How Multi-Lingual People Inhibit Their Other Languages (And Multi-Lingual Scrabble)

I switch between French and English without translating. I've largely forgotten my German, which was once fluent. Now I'm learning Spanish, and when I'm searching for a word, the French inevitably comes up and gets in the way.

It turns out that when you're multi-lingual, and speaking, all your languages are activated, and your brain inhibits the ones you're not using. Sometimes the inhibition is weaker, and then you get "intrusion errors" where the wrong language pushes its way in. 

Paradoxically, the brain of a bilingual person can inhibit their dominant language more than the non-dominant one, so that they can be slower to access words in their stronger language. I feel this when I'm playing Scrabble in English; my other languages jostle each other in the doorway of my mind, suggesting French, German, Spanish and even some Chinese words that I could make with the letters in my stash.Wrong, wrong, wrong--until I invented a game called "Multi-Lingual Scrabble", that I play with friends who speak other languages. (For the rules see below.)

Personally I find that even a French accent seems to prime my brain for French, so that as soon as someone starts speaking English with a French accent, my brain comes up with French words, despite my dominant language being English.

If this interests you, then for more details, read this fascinating article.

(Rules of Multi-Lingual Scrabble: You can put down a word in any language, but you're on your honour that it's a real word. If challenged, you have to prove it, and if you cheated, you miss your next turn. Try it; it's fun. Even though remember, Scrabble sets are adjusted for different languages, with different numbers of letters according to which letters are used the most in each language. So for example, if you're playing with an Italian Scrabble set, it will be harder to form words in French, etc.)

India Syndrome

Here's a fascinating article about a syndrome found in foreigners who visit India with high expectations of spiritual fulfilment, and go a little off the rails, with disorientation and even psychosis happening to them as a result. 

It describes the research of a French doctor named Régis Airault, and an Indian psychiatrist named Sunil Mittal.

Régis Airault worked at the French Consulat in Mumbai, and saw this over and over again. He differentiates it from simple culture shock, and says it is also found in other places of great psychological significance to people, such as Jerusalem, or Florence, where people can be overcome by the religious or artistic significance of the place.

Sunil Mittal is the senior psychiatrist at the Cosmos Institute of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences in New Delhi. He also sees the syndrome regularly, and he breaks it down into two categories: simple tourists who arrive with a pre-existing problem or vulnerability and have a breakdown, and people who arrive hoping for a deeply significant spiritual journey. In either case, he says the best treatment is a ticket home.