雙語學習改變腦結構 給腦健身

I’D BEEN BACK from studying abroad in Mexico City for a couple of days when I asked my dad, “Can I use the lavadora?”
從墨西哥留學回國已經有些日子了，一次我問父親：“我能用下洗衣機（西班牙語爲‘lavadora’）嗎？”

“The what?” He didn’t speak Spanish. I knew that, of course. I didn’t even really speak Spanish. I had barely been able to hold a conversation for most of the six months I had just spent in Mexico. So why when I needed to do laundry, the only word that came into my head was in Spanish?
“用什麼？”當然我知道父親並不會說西班牙語。但我甚至都沒怎麼講西班牙語。在墨西哥待的6個月裏，大部分時候我幾乎都不能夠正常交流。所以爲什麼當我要洗衣服的時候腦袋裏出現的第一個詞是西班牙語呢？

Something…came or comes into my head 表示的是，“不假思索，脫口而出”
類似的常用表達還有：
A) 以‘off the top of my head’, 開頭，後加完整句子
Eg: Off the top of my head, I’d say travelling is a great way to wind down.
B) The first / one…that springs to mind is (that)…
Eg: The first benefit that springs to mind is that swimming can help us keep fit and stay in shape.
C) The first / one…that pops into my head is (that)…
Eg: One reason that pops into my head is that young people feel much easier to land a well-paid job（一份薪水待遇還不錯的工作） in the city than in the countryside.

“You know, the…umm…the thing that washes your clothes?”What is happening to me? I thought. How could I be forgetting English? I thought I was great at English!
“你知道的，嗯~~~就是那個洗衣服的東西？”我當時在想我是怎麼了？我怎麼能忘了英語呢？我認爲我英語挺棒的！

Be great at something, 解釋爲: ‘to do something very well, or much better than most people.’
A) It equals to ‘excel at/in’
Eg: Rick has always excelled at foreign languages.
B) Out of this world …用來表示“某事某物非常棒”
Eg: What I like the most about Italian cuisine is the pizza, especially Margherita Pizza. It’s truly out of this world.

“You mean the washing machine?”
“你是說洗衣機嗎？”

“Yes, that!” I said, relieved to recognize a noun I had known and used for over 20 years. This momentary aphasia freaked me out when it first happened. But in the almost 10 years since this conversation—during which time I moved back to Mexico City as a grad student and then as a journalist—I’ve gotten used to it. I forget some English word or another at least once a day. I’m fluent in Spanish now, and I’m proud of that. But has speaking a second language somehow made me less fluent in my native language?
“對，就是那個！”我說，終於爲找到一個我認識並使用了20多年的詞感到鬆了口氣。第一次出現這種短暫性失語症的時候嚇壞我了。但是這段對話之後的10年時間裏（期間我回到墨西哥讀研究生然後做了記者）我已經習慣了（這種短暫性失語症）。我每天至少一次會忘記這些或那些英語單詞。我現在說西班牙語很流利，我很爲之驕傲。但一直說第二語言會讓我的母語更蹩腳嗎？

Freak somebody out, 解釋爲‘ to make somebody very anxious, upset or afraid.’
A) Eg: the whole idea freaked me out. (Verb)
B) Freak 還可以做名詞哦，表示 ‘somebody who is extremely interested in a particular subject so that other people think that they are strange or unusual.’ Like a computer freak, a fitness freak or a control freak.
SYN: weirdo

Judith Kroll thinks so. She’s a psychologist who studies bilingualism and its cognitive consequences at Pennsylvania State University. “A bilingual’s two languages sometimes converge, but often they compete,” she said this weekend during a presentation at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, DC. When I speak Spanish, it’s not an effortless cognitive switch. My brain needs to actively choose Spanish every time I say a word or construct a sentence. Even after years and years of speaking Spanish every day, I can often feel that work happening. It’s tiring, and switching to English can be a relief.
朱迪思·克羅爾是這麼認爲的。她是賓夕法尼亞州立大學一位研究雙語教育及其認知影響的心理學家。週末她在華盛頓舉行的美國科學促進協會會議上發表演講稱：“雙語學習者學習的兩種語言有時會交叉，但大多數情況下它們會相互競爭”。當我講西班牙語時，這並不是一個毫不費力的認知轉換。每次我說一個單詞或是組建一個句子時我的大腦都需要主動轉換成西班牙語模式。即使年復一年每天都說着西班牙語，我還是經常能感到（腦袋中）這種運作。其過程讓人累覺不愛，而轉換成英語模式則讓人甚感輕鬆。

But when I do, my brain is still doing all the same work, Kroll said. It’s just that now I’m choosing English instead of Spanish. Spanish is always there in my brain, forcing me to do a little extra work to find the English words, even though I’ve known them far longer than their Spanish equivalents. “Especially in immersive environments, it’s harder to grab hold of the native language,”Kroll said. “You might have a moment of panic.”
但是就算當我轉換成英語模式時，我的大腦還是在做同樣的運動，克羅爾如是說。現在的情況只是我選擇的是英語而不是西班牙語。西班牙語一直在我的腦海中強迫我額外發力找到對應的英語單詞，儘管我已經知道那些詞要比對應的西班牙語詞彙長得多。克羅爾說：“尤其實在融入該語言環境的情況下，更難‘留住’母語。”“你可能會有一段時間感到驚慌。”

Grab hold of 解釋爲“控制（抓住）”
Grab 就是‘take hold of something or somebody’、“抓住or拿點什麼…”
美語中常見grab some sleep, grab a cup of coffee, grab a bite to eat or grab a slice, 甚至grab a shower，有點類似於take 和 get 的含義，用法廣泛！

But if you really want to learn that second language, you can’t shy away from that panic. You should lean into it. “The native language may take a hit during second language learning,” Kroll said. “But that may be a crucial processes in learning to regulate language.”Preliminary results from her own lab suggest that “learners who are better able to take that hit to their native language and suffer those early consequences may be better able to learn the second language,”she said.
但是如果你真的想學習那門外語，你不能躲避那種驚慌。你應該“深入虎穴”。克羅爾稱：“在學習第二語言過程中母語可能會受到影響。”“但那可能是學習調節語言的一個關鍵過程。”克羅爾稱從她自己實驗室得出的初步結果顯示，“更能承受對母語的這種影響並受這種早期結果影響的學習者更能學好第二門語言。”

Shy away from = avoid, stay away from
Lean into it “撲身而入to enjoy it!”
So, we’d better not shy away from speaking English; instead, we should lean into it. ↖(^ω^)↗