Language Acquisition: How Many Languages Can You Learn?

Contemporary Science Issues and Innovations October 10, 2018, Belmont Media Center

Evelina (Ev) G. Fedorenko, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School; Associate Researcher, Massachusetts General Hospital. Federenko Lab MIT

How does the brain acquire and process language? How about multiple languages? And how about a whole lot of languages? Dr. Fedorenko describes what cognitive science knows and what is still to be learned. She and her associates focus on how the brains of multilingual people (polyglots) process very different types of languages. They also investigate those rare individuals who learn dozens of languages (hyperpolyglots).

recent article about super-multilinguals and Dr. Fedorenko's research New Yorker Sept 03, 2018: “Maltese for Beginners”