Brain freeze in two languages

By Jason Lim

I was born and raised in Seoul until I was nine years old. Then we emigrated to Asuncion, Paraguay and spent about two-and-a-half years there before landing in New York City where I grew into young adulthood. So, that means that I was immersed in three different languages in the first twenty years of my life with little exposure to the other languages when submerged in the culture of the dominant language. Naturally, I have been fascinated by how different languages play within my own brain.

So, this is where I stand today several decades later. As far as Spanish goes, I can't understand it or speak it. I only lived in Paraguay for a little over 2 years, so it wasn't long enough for me to become fluent. Also, as Paraguay was a stopover to America, I went to school only about half the time I was there, spending the final year before our departure studying English in a private school. Strangely enough, however, I feel emotionally at home hearing spoken Spanish. I don't understand what's being said and certainly can't speak it, but the rhythm and sound of the language as the words undulate in the air feel as familiar to me as listening to a nursery rhyme long forgotten.

My dominant language is English. But when visiting Korea, I can pass as native Korean speaker, speaking with the locals in both casual and business settings. However, it takes significant mental effort to discipline my Korean to match the level of the educated native speakers, especially when speaking outside the scope of my natural familiarity. What makes that more difficult is that vocabulary you use in Korean wholly switches when used in different contexts and audiences, so you have to know several sets of vocabulary that mean the same things but are appropriate in different situational contexts.

Although I am not a professional and never been formally trained, I am a pretty decent interpreter. However, I am far better interpreting Korean into English than the other way around. I guess that's natural, as it's easier to reproduce and rearticulate what's being said in your dominant language. It goes to show that listening (comprehending) is easier than speaking in any language.

Until now, I didn't know the cognitive process that makes this mechanism possible. I always thought I was somehow compartmentalizing my languages by putting up mental walls between them, with a filter that I selectively open and close. I was wrong.

Nicole Chang, in her BBC article titled, "How our brains cope with speaking more than one language," writes, "If you think about it, the ability of bilingual and multilingual speakers to separate the languages they have learned is remarkable. How they do this is commonly explained through the concept of inhibition ― a suppression of the non-relevant languages."

Chang argues that it's not compartmentalization per se. All the different languages are mixed together in some type of a data lake in your brain. Depending on the situation, you suppress all the other languages in favor of the desired one. Sometimes the suppression doesn't work well enough, and you experience an "intrusion," in which a word or accent in the wrong language sneaks in. Basically, we have a smart damper.

When adults acquire a new language, they also learn by suppressing their dominant language, which can lead to a temporary loss of capacity of their native tongue. This process rings true because I heard countless times from Koreans who immigrated later in life that they can speak neither English nor Korean well after a few initial years.

But I am still not entirely clear how simultaneous or consecutive interpretation happen neurologically. There must be some type of natural organization and tagging of words and syntaxes based on the language. In other words, how is language indexed in the brain? Are the words with similar words bonded together? So, if I hear "dog" in Korean, do I search for that meaning and pick the word "dog" in the desired target language? Or are the words organized by proximity? Maybe an emotional logic ties certain meanings together regardless of the language itself. How does the neurological filing schema facilitate interpretation in which you have to go back and forth repeatedly?

I am further curious about the ethical and cultural underpinnings of each language. I notice a subtle but definite shift in my personality, perspective and even ethical values when speaking in English versus Korean. This shift must mean that language is not just an executive function of the brain but also tied into the deeper emotional layers of the brain. Is that because language shifts your primary social identity so that you have an associated in-group with each language? After all, social identity theory tells us that your sense of belonging will dictate your values and even logic. Or could it be that language is so essential to our human experience that each language triggers different gene expressions even?

I would love to learn more. It's an endlessly fascinating topic. One thing is for sure though: my life has been enriched with different languages and the cultural gifts that come with them. For that, I will forever be grateful.

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.