Bilingual Babies Get Head Start -- Before They Can Talk

James Owen
for National Geographic News
April 13, 2009

Even before they can babble a single word, babies in bilingual households may get a head start in life, according to a team of scientists in Italy.

Rather than confusing babies, hearing more than one language gives newborns a mental boost, according to the new study, which tested seven-month-old infants.

"In many European countries, parents are wary of giving a bilingual education to their kids and try to speak only one language," said study author Jacques Mehler of the Language, Cognition, and Development Lab at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy.

"They are afraid [their children] might suffer when they get to school and so on," Mehler said. "Because of our results, I doubt that very much."

[Sam's remark: Babies brought up in multi-lingual regions like Singapore, Malaysia, Switzerland and Scandinavia never get confused. They grow up to become more gifted in languages than children brought up in monolingual countries like France, Japan or China.]