It's common that a Japanese-American bows on the phone—but only in Japanese. Behaviors and manners can become so routine that they appear even when there's no need for them.Those who are bilingual and bi-cultural know first-hand that how we behave can depend on what language we are speaking.Experts have shown that who you are in the moment can depend on the language you are using at that time.

This is because when you have an experience,the language you are using becomes associated with it.For bilingual people,this means certain memories are more closely associated with one language than the other-a phenomenon called language-dependent memory.For example,a childhood memory is more likely to be remembered when the language spoken during that childhood event is spoken again.

How we think and feel can thus change depending on what language we are using.For example,people who are bilingual have an intensified stress response when listening to the words of scolding in a native language.This may be,in part,because our early memories associated with learning a"bad”word or being scolded by our parents happened in our native language.

Because emotions play a key role in how we make decisions,people are often more sensible when making choices in the less emotional foreign language.When asked whether they would be willing to give one person's life to save a group,people who speak more than one language are much more likely to say"yes" when answering in a foreign language.The unpleasant feelings that can prevent us from making difficult choices are reduced when we're using a non-native language.

The Language we speak has an influence on how we think,feel,and even behave.In a way,knowing different languages can provide people with a variety of views through which to see the world.

For immigrant (移民) parents, passing on their native languages can be a struggle.

“You understand grandmother when she talks to you, don’t you, darling?” The girl nods. Johnson met her — and her Danish mother and English father — at the airport, on the way to Denmark. The parents were eager to discuss their experience of bringing up their daughter bilingually (双语) in London. It isn’t easy: the husband does not speak Danish, so the child hears the language only from her mother, who has come to accept that her daughter will reply in English.

This can be painful. Not sharing your first language with loved ones is hard. Not passing it on to your own child can be especially hard. Many immigrant parents feel a sense of failure; they are worried and share stories on parenting forums and social media, hoping to find the secret to bringing up bilingual children successfully.

Children are linguistic sponges (海绵), but this doesn’t mean that brief exposure (接触) is enough. They must hear a language quite a bit to understand it — and use it often to be able to speak it comfortably. This is mental work, and a child who doesn’t have a motive (动机) to speak a language — either a need or a strong desire — will often avoid it. Children’s brains are already busy enough.

So languages often fade and die when parents move abroad. Consider America. The foreign-born share of the population is 13.7%, and has never been lower than 4.7% (in 1970). And yet foreign-language speakers don’t increase: today just 25% of the population speaks another language. That’s because, usually, the first generation born in America is bilingual, and the second is monolingual (单语) — in English, the children often struggling to speak easily with their immigrant grandparents.

In the past, governments discouraged immigrant families from keeping their languages. These days, officials tend to be tolerant; some even see a valuable resource in immigrants’ language abilities. Yet many factors ensure that children still lose their parents’ languages, or never learn them.

Ever fought with a problem? Picked up a new skill? Encountered a difficult concept? The language of learning is full of references to parts of the body outside the brain. Perhaps that’s because these phrases suggest something deeper. Researchers are detecting that learning is easier, quicker and more long-lasting if it involves the body.

“In the past, people have argued that as we grow, we become more able to think abstractly (抽象地),” says Andrew Manches, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. Conventional (传统的) thinking might suggest that teachers should help prevent children from using body gestures to prepare them for the adult world. But in truth, the physical world never really leaves our thinking. For example, when we process verbs such as lick, kick and pick, medical scanners show that the parts of our brain that control the muscles in our face, legs and hands, respectively, light up with activity.

Science is beginning to back up the idea that actions really might speak louder than words in the classroom. Spencer Kelly, a psychologist at Colgate University in New York, has found that people spend three times as much time gesturing when they think the message they get across is remarkably important, suggesting that even if only at the subconscious (潜意识的) level, we appreciate the communicative value of our body language. Kelly has also found evidence that a teacher is more appealing to students when he or she uses arm and hand movements to stress points.

Also, some studies indicate that young children obtain more if their teacher uses gestures when explaining a concept. Meanwhile, Sunsan Wagner Cook, a psychologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, has found that children pick up new concepts more effectively, if they are taught to mirror and repeat gestures their teacher uses.