Susanna Zaraysky first realized she had a knack for languages when she was a foreign exchange student in France during high school. “I was able to mimic a French accent,” she says. “People would often comment, ‘Wow, your accent is spot-on.’”
As a child, Zaraysky was exposed to several languages. Her family spoke mostly English and some Russian, and she heard Spanish on the radio and around town. Her year in France sparked an interest in learning other languages. Zaraysky, who lives in Cupertino, CA, and works for Google, now speaks eight languages, including Portuguese, Italian, and Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), a language originally spoken by Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 1400s. Zaraysky started learning Ladino while living in Bosnia. “I have to like the way a language sounds,” says Zaraysky, who wants to learn modern Greek for that very reason.
People like Zaraysky who can speak multiple languages are known as polyglots. While there is no precise number of languages that qualifies a person for the label, five tends to be a common benchmark. Those who have mastered 10 or more languages are called hyperpolyglots, a much rarer distinction.
“I don't think polyglots are so special,” says Zaraysky. “In parts of the world like Africa or India, many people are multilingual.” They know their country's official language as well as one or more minority, tribal, or regional languages.
While Zaraysky is unfazed about being a polyglot, neuroscientists who research language are intrigued by the phenomenon. They are using functional MRIs (fMRIs) to measure the brain activity of polyglots to see if something unusual explains their ability. Zaraysky had her brain scanned for a study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and hopes to participate in another one at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. For the MIT study, the fMRI tracked Zaraysky's brain activity (as measured by changes in the amount of oxygen in the blood) while she listened to familiar and unfamiliar languages or nonlanguage gibberish, or performed a task unrelated to language like solving a math problem or remembering a visual pattern. Brain areas that process language light up when subjects listen to or read languages they understand.
Polyglots may have language networks that differ from those of the average person, says Evelina Fedorenko, PhD, associate professor of neuroscience at MIT. In one study, she and colleagues found that polyglots' networks (which include the frontal and temporal cortical areas of the brain) were smaller than those of people who speak just one or two languages. One possible explanation is that their language networks operate more efficiently, so they require less brain power, either from the start or as they learn multiple languages.
“Not all polyglots have a natural affinity for languages,” says Dr. Fedorenko, who used to speak six before she moved to the United States when she was a teenager. “Some say it comes naturally to them, but a lot say it's difficult, but they love it and spend hours each week learning and practicing.” Even self-identified polyglots dispute the notion that they can soak up a new language just by hearing it in passing.
Polyglot research is part of a broader field of study focused on understanding the brain processes involved in acquiring language, either native ones or those learned later in life. Although language is generally considered a task of the frontotemporal network in the brain's left hemisphere, fMRIs are revealing that the right hemisphere also plays a role. “We are trying to understand how the language network changes as people acquire more languages and how brain responses differ among languages [spoken] with different proficiencies,” says Saima Malik-Moraleda, a PhD candidate in Harvard's speech and hearing bioscience and technology program and a member of Dr. Fedorenko's lab.
To gauge participants' brain responses to language, researchers give them auditory tasks, since polyglots can't always read the languages they speak, says Malik-Moraleda, who grew up in a multilingual home in the Catalan area of Spain. She speaks six languages, including her native Kashmiri, which she started learning to read only a year ago. In her personal time, she is involved in efforts to revitalize interest in Kashmiri, which is spoken by about 7 million people in the Kashmir region of India.
Understanding Speech
Neuroscientists had thought that language works like a bureau with drawers that need to be opened one by one (one for syntax, one for sounds, one for vocabulary, and so on). Increasingly, they think it's more of a multilayered system in which multiple domains of the brain interact, says Alessandra Rampinini, PhD, a member of the research team at the University of Geneva studying polyglots. “Language engages a very large part of the left hemisphere in an intense way,” she says. But “the processes that support this widespread activation are not just based on language itself. They are supported by the memory system, the attention system, and the motor system as well, which makes acquiring language a complex task involving the whole brain.”
Researchers hope to isolate some of the mechanisms behind language that might add to knowledge about how we learn, says Dr. Rampinini. Studying polyglots also might lead to better methods for teaching foreign languages in schools or community-based second-language programs. Dr. Rampinini is involved in creating a repository of data on polyglots—behavioral and experiential characteristics, brain scans, and genetic samples—that scientists could tap into for future studies involving language.
Interrupted Speech
Another question that interests researchers is what happens when people who speak more than one language develop aphasia due to a stroke or other brain injury. “Some studies have been done with people who are bilingual,” says Dr. Fedorenko. “Typically, both languages are affected to some extent and often in similar ways.” Factors such as age, the extent and areas of brain damage, and how the two languages were acquired also play roles, says Dr. Rampinini. “In general, the brain has potential for plasticity, meaning it can rewire itself after damage,” she says. “Sometimes, in the case of language, other areas of the brain come to the rescue, taking over the lost function. Other times, people do not regain language because the lesion is too wide or too deep, damaging white matter pathways—communication between brain areas—where activity happens.”
In some instances, one of the languages may come back if its processing depends on different areas. For example, if the person learned the language later and relied more on memory processes, that language might come back before the language that was acquired in childhood and processed through parts that have been damaged by the injury, says Dr. Rampinini. If the patient works on both languages equally through speech therapy, and both languages rely on the same brain regions, they may come back together, she adds. Or patients may choose to rehabilitate the language they use most often and cease being bilingual.
Pursuing a Passion
For Zaraysky, learning new languages is like studying music. She listens for melody, rhythm, pitch, and other basic elements and often enhances learning by singing along to silly tunes or watching TV shows.
“I still have to study the grammar and learn irregular verb forms and things that are complicated,” says Zaraysky, who chronicled her experiences in a book she published called Language Is Music. “I am an introvert, and before I talk, I listen,” she says. “Listening is a huge factor in learning a language.”
Zaraysky's language skills are useful for traveling, although she doesn't like requests to serve as a translator or interpreter.
Jin Wu, a former researcher at MIT who also took part in the polyglot study there, says passion and persistence are key to her mastery of languages. As a child growing up in Canada, Wu studied French in high school but didn't take it seriously. She became interested in languages only as she got older and challenged herself to read original texts of the Bible in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. Before long she had picked up seven languages in just a year using a learning app called Duolingo. Now she knows 14 languages to varying degrees.
“One of my goals is to be fluent in the top 10 languages in the world,” says Wu. Among the top 10 are Portuguese, Mandarin, Hindi, and Arabic. She keeps track of her progress on a personal website with graphs and charts, and dedicates five minutes a day to learning whatever language she is focused on, using memorization techniques. “You would be surprised by how far you can get in five minutes,” she says.
Learning languages is in keeping with Wu's approach to life. “Some people focus on what they're really good at and stick with it for the rest of their lives and avoid what they're not very good at,” she says. She prefers to take on new challenges. “I just finished the Duolingo Arabic course and have started reading the Quran in Arabic,” she says.
