in some way, well: “I’m not weird. I’m not bad. So I guess that’s not what I need.”
BEN: And quote unquote “crazy” people are the people who go and get help.
DANIEL: Yeah. So…
BEN: Right, like and: I’m not that, so I don’t want that.
DANIEL: So it sets up barriers that would otherwise not be there, and it’s not very supportive. So that’s why we mention. I think we’re just about there. Just like to say a huge thank you to Ira… soon-to-be Dr Iryna Khodos. Thank you so much for coming on Because Language and talking to us today.
HEDVIG: Yes, thank you very much. It’s very interesting.
IRYNA: Thank you so much for inviting me! Now I do appreciate going to the conference even more, because I was able to meet actually Daniel!
DANIEL: Aww!
IRYNA: And it was a pleasure, guys, to interact with all of you today, and definitely it’s more about having fun and sharing your passion for linguistics. So thanks for inviting me today!
BEN: Thanks, new friend to the podcast, Ira!
[ENDING MUSIC]
HEDVIG: Thank you so much, Ira. We also want to give a big thank you to everyone who has sent in their reactions and their ideas to us. We love hearing what you’re saying. You can keep in touch with us on Facebook, on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, Patreon — we are everywhere and we are becauselangpod everywhere. You can also send us an… I was going to say old-fashioned email. [LAUGHTER] As opposed to direct messaging, at hello@becauselanguage.com.
DANIEL: Hello!
HEDVIG: And if you like the show and if you want to help promote good language science podcasting, tell a friend about us. You can also leave a review everywhere where you can review us. including… Can you review on Facebook? Yeah, I think you can. Yeah. All those things will help people find us.
BEN: You’re hearing this because you’re a patron. So thanks for that. We’re incredibly grateful that you support us and help us keep going. A special shout out to [DEEP BREATH]
DANIEL: Here we go.
BEN: Termy, Chris B, Lissa, Maj.… whoa. Okay. Hold on.
DANIEL: Would you like me to take this one? Shall I take it?
BEN: No, no, no. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. Okay. Okay. One… Major Xlad-hwïna Ël’i-zhe-bēyt the Fourth de Llan-yærd-nguy-Qêdj-wyñ-gew
DANIEL: That was good.
BEN: Who shall hereafter be referred to as the Major. And also Matt, Whitney, Damien, Chris L, Helen, Jack, Kitty, Lord Mort… sorry, that was bad of me. I almost didn’t pronounce Lord Mortis in the fashion to which Lord Mortis should be pronounced. Helen, Jack, Kitty, Lord Mortis, Elías, Michael, Larry, Binh, Kristofer, Dustin, Andy, Anna, Nigel, Bob, Kate, Jen, Christelle, Nasrin, Ayesha, and new to this episode Keighley, and Emma. Big thanks to all of our patrons and for any future patrons, please do more of the Major’s funny word stuff! That was awesome.
DANIEL: The music you hear in our show is written and performed by Drew Krapljanov of Ryan Beno and of Didion’s Bible. You can find them on Bandcamp and wherever you get your music. Thank you for listening to our show and I’ll catch you next time. Because Language.
[BRIEF SILENCE]
DANIEL: Hi, everybody. It’s Daniel here, at the tail end of this show. Thanks for listening all the way through and, for your persistence, you shall be rewarded because we’re trying something new. As a teacher, I learned that having frequent low-stakes or no-stakes tests were really really good for learning. Just a little quiz that wasn’t worth anything, but that would kind of help you to remember things. So at the end of some of our shows, we’re going to do a little quiz to see if you remember the main points. And you can just, you know, stop listening early if you want to. So here’s the quiz for today. Dr Iryna Khodos, in her work work on bilingualism, studied four different factors to see if somebody would be good at doing the ol’ colour-shape switcheroo test. The four factors were • proficiency in the language, how good they were; • language use, the more frequently they use the language; or if they were good at using different languages in the same context; she looked at • taxonomic proximity of languages, how similar the languages were that they spoke; and also • the age of learning. Can you remember which ones she found were the best at predicting whether you’d be good at the test? The answer was: language use. And also taxonomic proximity and age were also minor factors. But the main one: whether you use the languages frequently or whether you use different languages in the same context. All right. Thanks for listening and we’ll do this again sometime.