While I lay no claim to the title of “polyglot”, I have met a fair few languages in my time, in varying depths: Cantonese was the first tongue ever taught to me; the English I started acquiring in nursery has been the linguistic spine of my education and early career; French and Spanish I studied before majoring in a subject that relies heavily on Classical Latin and Greek (mostly Attic). In between that, I have tangoed briefly with mobile apps for novice-level German and Korean, respectively, while I sometimes find myself in brief exchanges that call upon my very humble Putonghua. 

Psychological research attests to several benefits bi- or multilingualism offers, from training executive function to increasing the density of grey matter in the brain, even compensating for neural degeneration as one ages.¹ Before we get ahead of ourselves, however, what bearing does this have on the young learners we meet? 

The most obvious scenario of pinning down specific vocabulary aside, an awareness of how other languages operate frequently comes in handy for investigating areas of very “un-English” grammar, syntax or word choice. If your experience of teaching younger primary students resembles mine at all, you have probably seen a person described as “high” when physical stature is meant. Most likely, this error is informed by 高 (gāo, gou1) in Chinese being used for inanimate objects (mountains, ceilings) and people alike; similarly, the Spanish adjective alto applies to both of these uses. 

It is worth encouraging connections wherever they might help: for example, asking whether students have already come across the concept of 公元前 (gōngyuánqián, gung1 jyun4 cin4) and 公元 (gōngyuán, gung1 jyun4) in history creates the opportunity for them to link facts learnt in different settings, as well as making BCE and CE a little more familiar, since the terms translate literally between Chinese and English. 

That’s not to say that we can’t stay curious and evolve to embrace unfamiliarity: we can revel in vowels and consonants with distinct new flavours, and work through pronouncing names like Passepartout (“PASS-par-too”, as opposed to “PASS-part-out”) from Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. 

The practical advantages of encountering more than one language may be universal: it is no secret that basic recognition of Indo-European languages help us make more sense of archaic words like “thou hast” — compare “du hast” in modern German — and it is said that some schools choose to teach Latin for the purpose of boosting skills and proficiency in the study of modern languages. Yet the beauty of harnessing this especially for English learning and teaching is that virtually any language is bound to be useful, since English is linguistically such a hybrid (in terms of its DNA, so to speak) and a melting-pot that willingly imbibes all sorts of influences and loanwords. 

¹ Ramin Skibba (29.11.2018), ‘How a second language can boost the brain’, https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/mind/2018/how-second-language-can-boost-brain (accessed 12.12.2024).