PANDEMIC BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE

• Canada is more bilingual now than it has ever been...
• ...and Quebec has the highest number of bilingual people out of every province.
• Research shows that it’s best to start learning a language at a young age, the best being 7 years old.
• However, research also shows that this is due to perception, not biology. With the right approach, an adult can learn a language as effectively as a child!
• Learning a language makes your brain physically grow! Brain scans show a greater density of grey matter in areas of the brain associated with language in people who speak two or more languages.
• There are 46 different alphabets used worldwide.
• Learning a second language helps prevent the mind from aging and delays the onset of conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s by as much as a decade.
• The most widely spoken in the world is not English… it’s Mandarin/Chinese!
• Interestingly, Mandarin is also the most difficult language to learn.
• The easiest language to learn is Spanish.
• The dot above an “i” or a “j” is called a tittle.
• Bilingual people have a better memory.
• Bilingual people do better academically, too!
• The first alphabet was called the Phoenician alphabet, created sometime around 1200 BC.
• 89% of employers agree that being multilingual adds value to an employee.
• 43% of the world’s population speaks two languages fluently… 13% speaks three.
• English is the most common second language. In fact, people who speak English fluently as a second language outnumber native speakers!
• Almost half of languages have no written form.
• Knowing more than one language makes it easier to learn additional languages. (You knew that one, didn’t you?)
• The most common reason for wanting to learn a second language is to communicate better when travelling.
• The most widely translated books after The Bible are The Little Prince and Pinocchio.
• There are roughly 6500 languages spoken in the world today; however, 2000 of these languages have fewer than 1000 speakers; in fact, one language becomes extinct every 14 days.
• The most linguistically diverse country is Papua New Guinea, where around 840 languages are spoken.
• There are more Spanish speakers in the US than in Spain.
• In Chinese, dogs go 'wang wang'... in Spanish they go 'guau guau'... and in Swedish they go 'voff voff’.
  • Some cool celebrity facts (about language, of course):                                                           ✓ Arnold Schwarzenegger was told that he cannot voice his own character in a movie translated to German because his Austrian accent was too rough;                                                                        ✓ The actress Sandra Oh, Canada’s own, is fluent also in Korean - and French, which she learned in Montreal;                                                                                                                            ✓ Mila Kunis was born in The Ukraine, and she speaks excellent Ukrainian and Russian to this day;​                                                                                                                                                     ✓ Celine Dion didn’t start learning English until well into her teens – and her motivation was world fame, her inspiration – Michael Jackson.

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