Being bilingual can delay onset of dementia! This  medical report  was presented to the  members of the Academy Of Codfish attending the 74th  dinner January 15th 2007

Camões and Shakespeare

What do we call a person that speaks many languages? Polyglota  (poly=many + glota = language .
What do we call someone who speaks 3 languages? Trilingual. 
Two languages?  Bilingual.
One language? AMERICAN !

Yesterday (Jan.14, 2007) the News Agency Reuters reported from Ottawa, Canada, a scientific report with a study of 184 elderly patients who suffered from dementia and  who attended  a Toronto memory clinic between 2002 and 2005. They divided these patients into 2 groups:

 One group of  91 spoke  ONLY one language. The other group of  93  were BILINGUAL.

This scientific study was done in Toronto  at  the University of York by Professor Ellen Bialystok and her team.

 Results:  The researchers determined that the mean age of onset of dementia symptoms in the  monolingual group   was 71.4  years, while the bilingual group was 75.5 years.

There is a difference of more than 4 years. The BILINGUAL group started the dementia symptoms 4.1 years LATER!

This is a very impressive difference! They are going to continue with this research to increase the number of participants.

So those of us who speak fluently every day – at  least  two languages – are mentally healthier and much more alert!

61 years  ago, when I was examined by the American  Armed Forces in New York City,  I was officially  classified as   “Mental Deficient” because I  could not answer the  questions in the English presented to me in the  recruiting exam!. Today  I stand here before  of you, able to speak fluently in English and Portuguese,   as a full fledge American citizen, older than 80 years old, with 13 copyrights in the Library of Congress and fortunately, without any symptoms of dementia!!!

 Why? Because I used BOTH languages – Portuguese and English – every single day!  I use every day the dictionaries that I have at home:

“Portuguese into English: Novo Michaelis”,  Edições Melhoramentos, São Paulo, Brasil.
English into Portuguese: “Inglês-Português”, Por Armando de Moraes, Porto Editora, Rua da Fábrica, Porto, Portugal.

TV = “Traza a vida”.  “Life goes backwards”. Read in Portuguese and Read in English.  Read, Read! Read!  Try to find out the meaning and origin of the words.  It is lots of fun.

If you know 3 languages, does your dementia comes even later?  Possibly!  Fully bilingual has a “huge protective effect  against the onset of  dementia”  !!!  Our brain is like any other organ: If you do not use it to fullest it gets  RUSTY  !!!

So we should not have any inferiority complex by speaking more than one language in this  great country the United States of America!