Is Bilingualism a Superpower? Inside the Neuroscience of Language and Success

When a child first realizes that the word for “water” exists in two shapes simultaneously, she has a certain expression. It can be found in classrooms in Queens, bilingual preschools hidden in Houston strip malls, and the kitchen of a Punjabi grandmother in Sacramento who won’t let her grandson’s first laugh be stolen by English. Even though it’s a tiny flicker, you remember it. Something seems to be opening up in the child’s mind that the rest of us spent years attempting, mostly unsuccessfully, to recover later.

It appears that the U.S. Department of Education has finally taken notice. Ten years ago, the Office of English Language Acquisition’s “Being Bilingual Is a Superpower” initiative would have sounded a little idealistic. It feels long overdue now. Every time a teenager from Europe switches between three languages at a train station, the nation is subtly embarrassed by the fact that only 20% of Americans are multilingual. It’s difficult to disagree with Cardona when the statistics consistently show that multilingualism is an academic and economic necessity, as he stated when he was still in charge of the department.

The intriguing thing is that science reached the same conclusion so late. Pediatricians used to sincerely warn parents that teaching a child two languages would confuse the young brain. We used to think the world was flat, as Dr. Mariano Sigman likes to point out. Bilingual kids routinely outperform their monolingual peers on tasks requiring cognitive control, which is the capacity to pay attention, plan, and switch between tasks without losing your footing, according to his research and an expanding body of work supporting it.

The experiments themselves are strangely beautiful. On a screen, objects flash. For red, press one button; for blue, press another. Then, all of a sudden, the rules shift; you now react to shape rather than color. Bilinguals typically heal more quickly. Even when there is no language involved, brain scans reveal that their language networks are active, as though their minds have spent their entire lives practicing the skill of switching and simply applying the muscle elsewhere. You begin to question how much of what we refer to as intelligence is actually just practiced flexibility as you watch this develop in the data.

Most people are unaware of how important cognitive control is. Children who acquire it typically report better health outcomes, do better academically, and earn more money later in life. Governments all over the world spend vast amounts of money attempting to teach patience, concentration, and the capacity to resist the urge to grab a marshmallow. Just as a pianist develops finger strength without ever lifting weights, bilingual children seem to pick up a lot of it almost as a byproduct.

But the myths endure. One language for mom, one for dad, and one for school is still a question that parents ask. This amuses Sigman a little. He maintains that babies are exceptional context readers. Long before adults acknowledge them, they sort the world into who speaks what, watch faces, and read cues.

We still don’t know a great deal. Open questions include whether the bilingual advantage persists consistently across socioeconomic categories, whether it diminishes in adulthood without practice, and whether the benefits are as significant as the most enthusiastic research indicates. However, it’s difficult to ignore the pattern. One brain learns to accommodate two languages and two visual modalities. If it’s not a superpower, it’s the closest thing most of us will ever have.