Multilingualism and Personal Health Benefits: Connecting the Dots

Abstract

Being multilingual is a valuable advantage in today’s global society, which is right at everyone’s doorstep. Language and the ability to communicate are important skills to possess. These skills are particularly useful for healthcare professionals because without effective communication, it is tricky to collect reliable information, inform patients of a diagnosis, and/or engage them in developing a management plan. This chapter discusses the connection between speaking several languages and speaker’s mind health. New research on multilingualism has impacted the author insight into the effect of learning and using two or more languages on cognition, the brain, and success and well-being across the lifetime in the last twenty years. The notion of learning various languages expose the linguistic and cognitive development in the community, the latest findings imply that people gain a swathe of health benefits, becoming more open to different languages and new learning in general. An old saying says, speaking more than one language inevitably means that one’s have access to more than one culture, the person tend to have a better understand of intercultural differences and the nuances of different subcultures within an entire culture. The finding of the study shows that knowing several languages support ones life style, boost to live longer and the speaker become a certain kind of personification of cultural dynamicity and cross-culture exchange. Consequently, multilingualism has a range of social, psychological, and lifestyle benefits. Furthermore, experts are discovering a slew of health benefits from learning multiple languages, including quicker stroke recovery and delayed dementia development.