I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily.

Which languages do you speak?

And how did you learn to speak those languages?

In today's lesson from TED ed, educator Mia Nakamoli

breaks down the cognitive advantages that come from being multilingual.

It's pretty great.

Ablaz Spanish? P-vous-Francé? You will

show Chinese? If you answered, si, we, or,

or, hui, chances are you belong to the world's bilingual and multilingual

majority. And besides having an easier time traveling

or watching movies without subtitles, knowing two or more languages means that your brain may

actually look and work differently than those of your monolingual friends. So what does it really

mean to know a language? Language ability is typically measured in two active parts, speaking and writing,

and two passive parts, listening and reading. While a balanced bilingual has near-equal

abilities across the board in two languages, most bilinguals around the world know and use

their languages in varying proportions, and depending on their situation and how they acquired each language,

they can be classified into three general types.

For example, let's take Gabriella, whose family immigrates to the U.S. from Peru when she's two years old.

As a compound bilingual,

Gabriella develops two linguistic codes

simultaneously with a single set of concepts, learning both English and Spanish as she begins to

process the world around her. Her teenage brother, on the other hand, might be a coordinate

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