Humans are organised into around 200 nations, yet there are roughly 6,000 languages in existence. It therefore seems obvious that bilingualism is much more common than many of us might assume. This is an increasingly visible fact that appears to undermine the predominant model of “one state, one language”, a consequence of unifying previously distinct regions and cultures into larger nations.
As perspectives on this topic have begun to shift, bilingualism has been investigated for its effects on cognitive and linguistic development in recent decades. The question of whether bilingualism can protect against Alzheimer’s has been in the limelight for some time, and even today the extent to which it might be effective in combating cognitive decline is a topic of debate.
