Babies have their innate ability to distinguish mother and foreign tongue but for Bella Devyatkina, she has gone overboard with this ability. Now four years old, the Russian blonde beauty is able to read and speak whopping seven languages.
Daily Mail reports that the little tot showcased her exceptional talent in a TV show in Moscow, "Udivitelniye Lyudi" (Incredible People). For an entire five minutes, Devyatkina wowed the audience as she fluently spoke, read and completely understood English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic, aside from her vernacular, Russian.
Devyatkina's mother, Yulia, said that her daughter started flourishing her language skills at age two. At first, they introduced one foreign language and they found out she grew interested in it. The mother said she first taught English.
Not only is Devyatkina adept in conversing using seven languages, she also proved to be very articulate. Particularly as she read a French passage, it can be noted that Devyatkina's accent is superb.
Multilingual kids like Devyatkina has been reported to grow up more intelligent than their monolingual contemporaries. In a study published in Psychological Science, University of Chicago notes that as little as bilingualism can have a positive effect on a child's cognitive development.
Moreover, bilingual or multilingual kids — in the case of Devyatkina — are said to become better communicators in the future. This is because kids who practice speaking two or more languages are able to decode social patterns through the language syntax.
One school of thought, however, opposes children from the introduction of multilingualism. According to Multilingual Children's Association, kids exposed to at least two languages at a very young age may lead to more effort for parents in teaching full literacy, confusion and speech delay. However, the latter is still debatable as it is noted that there are still no significant data to prove such claim.
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