Arabic, English, Chinese: How reading in different languages shapes the brain

Dubai: In the UAE, many children spend their school day reading in English, then go home to a household that speaks Arabic. Some are also learning a third script, such as Chinese.

It raises a question many parents ask: does reading in more than one language stretch a child's brain, or overload it?

Two UAE-based researchers, Dr Fatma Said of Zayed University and Dr Yuan Meng of UAE University, spoke to Gulf News during the Reading for Pleasure Caravan, a series of free events for parents and teachers organised by Emirates Literature Foundation. They explained what happens when children read in different languages, and why enjoyment matters more than many people think.

Dr Meng, a postdoctoral researcher in psycholinguistics at UAE University, studies how readers break down Chinese characters. She says each writing system gives the brain a different puzzle.

"In Chinese, there are no spaces between words, so readers have to work out which characters belong together. Within a character, smaller components called radicals can also offer clues to meaning or pronunciation. So you can't simply sound out a Chinese character in the same way you might sound out an English word," she said.

Arabic and English differ from each other too.

"Arabic has a root-and-pattern structure, and the order of root letters can be particularly important for recognising a word. English readers can sometimes recognise words even when two letters are swapped," Dr Meng explained. She added that this does not mean letter order is unimportant in English, and that results can vary depending on the task and the reader.

Despite the differences on the page, all three languages ask the same thing of the brain in the end.

"I'd say the shared goal is understanding meaning. Whatever the writing system looks like, we need to connect what we see on the page with language and make sense of the message," she said.

What changes is the type of clue. In Chinese, semantic radicals can hint at a character's category. In English, prefixes and suffixes help, such as "un-" changing the meaning of "happy". In Arabic, root letters link related words through a shared core meaning.

For Arabic-speaking children, there is an extra layer. The Arabic spoken at home is usually a local dialect, while written Arabic is Modern Standard Arabic, or Fusha, which has its own vocabulary and grammar. Linguists call this diglossia.

Dr Said, an associate professor in applied linguistics at Zayed University, sees this as an opportunity rather than a problem.

"This means that the brain has to learn more vocabulary, more sentence structures and more ways to express meaning," she said.

Her reading of the research is that many skills carry over between languages. "Children who learn Arabic sounds and letters can perform at the same level as English-only peers on English reading tasks. Some even spell English better than expected, because Arabic spelling is very regular."

Diglossia is often blamed when children struggle to read Arabic. Dr Said disagrees.

"The fair conclusion is that diglossia is real, but the evidence that it is a primary cause of reading difficulty is weak. The stronger predictors of Arabic literacy are teaching quality, early exposure to MSA/Fusha, and home literacy practices, not diglossia itself," she said.

Exposure to both forms early on appears to help. In one of her studies, children who watched cartoons and had stories read to them in Fusha had larger Arabic vocabularies than children who were spoken to in Arabic but watched only English-language cartoons.

"The earlier children have access to different kinds of Arabic, the better it is for their formal or Fusha Arabic acquisition and later literacy development," she said.

The difficulty, Dr Said says, is less about the brain and more about exposure. English is usually reinforced every school day, while Arabic often gets fewer teaching hours and less practice.

Research she carried out with a colleague, following 20 Emirati families for a year, found that English-language media, English-speaking nannies and digital tools can gradually shift a household from Arabic towards English.

"I know from ten years of research that the protection for Arabic is the family, and without deliberate effort, Arabic risks becoming that distant language only the grandparents speak," she said.

But that loss is not inevitable. She recommends a family language policy, meaning consistent rules about when Arabic is used, such as only speaking Arabic at the dinner table.

For children learning two very different writing systems at once, Dr Meng says the answer is not simple.

"For example, both Chinese and English combine meaningful parts to form words. Think of 'blackboard' in English and 黑板 (hēi bǎn) in Chinese. Both combine the meanings 'black' and 'board'," she said.

"A child could potentially use that shared idea, looking for meaningful parts, as a starting point when learning to read in the other language. But the ways those parts are written and pronounced still have to be learned for each writing system."

Does reading for pleasure in childhood leave lasting traces? Dr Meng points to a British study that found reading for pleasure at ages 10 and 16 was linked to a stronger vocabulary at 42, even after accounting for other factors.

"That's an association, though, not proof that childhood reading alone caused those differences," she said.

Her own experience teaching Chinese to children showed her how much enjoyment matters. "My pupils got excited about learning to write Chinese characters because it felt a little like drawing. That made the activity feel playful and gave them something they wanted to explore."

When it comes to what parents should prioritise, Dr Said's said that it had little to do with flashcards.

"The single most important thing a parent can do is build a strong emotional bond with their child through using Arabic as a vehicle of love and affection," she said.

She has interviewed teenagers who rejected Arabic when they were younger but later returned to it. "The key was that their parents showed them love in Arabic and made it a home language full of emotion, stories, reading, love, play and fun."

What parents tend to overestimate, she said, is how much school can do on its own.

"Start small, start today, be consistent, patient, and always do it with love, you'll see amazing results."