As a British-Chinese colleague of mine once sagely said, “Second Tongue, Second Soul.” It turns out that research now confirms this.
Research presented in Science News shows that German and Arabic speakers have different strength connections between certain synapses. Evidence was gathered from brain scans from the 94 subjects taking part in the research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.
At a macro-level, German speakers had denser connections in the left-hemisphere of the brain, whilst Arabic speakers had stronger connections between both hemispheres. It is thought this is because Arabic has words made up of complex tri-syllable roots, requiring stronger ability to assemble and recognise these roots, whilst German requires a strong ability to parse sentences that may have multiple meanings.
Link to the full article in Science News
Andrew Climo
Andrew Climo is a Cornish Democracy researcher, historian, analyst, community facilitator and Higher Education consultant.