Check out today’s New York Times for an article titled “The Benefits of Bilingualism: Why Bilinguals are Smarter“.

What does this have to do with Mi’gmaq? Many endangered languages of the world––including languages of the Americas––have arrived at their current state because of education policies designed to “help” children assimilate to the dominate culture, whether this be English-speaking, Spanish-speaking, French-speaking, etc. The logic went (and often still goes…): if a child speaks Mi’gmaq at home, it will slow down her ability to learn English, putting her at a disadvantage later in life.

Work in recent decades, as discussed in this NYT article, points to a much different conclusion, but one that many people have suspected all along: bilingualism is good for kids! Not only from a cultural point of you, but also from a cognitive point of view. This is obviously good news for advocates of revitalizing indigenous languages. The issue is not a choice between maintaining one’s cultural heritage and linguistic identity versus being able to communicate in the dominant language. Rather, having access to two languages is not only a natural state, but one with clear benefits.

Question: Do you know of other work documenting the benefits––cognitive, cultural, political, etc.––of bilingualism? Please post to the comments!