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The words people use are like fingerprints that can reveal their relationships, honesty, or their status in a group. Scientists are using linguistic software to analyze pronouns, articles, prepositions and a handful of other small function words. Social psychologist James W. Pennebaker says, "Using computerized text analyses on hundreds of thousands of letters, poems, books, blogs, Tweets, conversations and other texts, it is possible to begin to read people’s hearts and minds in ways they can’t do themselves.
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Scientists in Canada (where they speak both English and French) have discovered evidence that speaking two languages can help delay the start of Alzheimer’s symptoms by as much as five years. PhysOrg.com quotes researcher Fergus Craik as saying, "We are not claiming that bilingualism in any way prevents Alzheimer’s or other dementias, but it may contribute to cognitive reserve in the brain which appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms for quite some time." It’s a good reason to study a foreign language!
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You just have to FIND it – Many of us learn a foreign language in school, but we forget it later because we never get to hear it or practice it. But it HASN’T vanished from our brain, it’s still in there, waiting to be accessed. How can we find it again?

Psychologists recruited volunteers who were native English speakers but who had learned either Hindi or Zulu as children living abroad. They focused on those two language because they contain certain sounds that are difficult for native English speakers to recognize and speak. The scientists asked the volunteers to complete a background vocabulary test to see if they remembered any words from the neglected language.
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Which ones will be lost in the future? – What are the oldest words in the English language? Also, which words are most likely to become extinct in the future? Linguists claim they can answer BOTH these questions!

BBC News quotes evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel as saying, “We have lists of words that linguists have produced for us that tell us if two words in related languages actually derive from a common ancestral word?We use a computer to fit a range of models that tell us how rapidly these words evolve.”
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