Having trained at the Max Planck Institute in Munich and the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, Núria Sebastián is today a professor of psychology at Pompeu Fabra University, where the focus of her research is language learning.
You say it is a myth that bilingual people have an advantage when it comes to learning languages.
There’s no solid evidence or study clearly showing that bilingual people find it easier to learn other languages. With learning we often hear things like the Dutch or Germans find it easier to learn English, while it is more difficult for the Catalans, the Spanish or the Italians. But obviously you need to take into account that Dutch and German are more similar to English than Catalan, Spanish or Italian. If it were about learning Italian, then who would find it easier? We do not always take the similarities between languages into consideration.
Is it good to expose small children to other languages?
When babies are born they can distinguish between all the sounds in all existing languages. So when we are a month old we are ready to learn any language. In the first year of life we gradually lose the sounds we do not need while the way our brains process the ones we do need improves. Here in Catalonia, we see that at four months all babies can tell the difference between ‘Pere’ and ‘pera’, whether they are from Catalan-speaking or Spanish-speaking families.
So it’s all about motivation?
Children love language when they are small, it’s a stimulus that attracts them a lot, but there is nothing magic about how they learn. All you need is motivation. When you are a baby the motivation comes from your parents, as what you want is for them to be happy with you, for them to smile at you and hold you. Later on the best thing for learning is to be exposed to the language in a fun situation or one that connects with your emotions. You see it with kids in the summer, who make friends and play with foreign children and they end up learning words and phrases from another language.
And with adults, who learns languages more easily?
Here people are exposed to two languages and a large part of the population did their schooling in two languages. What we have seen in doing perception tasks is that there is one group of people who is much better at doing difficult tasks, whether in Catalan or Spanish, while another group has a lot of difficulty doing easier tasks, even those that might be easy for monolingual speakers. People who are good at learning a second language are good at languages in general. There is a major correlation between being very good in your first language and being good in your second language. Different studies have shown that this is due to small differences in the brain.
Is it possible to unlearn a language?
Yes, through an injury or an illness. Bilingual people can lose one of their languages. In the case of degenerative illnesses, we see that the longer the subject has had the language, the longer it remains. The first language learnt is, in theory, the last to go. There are sometimes spectacular stories in the media about someone who has an accident and starts speaking a new language, but this is not true. If someone suddenly starts speaking another language it is because they already knew it, perhaps when they were small, and haven’t used it since. There is nothing mystical about languages.
Yet we always hear that language is what makes us human...
It is, but so is compassion, for example. The reason why language is so important is that it shows we belong to a group. Studies show that the closer two languages are, the closer the genetics of the populations who speak them. That means, the closer someone talks to the way you do, the closer you will feel to them. Imagine you are in Patagonia and you are approached by a German-speaking man who makes you understand that he has lost his money and needs $20. Now, if instead of being a German-speaker the man speaks Catalan, there is a much better chance you will give him the money he needs. You are more willing to help him because you feel closer to him. That is why language has so many political connotations. [French president] Macron recently reminded the Corsicans that French is the only official language. Why so much malevolence with languages and not with traditional dress? Because language is a powerful element of identity. At just 10 months old babies already show more trust in someone who speaks like their parents than someone who talks with a different accent.
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