Do bilinguals switch between personalities when they switch languages?

By Cecilia Hustá / 21 March 2022

When people start learning and using a new language, some of them notice that they come across differently, almost as if they have a different personality. Could this be because they lack finesse in the new language? Or does the language we speak really shape our personality? A person’s personality is usually seen as a set of qualities and behaviors that are stable over time and across different situations. This is why it may be counterintuitive to think that it could change when speaking a different language.

Communicative difficulties faced by deaf children: A way forward

By Dilay Karadoller / 21 February 2022

Children learn language with astonishing ease when they are exposed to it. Unfortunately, some children face circumstances where exposure to language from birth is more difficult as in the case of deaf children with hearing parents. This article describes the challenges these children face especially in developing countries and presents current scientific insights that provide a way forward.

Code-switching: One sentence, two languages

By Sara Mazzini / 7 February 2022

We live in a multicultural and multilingual world, where being able to communicate in more than one language is the norm for many people. As bilingualism plays such a fundamental role in our society, it has naturally become a topic of interest for the scientific community in recent decades. In particular, scientists are intrigued by a phenomenon they call code-switching, which is defined as ‘mixing or changing the structures, vocabulary and other components of at least two languages’.