How to Keep Your Brain Nimble and Postpone Dementia.
Our Personal Brain Exercising Life
Growing up in the Netherlands, I spoke Dutch but also learned Frisian, a language spoken by my parents, who came from Friesland. They only spoke Frisian with each other when they didn’t want me to know what they were talking about, like wartime news or a surprise birthday party. This motivated me to listen carefully until I understood them, but I never spoke Frisian and let them know that I understood.
Our family immigrated to Canada when I was twelve, and I learned to speak English in a one-room multi-grade rural school. I spent a few weeks in first grade, then moved through the other grades until by Christmas, I was in seventh grade and was fluent in English.
Fifteen years later, I was a married man and a father of three daughters. We moved to Brazil and learned Portuguese to start a missionary career. Then, a few years later, we moved into an indigenous village and learned the unwritten Canela language, inventing a way to write it and teaching the Canelas to read and write their language. Eventually, Jo was tri-lingual, and I was quadra-lingual: Dutch, English, Portuguese and Canela.
A Major Change in Attitude
When my wife and I were invited to dinner at the home of a Dutch diplomat in Brazil, I knocked on the apartment door. A preschool boy opened the door, saw my blond hair and blue eyes and said in Dutch, “Goedemiddag, meneer.” He then saw Jo with her dark hair and brown eyes and greeted her with “Boa tarde, senhora,” judging her to be Brazilian. At dinner, he asked, “Please pass me the gravy.” Five years old and tri-lingual. Later, when the family was transferred to France, he became fluent in French.
Fifty to one hundred years ago, educators considered a second language to interfere with a child’s academic progress and harm his intellectual development. They were right about the interference but wrong in their opinion that this caused harm to the brain. Instead, a second language gives our minds a workout that strengthens the cognitive muscles.
A single language speaker’s brain is as undeveloped as a driver who has only ever driven around a deserted mile-long circular track. However, the brain of a bi-lingual or multi-lingual person is like a driver who confidently maneuvers in city traffic, making left and right turns and obeying traffic signs and rules of the road.
Postpone the Onset of Dementia
I was thrilled to read a report that bi-lingual people, let alone multi-linguals like Jo and me, were far more resistant than mono-linguals to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bi-lingualism, the later the age of onset. So, since reading that report, I have been reading more in the the Canela Bible and the Dutch and Portuguese books in my library. I want to exercise my mind and keep it functioning well for as long as possible.