For another example, if we speak a Romance language like Spanish or French, if we hear the article “la” we’re unconsciously predicting that a “feminine” noun will come next! (3/3 🧵)

For example, for English speakers, if we hear a sentence like “I love dogs”, as soon as we hear the word “love” we’re unconsciously predicting that a noun will come next (the object of “love”, or what we love), based on what we know about English grammar! (2/3 🧵)

In the sentence “I like dancing” we’re taking in everything while we’re processing that sentence, from the “l” sound in the word “like”, all the way up the word’s meanings, and the grammar or “syntax” of the sentence! (2/2 🧵)

I went to repeat the phrase I had just said in Danish (“jeg skal afleverer telefonen” or similar), into English, and I said “I'm going to turn in my cell phone," which would more or less be the direct translation of what I had said in Danish. And, I forgot how to say “return” in English! (3/3 🧵)

An example: the Danish verb "to return" is "at aflevere." The direct translation however, means "to turn in” or “deliver”. One day, after about a year of living in Denmark and speaking Danish every day, I was returning a cellphone I had been borrowing for a while. (2/3 🧵)

To some this might sound obvious, but there is an entire (sub)field of study that is dedicated to studying how people learn and process second or more languages, called Second Language Acquisition. This would have blown my mind ten years ago! (2/2 🧵)

So, follow along, while I figure out BlueSky, and move from IG. If you’re a fellow linguist/cognitive scientist, and want to collab on SciComm together, I’d love to chat!

Bilingualism and second language acquisition are human experiences. They are part of the human condition. I believe everyone deserves access to such insanely cool information about how we process language, and how bilingualism impacts the brain!

But between now and ten years ago, we’ve seen an explosion of technology and social media that otherwise would allow for researchers to communicate bilingualism/language processing! So, it really surprised me that still, not much accessible information was out there.

It’s been ten years and three degrees since then. I taught a second language acquisition class in Fall ‘23 and and Summer ‘24. While teaching, I did another Google search, ten years after I started this journey, and saw practically the same information. That is, hardly any!

Why did I make this account/why did I start SciComm? When I was 17 I learned Danish, and was endlessly curious about how the brain processes language. But, there was virtually no (accessible) information available about how language processing works!