"Sparkles with insight."--Daniel Pink
This revolutionary book goes beyond any recent book on language to
dissect how language operates in our minds and how to harness its
virtually limitless power.
As Dr. Marian explains, while you may well think you speak only one
language, in fact your mind accommodates multiple codes of
communication. Some people speak Spanish, some Mandarin. Some speak
poetry, some are fluent in math. The human brain is built to use
multiple languages, and using more languages opens doors to creativity,
brain health, and cognitive control.
Every new language we speak shapes how we extract and interpret
information. It alters what we remember, how we perceive ourselves and
the world around us, how we feel, the insights we have, the decisions we
make, and the actions we take. Language is an invaluable tool for
organizing, processing, and structuring information, and thereby
unleashing radical advancement.
Learning a new language has broad lifetime consequences, and Dr. Marian
reviews research showing that it:
- Enhances executive function--our ability to focus on the things that
matter and ignore the things that don't.
- Results in higher scores on creative-thinking tasks.
- Develops critical reasoning skills.
- Delays Alzheimer's and other types of dementia by four to six years.
- Improves decisions made under emotional duress.
- Changes what we see, pay attention to, and recall.
