This article is in partnership with Day Translations.

According to a study from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology published in 2024 which surveyed 30 people who speak multiple languages, polyglots use less brain power to process information in their native tongue compared to individuals who only speak one language.

Does it mean that polyglots are “lazy”? Well, not quite. Here’s the scientific explanation.

Polyglots Are Not Lazy, They Just Process Their Native Language Differently

The MIT study looked at how people who define themselves as polyglots think and process information both in their native language and in other languages they are proficient in.

This is because when we are born speaking in one language, the way we learn it is different from how we learn successive languages. Not only our brains as children are better suited for absorbing new information, but also the combination of being surrounded by an environment that is optimal for learning with being gradually exposed to more information is difficult to match in later years.

The research conducted by the MIT studied 30 people who could speak a minimum of five languages fluently and the main condition to have uniformity of data was that they had learned additional languages after a few years from learning their mother tongue. In other words, people who are bilingual from birth were excluded from this study.

The study itself comprised some listening skills tests where polyglots would hear texts being read out in their native tongue plus other languages and their brain activity would be recorded with an MRI scanner. The study was also a further investigation into the findings of a previous report published in 2021 which found that polyglots’ brains were less active when they listened to something in their native language. Language is processed mostly in the left side of the brain and this area was one of the key focus for brain activity during the research study.

The recordings in different languages were presented to the study participants which had previously rated their level of proficiency in each of the languages they spoke.

What Conclusions Were Drawn Studying Polyglots

Ultimately the study concluded that there are different types of brain activity in polyglots when they listen to spoken words in various languages. The most brain activity was found in polyglots who listened to the language they were most proficient in which wasn’t their native language.

In other words, the brains of polyglots work the hardest in the language they already know very well and the least in the language they learned since they were babies because it requires the least amount of effort.

In summary, our brain evaluates the various tasks it is presented with and puts them in order of difficulty, with tasks such as listening to something that is familiar as an easy task, while rating others at various levels of complexity. Also, age plays an important part in language acquisition as you need to use different techniques to learn new vocabulary and embed different expressions in conversation.

Photo by Natasha Connell on Unsplash