Does learning a language boost your IQ?
Learning another language is one of the most effective and practical ways to increase intelligence, keep your mind sharp, and buffer your brain against aging.
Bilingual children who speak native language at home have higher intelligence. Children who regularly use their native language at home while growing up in a different country have higher IQs, a new study has shown.
This might sound weird but learning a new language enhances your cognitive and analytical abilities. Learning English is easy but it requires a logical process.
In the early nineteen fifties, researchers found that people scored lower on intelligence tests if they spoke more than one language. Research in the sixties found the opposite. Bilingual people scored higher than monolinguals, people who speak only one language.
- Sierra Leone – 45.07.
- Guatemala – 47.72.
- The Gambia – 52.98.
- Nicaragua – 52.69.
- Guinea – 53.48.
- Ghana – 58.16.
- Ivory Coast – 58.16.
- South Sudan – 58.61.
With 108 points, the inhabitants of Hong Kong reach the highest intelligence quotas worldwide. The last place, with only 56 points, is occupied by Equatorial Guinea. In addition to the simple ranking of countries, the following table shows the influence of prosperity and climate.
Language gives us the ability communicate our intelligence to others by talking, reading, and writing. As the psychologist Steven Pinker put it, language is the “the jewel in the crown of cognition” (Pinker, 1994). Although other species have at least some ability to communicate, none of them have language.
An international conference on languages held in Sarawak, Malaysia between February 5 and 8, selected Sanskrit as the language which emits the 'most positive vibrations' and 'spiritually pure in nature'.
- Python.
- R.
- Java.
- C#
- C++
- Kotlin.
- JavaScript.
- TypeScript.
If you want to learn a language that is widely spoken throughout the world, you may want to opt for English, French, or Spanish, which are spoken on all continents.
Do intelligent people talk fast or slow?
Speak more slowly. According to research, you sound more intelligent if you speak relatively slowly. (Think of it as the Jeff Goldblum effect.) Speaking at a measured pace makes you seem smarter--as if your words are better thought-out (even if they aren't).
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Bilingual people have a stronger executive function which results in a heightened ability to switch between tasks, a more efficient monitoring system, and a heightened cognitive ability. Adults aren't the only ones who experience these benefits; infants, children, and the elderly can benefit as well.
Although science is on the fence about whether you can raise your IQ or not, research does seem to suggest that it's possible to raise your intelligence through certain brain-training activities. Training your memory, executive control, and visuospatial reasoning can help to boost your intelligence levels.
| Rank | Country | IQ |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Taiwan | 106.47 |
| 3 | Singapore | 105.89 |
| 4 | Hong Kong | 105.37 |
| 5 | China | 104.1 |
Notably, the average IQ score falls between 85 and 115. A score above 140, meanwhile, is considered to be genius level.
The takeaway: Your individual IQ will not change as you age, but on average our intelligence does decrease with age.
The first genius IQ score was around 140. That's about one in every 250 people. But one leading researcher in the 1940s suggested that a genius should have an IQ over 180. That's about one in every 2 million people.
- Chinese: 1.51 billion people (native speakers: 899 million; second language speakers: 178 million)
- English 840 million people (native speakers: 330 million; second language speakers: 510 million)
English is merely a language; it is a means of communication, not a measure of intelligence or knowledge. The ability to speak English according to a specific grammar and pronunciation standard has nothing to do with intelligence.
Does language affect memory?
Researchers at the University of San Diego have found that the language you speak may determine the quality of your working memory. Running memory tests on participants in eight different cultures around the world, they found a difference in working memory capacity among speakers of various languages.
Your spoken language has nothing to do with your intelligence. First of all, intelligence is the ability to learn. Being able to speak, but in reality THINK, in different languages does help you be smarter.
Summary: Speaking more than one language does not improve a person's general mental ability. However, while there is no cognitive advantage to being bilingual, there are broader social and lifestyle benefits that come from speaking multiple languages.
Language gives us the ability communicate our intelligence to others by talking, reading, and writing. As the psychologist Steven Pinker put it, language is the “the jewel in the crown of cognition” (Pinker, 1994). Although other species have at least some ability to communicate, none of them have language.
People who speak both English and Spanish, for example, are likely to have more brain cells than people who just speak English. This, of course, suggests a healthier brain and better intelligence.
Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.
4. Russian. Ranking fourth on our list of hardest languages to learn, Russian uses a Cyrillic alphabet — made up of letters both familiar and unfamiliar to us. But speaker beware: some of the Cyrillic letters may look familiar but make a different sound than the Latin letter they resemble.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Studies show that learning a language increases the volume and density of gray matter, the volume of white matter, and brain connectivity. In older language learners, some studies show cognitive benefits beyond languages, such as for working memory.
“Because the language centers in the brain are so flexible, learning a second language can develop new areas of your mind and strengthen your brain's natural ability to focus, entertain multiple possibilities, and process information,” Roitman writes in another post on the site.
What is the richest language in the world?
A major uniqueness of Arabic language lies in its richness. While English, French, and Russian languages have around 500,000 words, 150,000 words, and 130,000 words in its vocabulary respectively, Arabic language has 12,3 million words in its own, making it the richest language in vocabulary, by far.
But more importantly for teachers, for every year of education, students also gain on average one to five IQ points , with gains that continue into old age. To put that in perspective, about two-thirds of adults have an IQ between 85 and 115, and only about 2.5 percent of adults have an IQ above 130.
Supposedly, people of higher levels of intelligence do learn faster than people of lower levels of it. But this is an awfully coarse observation, and different people can learn at drastically different speeds in different environments.
- Frisian. Frisian is thought to be one of the languages most closely related to English, and therefore also the easiest for English-speakers to pick up. ...
- Dutch. ...
- Norwegian. ...
- Spanish. ...
- Portuguese. ...
- Italian. ...
- French. ...
- Swedish.
