Bilingualism and Human Brain (1)\Hark Yeung（yeung@harkyeung.com）
It is known that many companies in Hong Kong require their employees to speak fluent English and Chinese (preferably Cantonese and Putonghua). Most companies just focus on the communication ability of their workers but do not take their language skills as an indication of the level of their intellectual power.
In 2004, the researchers from York University in Canada carried out tests on 104 people between the ages of 30 and 88. They found out that those who were "fluent" in two languages might be able to keep their mind sharper for longer time. Recently the US researchers from Northwestern University concluded that being bilingual is like having brain training sessions all the time, and as a result can produce a sharper mind.
So, I can now tell my friends in other parts of the world why so many Hong Kong people are so quick in mind and why they are so efficient. It is because, if they are bilingual, switching from Cantonese to English and back from English to Cantonese has an impact on their brains. In this way they can be more sensitive in certain ways.
The Northwestern University study also makes me think more about how people in Hong Kong can function quite well although Hong Kong is such a noisy place. The researchers studied the brain responses of healthy student volunteers and traced their pattern of brainwaves（腦電波）. There were 48 of them and 23 of those student volunteers were bilingual. It is found that in a noisy environment the bilingual group could process sounds better. They were better able to get important information (the speaker's voice) and they could forget or delete noises that were useless.
