 Charlemagne once said, To have another language is to possess another soul. Another soul? Somehow this celebration of learning second languages was not all with the case. It was once more recently thought that learning a second language was a sign of dual personality disorder, or could onset schizophrenia and other disorders. This was thought to be true because many who were bilingual had smaller vocabularies and slower access to sentence structure. However, in today's day and age, the cons of knowing more than one language are far outweighed by the pros. Number one, delaying dementia. While more research is needed for data, it has been shown that being bilingual slows dementia by five years. There's no downside there. Number two, better listening. Listening skills are heightened in those who are bilingual. Once someone speaks more than one language, they can hear different sounds and tones and recognize them, thus creating a subconscious analytical mindset. Babies who grew up in bilingual households can distinguish and differentiate languages they've never even heard before. Number three, better memory recall. Those same babies who grew up in bilingual households also show a stronger memory recall. Their memories were also recalled with more clarity and accuracy. This leads to faster learning, especially in math, and a better recollection of faces and names, which allows creating stronger relationships at a much quicker rate. Number four, multitasking. Despite the fact that multitasking is impossible, as our brains are only capable of tackling one thing at a time, rapid task changes are vastly improved by being bilingual, because being bilingual requires cognitive flexibility, allowing the speaker to be able to shift from one task to the next, much quicker and with more ease than those who only speak one language. Number five, sharper focus. Bilingual people also have both languages activated in their brains at the same time, monitoring which is appropriate for which given situation, which can improve attention and focus. Learning another language can also shed new perspectives on different topics. Nancy Sucilo conducted a study in June 2015 that showed that those who are bilingual had higher abilities to process information and their self-perception was different. Being bilingual has lots of benefits, so why not go and learn a new language? Do you already know one? Don't forget to subscribe for more language-based facts and leave a comment with your bilingual thoughts below.