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Is there an antonym for lying?

The lyric “You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin'” in “These boots are made for walkin'” made me wonder: does a single word exist which means to speak the truth?

• 1This is interesting and I’ve added it to my collection of word opposite pairs for which one has a noun and verb form and the other lacks one of those two (usually the verb). Another great example is that the noun “understanding” has the verb “to understand” whereas the noun “wisdom” has no verb counterpart. While “understanding” and “wisdom” are not traditionally opposites, they are in essence opposing faculties of cognition where the former is rational and the latter based on intuition; it seems that the concepts related to right-brain functionality are more likely to be missing a POS form! – miercoledi Apr 4 ’14 at 2:05
• 1@miercoledi care to share? – Pureferret Apr 4 ’14 at 9:58
• 1Fascinating question! I wonder if this says something about our society: we value the truth so strongly that when one is lying he’s not actually speaking any longer, but lying. – ilinamorato Apr 4 ’14 at 16:25
• 3@ilinamorato I think by default any communication is assumed true by most. I am guilty of making this assumption. This may be why an antonym (no longer?) exists. I also think this may be why people often blindly believe what they are told and why critical thinking and skepticism are not as prevalent as I think it ought to be. – Pete Apr 4 ’14 at 16:51
• 6I would be the wrong person to ask. – Mike G Apr 4 ’14 at 19:03

Show 1 more comment

10 Answers

ActiveOldestVotes24

There is truthing, to truth (as in the lyrics) but it is nonstandard or a neologism.

Wiktionary has three definitions for the verb truth where the transitive usage is obsolete:

1. (obsolete, transitive) To assert as true; to declare; to speak truthfully.
2. To make exact; to correct for inaccuracy.
3. (nonstandard, intransitive) To tell the truth.

OED definition and the latest citation:

intransitive. U.S. colloquial and regional. To tell the truth.

1993     J. Womack Random Acts of Senseless Violence 237     She was lying not truthing

Etymonline says that:

English and most other IE languages do not have a primary verb for “speak the truth,” as a contrast to lie (v.).

You can see examples in literature and technical books also if you check Google Books. Some examples have different senses and the gerund form of the word seems to be more common. I’ve excluded the word ground from the search as there is the technical term “ground truthing” also.

Furthermore, Wikipedia includes this note about verbification under Conversion article:

Verbification may have a bad reputation with some English users because it is such a potent source of neologisms.

Although some neologistic products of verbification may meet considerable opposition from prescriptivist authorities, they are very common in colloquial speech, particularly specialized jargon, where words are needed to describe common actions or experiences.

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Level (with) is a verb that can be considered but it is not an exact antonym. OED definition:

To be honest or truthful; to tell the truth, speak frankly, behave honestly or deal straightforwardly (with). slang (originally U.S.).

Other than that, aver might be a close contender but it is mainly used in legal context. MW definition:

to verify or prove to be true in pleading a cause

ShareImprove this answerFollowedited Jun 15 ’20 at 7:40Community♦1answered Apr 3 ’14 at 21:460..50.7k3333 gold badges139139 silver badges248248 bronze badges

• 1I agree that “aver” is in close contention; however, it has a more official and legal connotation than “lying” and thus may be inappropriate if referring to everyday conversation. A closer antonym of “aver” might be “perjure.” Or, if you take the meaning of “aver” as a proof or corroboration to an existing statement, “deny.” Either way, not strictly “lie.” – ilinamorato Apr 4 ’14 at 16:23
• 3Verbification? Don’t you mean verbing? – Patrick M Apr 4 ’14 at 17:49
• @Patrick M: They are same and I quoted that part. – 0.. Apr 4 ’14 at 18:24

Add a comment7

That’s an interesting question. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a pure single-word antonym for ‘liar’ or ‘to lie’. The closest I can give are near-antonyms which serve more to corroborate with existing truths, like attest, validate or testify.

A little bit of research seems to indicate that there is in fact no pure antonym, and the only option is to use a verb phrase instead:

"I lied," is the verb;
"I told a lie," is the verb phrase.

So the antonymous verb phrase would be “I told the truth.”

Can’t seem to come up with anything better than that right now. I briefly entertained the possibility of an antonym to ‘prevaricate’ like ‘varicate’ but apparently that’s an adjective pertaining to medical research, so no dice.ShareImprove this answerFollowanswered Apr 3 ’14 at 21:34NinjaDuckie65044 silver badges1010 bronze badges

• 1I know you’re not proposing them as being the answer but “attest” and “testify” mean to assert something to be true, not necessarily to tell the truth (hence, the offence of perjury). – David Richerby Apr 5 ’14 at 12:28
• 2@DavidRicherby That’s also why I was careful not to upvote answers like ‘own up’ or ‘confess’, since they are verbs that refer more specifically to admitting the truth, esp. about committed crimes, rather than just upfront speaking the truth. – NinjaDuckie Apr 5 ’14 at 12:35

Add a comment5

I’m going to suggest confess.

1. To admit to the truth, particularly in the context of sins or crimes committed.

It would fit your lyric well. “You keep lying, when you oughta be confessin'”ShareImprove this answerFollowanswered Apr 3 ’14 at 21:44ghoppe14.1k11 gold badge3535 silver badges6262 bronze badgesAdd a comment4

I take it you want an antonym for the verb lying. I don’t think a single word antonym exists yet in English. But I think it might be in the making.

Wikitionary has an entry, albeit a short one:

Verb: truthing, Present participle of truth.

The Urban Dictionary, however, has an entry for truthing: the act of telling the truth.

It also has one for creative truthing: “When you present the truth in a very unflattering way as a means to deter another person’s romantic interest in you (most useful in online dating).”

I was grossly unimpressed when I met Joe for a coffee date. I wasn’t lying when I told him that I wanted to get married, have two kids and be a stay at home mom. I was just creative truthing.

Full Metal Mommy, a mommy blogsite, dispels the lies and myths about potty training in Potty Truthing.

Another website, The Human Potential Center, has an article titled TRUTHING AND TRUSTING – An honest look at the effects of dishonesty

An article on Wikileaks: Truthing People into Peace

There is a book about relationships that emphasizes truthing:

“Truthing” is the word we have been using in this chapter to designate simplicity, clarity, honesty and humility in communication. Truthing seeks simplicity…, clarity…, honesty…

It gets a substantial number of hits on Google (- ground, as ground truthing is a method of data collecting in the field).ShareImprove this answerFollowedited Apr 3 ’14 at 21:47answered Apr 3 ’14 at 21:37anongoodnurse54.1k1616 gold badges118118 silver badges198198 bronze badges

• 1Thanks for the well researched answer. If I could accept two, I’d accept this one as well. Have an upvote instead. – Pete Apr 3 ’14 at 23:24
• 1Wiktionary (and even moreso Urban dictionary) are questionable resources for judging word popularity. There are errors in OED and Merriam-Webster, but anybody can add things to wiktionary and urban dictionary. – Mitch Apr 4 ’14 at 1:14
• @Mitch – I didn’t know that. Hmm. I will remember that. I did upvote the accepted answer, was surprised that my search revealed so little. Kinda makes me want to pull my answer. Well, at least I can resolve to use those sources rarely if ever. Thanks! O_o – anongoodnurse Apr 4 ’14 at 1:38
• 1@medica Consider W and UD to be entertainment and inspiration “What? Does bangorrhea really mean that?!!!”. But just not reliable. – Mitch Apr 4 ’14 at 2:48
• @medica Urban Dictionary is stunningly unreliable. Wikipedia cites sources and has a culture of people correcting errors; Urban Dictionary really is just “Some guy on the internet said…” – David Richerby Apr 5 ’14 at 12:30

Add a comment4

The Hip Hop usage of the word “represent” comes pretty close. It’s a bit narrower in scope than the generic scope of “lie”, but certainly accurate in some contexts.

It basically means that someones language and actions match their authentic self — frequently in hip hop it’s narrowed to representing one’s true cultural self. For instance, if you are from a certain socio-economic status, it would be a “lie” to talk and act in a way to cover up that truth of your existence. However, if you represent, you try to be authentic to your background in both words and actions.

http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/representShareImprove this answerFollowanswered Apr 4 ’14 at 17:58chad27411 silver badge33 bronze badgesAdd a comment2

How about “to own up” and “to own”?

E.g.

The one who did it had better own up!

Never lie. Own your mistakes.

ShareImprove this answerFollowedited Jun 15 ’20 at 7:40Community♦1answered Apr 3 ’14 at 21:41Elian42.2k2525 gold badges118118 silver badges235235 bronze badges

• +1 – good thought! As well as well-established, and a good contrast in it’s implications to lie. Well done. – anongoodnurse Apr 3 ’14 at 23:28
• Good one! Not necessarily the typical contrast to lie, but it fits rather well. – David M Apr 3 ’14 at 23:35
• “Own up” doesn’t really work. To own up to something is to admit to having done it, with the implication that it was something negative. It’s about moving from a state of lying (or, at least, keeping something secret) to one of telling the truth. You could own up to having stolen something but you couldn’t, in most circumstances, own up to driving a black car. – David Richerby Apr 5 ’14 at 12:39
• And I suspect that “own” in this sense is business bs speak for “take responsibility for”. Can you, for example, come up with a sentence using “own” that conveys the meaning of, “He truthfully stated that he drives a black car”? (“He owns a black car” doesn’t count! 🙂 ) – David Richerby Apr 5 ’14 at 12:40
• @DavidRicherby I can. Stephanie owned up to driving a car through the kitchen (=she truthfully stated that she drove a car through the kitchen.) revenantpublications.com/2012/09/23/full-house-20-years-later – Elian Apr 11 ’14 at 1:29

Show 1 more comment2

Whatever one may neologize or ‘type convert’ (‘truthing’ or ‘to truth’), the way that actual people express the opposite of lying is

telling the truth

There is no necessity that every single word have a corresponding relative single word counterpart (see lexical gap ). Also, there very well may be a single word counterpart to ‘lying’ (there isn’t) but it may be less common than how people (or is it ‘persons’) actually say things.ShareImprove this answerFollowanswered Apr 4 ’14 at 1:11Mitch67.1k2424 gold badges131131 silver badges248248 bronze badges

• Verily, to this I say, Amen. Our language is adequate for our needs. Not that exploring it and modifying it isn’t. but it must change to meet needs, not only desires. – anongoodnurse Apr 4 ’14 at 19:00
• 1@medica: I like ‘truthin’, it’s just too funny sounding to be used seriously. ‘Truth’ is a mass noun, but there’s no ‘Lie’ that’s a mass noun. ‘Falsehood’? – Mitch Apr 4 ’14 at 19:55
• @Mitch Yes, “Falsehood”. – David Richerby Apr 5 ’14 at 12:32
• A lexical gap may exist because there is no perceived need to fill it… one might explain no direct antonym to the verb to lie because one might assume that everyone tells the truth by default. – Mitch Apr 5 ’14 at 15:32

Add a comment2

You could say ‘bear witness‘ which is the opposite of ‘bear false witness’, prefixed in the Ten Commandments with ‘thou shalt not’.

As a side note I think it stems from the difference in the nature of the words. As truth is viewed as singular as there is only one truth (from one person’s perspective anyway) but there are many lies possible as an alternative to that truth. It’s very difficult to provide an antonym of a plural which is by nature singular.ShareImprove this answerFollowedited Apr 4 ’14 at 21:01answered Apr 4 ’14 at 20:52GenericJam1,01277 silver badges1111 bronze badges

• I like it but does “bear witness” necessarily imply the truth? It feels like one can just as well bear true witness as bear false witness and that an act of bearing witness could thus be either true or false. – David Richerby Apr 5 ’14 at 12:46
• To bear witness does imply honesty. @DavidRicherby you’re right it could be explicitly false, but to bear witness (to witness) is, at least IMHO, fully truthful. But I may add my own answer using witness, with a different discourse than GenericJam. – Tom Pace Apr 7 ’14 at 1:10

Add a comment0

“to lie” seems to have a sense of speaking or expressing at the very least.

It’s an word to express deliberately hidden unreliability… that’s one way of putting it!

So what first came to mind is witness as an antonym, a word to express deliberate open reliability. I’d like to think its awkwardness isn’t because of bad grammar but simply unfamiliarity with its use, ie “You need to witness about the dent in the car, not lie about the dent in the car.”

But a skim over thesaurus and connotations, lead me to think inform although it’s got the more explicit misinform antonym. “You need to inform about the dent in the car, not lie about it”.

This is a really interesting point. It seems calculate the opposite of “lying”, as stating false, deliberately, results in stating truth, deliberately. That leads me back to witness. But, it may be fair to say, when we humans communicate, it’s typical to communicate without false statement. So an opposite of a default state, should be naturally explicit. And “lying” is explicit, where there is no easy answer. Thus, I could propose speaking as an antonym. Hahaha. But, personally, I like witnessing best.ShareImprove this answerFollowanswered Apr 7 ’14 at 1:33Tom Pace17144 bronze badgesAdd a comment0

I just checked the OED and the Historical thesaurus. to no avail. no such antonym…good catch.

(english.stackexchange.com)

by Astro Butterfly (astrobutterfly.com)

Welcome to September, welcome to the Libra season! While we’re literally still in the Virgo season, Venus, Mercury and Mars are in Libra, so September feels more Libra than Virgo.

The shift from Virgo to Libra is extremely important and cannot be underestimated. If the first 6 signs of the zodiac, from Aries to Virgo, are about “Me”, the last 6 signs of the Zodiac, from Libra to Pisces, are about “The Other”.

Even the most emotionally mature people who have done a lot of personal development, may still lack the ability to truly relate to other human beings. When we run our lives through our own script, we feel lonely and alienated, irrespective of whether we are in a relationship or not.

When we truly open up to another, our ego dies (that’s why Libra’s glyph is a Sun-set) but we ‘find ourselves’ within a greater whole.

According to Greek mythology, humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces. Humans had great strength during that time and threatened to conquer the gods. That’s why Zeus decided to split humans in half, as punishment for their power.

Since then, each human would forever long for and seek to find their other half. It is said that when two halves, or humans, find each other, they have an unspoken understanding with one another, and that they will lie with each other in unity and will know no greater joy than that.

September 6th, 2021 – New Moon In Virgo

On September 6th, 2021 we have a New Moon at 14° Virgo.

The New Moon auspiciously lines up with Uranus. Uranus promises insights, clarity, and opportunities. Just keep your mind open and the Virgo/Uranian opportunities will eventually find their way to you.

If you’ve been feeling stuck or confused and you’re in search of some inspiration, this is your New Moon.

September 9th, 2021 – Venus Enters Scorpio

On September 9th, 2021 Venus leaves her home sign, Libra and enters Scorpio. Scorpio is Mars’ territory, so things are a little bit more complicated for Venus here.

Fortunately, we have a great mitigating factor called mutual reception. Mutual reception is when 2 planets are in each other’s sign of rulership. Venus is now in Mars’s sign (Scorpio), while Mars (from September 14th onwards) is in Venus’ sign, so Venus and Mars bring the best out of each other.

This is a great transit for relationships of any kind. In the next few weeks, we will find it easier to relate to others, to put ourselves in their shoes, to accept and love other people for who they are.

September 14th, 2021 – Sun Opposite Neptune

On September 14th, 2021, the Sun in Virgo is opposite Neptune at 21° Pisces. The opposition is a confrontational aspect that will ‘force’ us to pay attention to something that we would rather overlook, because it feels like hard work.

Neptune oppositions can be rather confusing. The question now is not “Who am I?” but “Who am I becoming?”.

The lines are certainly blurred, but the good thing is that with Neptune we’re less likely to put up resistance. Neptune knows better anyway, but we’ll have to trust the process, trust our intuition.

September 14th, 2021 – Mars Enters Libra

On September 14th, 2021 Mars enters Libra. Mars in Libra is the “lawyer aspect”.

Mars in Libra may not fight for themselves, but will certainly fight for others. Ask Gandhi, Mandela, Dalai Lama, the Pope, or John Lennon – they all have Mars in Libra. They are all known as fighters for peace, but the key word here is “fight”.

Libra is a cardinal sign after all. Cardinal = action. Mars in Libra fights for an idea. It fights for justice. It fights for the truth.

Mars in Libra is a great transit to put up the right kind of fight – for a cause you believe in, to support someone else, or to fight injustice of any kind. This is also a good aspect to address relationship issues and blockages. Mars will give you the drive to “do something about it”, and Libra will make sure you remain reasonable and objective.

September 17th-23rd, 2021 – Venus Square Saturn And Uranus

From September 17th until September 23rd, Venus gets entangled with Saturn and Uranus.

This is a deja-vu of the fixed T-square we had in July when Venus was in Leo. If back in July, Venus in Leo’s dramatic displays of emotions aired out the tension, Venus in Scorpio will deal with it (the tension) all by herself.

Sometimes we need an implosion-like intensity to gain clarity on what really matters, and what needs to change.

September 20th, 2021 – Full Moon In Pisces

On September 20th, 2021 we have a sweet and spicy Full Moon at 28° Pisces.

The Full Moon is conjunct Neptune and opposite Mars. Like any Full Moon, the Full Moon in Pisces will aim to reconcile the complementary energies of the 2 signs on the axis, i.e. the “floating in space”, otherworldliness of Moon/Neptune in Pisces, with the “let’s do it, let’s do it now, let’s get it done” Sun/Mars in Virgo.

September 22nd, 2021 – Sun Enters Libra

Happy birthday to all Libras out there! On September 22nd, 2021 the Sun enters Libra and we have the Autumn Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the Spring Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere.

No matter where you live on Earth, the day is equal to the night. Equality is a key Libra word, but it is not to be taken for granted. Equality is a balancing act – the result of lots of weighing and reflection.

Equality also means we’ll have to get outside our personal, subjective bubble, so we can see where the other is truly coming from.

We can find equality, balance and peace (Libra’s highest goals) when we begin to love (not only to accept) personal differences. When we see others not as a means to some sort of personal gratification, not as a reflection of ourselves, but as individuals in their own right.

In the Libra season, it will just come easier than usual to open up to other people, put the “we” before “me”, and reach Win-Win outcomes.

September 27th, 2021 – Mercury Goes Retrograde

On September 27th, 2021 Mercury goes retrograde at 25° Libra.

Mercury retrograde in Libra is a great time to re-flect, re-assess, re-evaluate, “RE” anything Libra stuff, mainly our re-lationships.

We humans are social creatures. We can’t really live without others. The OTHER is much more than a partner; it is a mirror. With the OTHER we bounce back and forth ideas, feelings, and experiences.

The act of getting something outside of ourselves, and putting it out in the open is what keeps us sane, because it provides us with useful feedback. If we didn’t relate to others, we would live delusional, catatonic lives.

Mercury retrograde in Libra is our opportunity to do the Libra work, so we can have more honest, balanced, and fulfilling relationships.

Join The Age Of Aquarius Community

The Age Of Aquarius Community is the best place to re-late with individuals who get you.  We are proud to have attracted some of the most brilliant and kind souls.

Age Of Aquarius offers a mix of Community aspects (private forum) where you can interact with others, ask questions or share experiences, AND astrology content. 

Every month, we have a “Topic of the Month”, which is derived from the astrological weather of the month. In September, the Topic of the Month is “Psychological Astrology”. Here we will cover themes like balance and imbalance in the natal chart, the Jungian approach to Anima/Animus, the process of projection and mirroring in astrology, the 7th house, and much more. 

Interested? Here are 3 more benefits when you join now:

1) You have a 3-day, $1 trial. You have 3 days to decide if the membership is for you. If it’s not, you can cancel from your profile settings. If you like it, you just enjoy it for 1 year or for how long you wish to remain a member.

2) If you decide to stay, you will get a private, 1-on-1 reading with one of our astrologers. This is a complimentary gift for becoming a member.

3) If you’re interested in the Astro Butterfly Wings natal chart certification course which will open for enrollment in September, as an Age Of Aquarius member you get a hefty discount. 

Learn more about the Age Of Aquarius Community and join us here: 

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ACIM 38

There’s nothing my holiness cannot do.

–Marianne Williamson

By Maria Popova (brainpickings.org)

Self-knowledge might be the most difficult of life’s rewards — the hardest to earn and the hardest to bear. To know yourself is to know that you are not an unassailable fixity amid the entropic storm of the universe but a set of fragilities in constant flux. To know yourself is to know that you are not invulnerable.

The honest encounter with that vulnerability is the wellspring of art: Every artist’s art is their coping mechanism for the extreme sensitivity to aliveness that we call beauty — the transcendent and terrifying capacity to be moved by the world, to let something outside us stir deeply something within us. All great art — and only honest art can be great — is therefore the work of vulnerability and all integrity the function of fidelity to one’s fragilities.

That is what Bob Dylan (b. May 24, 1941) addresses with his penetrating poetics of insight in a 1977 conversation with Jonathan Cott — that uncommonly sensitive and erudite investigator of uncommon minds.

Bob Dylan (Library of Congress)

Cott prefaces the conversation, included in his collection Listening: Interviews, 1970–1989 (public library), with a soulful and percipient encapsulation of Dylan’s gift:

His songs are miracles, his ways mysterious and unfathomable. In words and music, he has reawakened, and thereby altered, our experience of the world. In statement (“He not busy being born is busy dying”) and in image (“My dreams are made of iron and steel / With a big bouquet / Of roses hanging down / From the heavens to the ground”) he has kept alive the idea of the poet and artist as vates — the visionary eye of the body politic — while keeping himself open to a conception of art that embraces and respects equally Charles Baudelaire and Charley Patton, Arthur Rimbaud and Smokey Robinson.

Dylan’s virtuosity with the mysterious and the miraculous has always sprung from his ethos of placing the unconscious mind at the center of creativity. In discussing his film Renaldo and Clara — which Dylan describes as being about integrity, about “naked alienation of the inner self against the outer self” — he tells Cott:

Human emotions are the great dictator.

[…]

You can’t be a slave to your emotions. If you’re a slave to your emotions you’re dependent on your emotions, and you’re only dealing with your conscious mind… You have to be faithful to your subconscious, unconscious, super-conscious — as well as to your conscious. Integrity is a facet of honesty. It has to do with knowing yourself.

True integrity necessitates the honesty of vulnerability — that great valve between us and the world, through which reality rushes into the chamber of our being and art pours out. Dylan observes:

You must be vulnerable to be sensitive to reality. And to me being vulnerable is just another way of saying that one has nothing more to lose. I don’t have anything but darkness to lose. I’m way beyond that.

Bob Dylan by Milton Glaser, 1967.

When the conversation turns to humanity’s greatest spiritual sages — the teachers from various traditions best able to access and teach the eternal truths — Dylan counters Cott’s observation that “they speak and teach with more emotion,” redoubling his defiance of feeling as an organizing principle for truth:

I don’t believe in emotion. They use their hearts, their hearts don’t use them.

A generation after Aldous Huxley reverenced music as the great illuminator of the “blessedness lying at the heart of things,” Dylan exalts music as a supreme instrument of revelation: its inherent honesty, its elemental fidelity to truth — the temporal and the eternal, the personal and the universal:

Music is truthful… Music attracts the angels in the universe.

It may be that Bob Dylan is the Bach of our time — the rare vessel for universal truth, whose music contains “the ultimate expression of anything and everything.”

Complement with three centuries of uncommon minds on the singular power of music and Nick Cave on music, feeling, and transcendence, then revisit psychologist Erich Fromm on vulnerability as the key to our sanity, philosopher Martha Nussbaum on how to live with our human fragility, and philosopher-poet Kahlil Gibran on the courage to know yourself.

Being bilingual benefits children as they learn to speak — and adults as they age

By Ramin Skibba 11.29.2018 (knowablemagazine.com)

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Even when you’re fluent in two languages, it can be a challenge to switch back and forth smoothly between them. It’s common to mangle a split verb in Spanish, use the wrong preposition in English, or lose sight of the connection between the beginning and end of a long German sentence. So — does mastering a second language hone our multitasking skills or merely muddle us up?

CREDIT: JAMES PROVOST (CC BY-ND)

Psycholinguist Mark Antoniou

Western Sydney University

This debate has been pitting linguists and psychologists against one another since the 1920s, when many experts thought that bilingual children were fated to suffer cognitive impairments later in life. But the science has marched on. In the Annual Review of Linguistics, psycholinguist Mark Antoniou of Western Sydney University in Australia outlines how bilingualism — as he defines it, using at least two languages in your daily life — might benefit our brains, especially as we age. He addresses how best to teach languages to children and lays out evidence that multiple-language use on a regular basis may help delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What are the benefits of bilingualism?

I’m interested in the interaction between language-learning and cognition — the mental processes of the brain. The cognitive benefits of bilingualism can begin from experiences very early in childhood and can persist throughout life.

The first main advantage involves what’s loosely referred to as executive function. This describes skills that allow you to control, direct and manage your attention, as well as your ability to plan. It also helps you ignore irrelevant information and focus on what’s important. Because a bilingual person has mastery of two languages, and the languages are activated automatically and subconsciously, the person is constantly managing the interference of the languages so that she or he doesn’t say the wrong word in the wrong language at the wrong time.

The brain areas responsible for that are also used when you’re trying to complete a task while there are distractions. The task could have nothing to do with language; it could be trying to listen to something in a noisy environment or doing some visual task. The muscle memory developed from using two languages also can apply to different skills.

Where are these benefits expressed in the brain?

Executive functions are the most complex brain functions — the most “human” functions that separate us from apes and other animals. They’re often observed in parts of the brain that are the newest, in evolutionary terms: the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for advanced processing; the bilateral supramarginal gyri, which play a role in linking words and meanings; and the anterior cingulate. Studies show that the bilingual experience alters the structure of these areas.

First of all, we see increases in gray matter volume. The brain is made up of cells called neurons, which each have a cell body and little branching connections called dendrites. Gray matter refers to how many cell bodies and dendrites there are. Bilingual experience makes gray matter denser, so you have more cells. This is an indication of a healthier brain.

Bilingualism also affects white matter, a fatty substance that covers axons, which are the main projections coming out from neurons to connect them to other neurons. White matter allows messages to travel fast and efficiently across networks of nerves and to the brain. Bilingualism promotes the integrity of white matter as you age. It gives you more neurons to play with, and it strengthens or maintains the connections between them so that communication can happen optimally.

Can teaching children two languages delay or confuse their understanding?

These myths about bilingualism date back to studies in the US and the UK from the First and Second World Wars. They were seriously flawed studies involving children from war-torn countries: refugees, orphans and, in some cases, even children who were in concentration camps. Their schooling had been disrupted for years. They may have suffered traumas, and then they participated in these studies with tests measuring their verbal language abilities.

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Unsurprisingly, they scored very poorly on these tests. Did the researchers attribute the poor scores to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)? They probably didn’t even know what that was. No, instead they attributed it to the children’s bilingualism.

It wasn’t until the 1960s, when a really important study was published by Elizabeth Peal and Wallace Lambert at McGill University in Montreal, that views started to shift. Their findings showed that not only do bilingual children not have a cognitive delay or mental retardation but that their bilingualism actually has some cognitive benefits.

In addition to executive function, bilingual individuals and children show advantages in metalinguistic awareness. This is the ability to think about language as abstract units and associations. A good example is the letter H, which is associated with the sound “he” in English, with “n” as in “nickel” in Russian, and with the vowel sound “e” in Greek. There’s nothing special about H that makes it have to have a “he” sound; a bilingual person understands this more readily than a monolingual person does.

What do the skeptics argue?

The original findings about bilingual advantages to executive function in the 1960s generated a lot of excitement and media interest. Perhaps the advantages were overstated or misinterpreted. Not every bilingual person is going to have a healthier brain than every monolingual person. We’re talking about general, population-level trends.

We see evidence of bilingual advantages in children, but not always. And as we move into young adults, say, in their 20s, it becomes more difficult to detect these advantages. This makes sense in terms of brain maturation: When you’re a child, your brain is still developing, but when you reach young adulthood, your brain is at its peak, so bilingualism doesn’t give you much extra.

Learning languages as a child is different than doing so later in life, right?

It depends. For a long time, it was thought that the only way to really learn a language was to do it early. It was thought that after adolescence, you couldn’t learn a language perfectly. You were always going to be accented. But we now know that that’s not true, because there are many people who learn languages as adults, and they learn them very well. So this has led us to reexamine what it is about learning a language during childhood that makes it different from adulthood.

Is your brain more ready and more flexible — what we call more “plastic” — when you’re a child, and then it becomes more rigid and fixed as an adult? Or is it that the conditions of language-learning are different when you’re a child, in terms of the amount and type of input you receive, how much slack you’re afforded and how much encouragement others give you? An adult who is working two jobs and going to language classes at 7 o’clock at night has a different type of acquisition than a child constantly receiving input from the mother, grandmother, father or other primary caregiver.

Ultimately, the difference between language-learning in children and adults is probably some combination of the two: plasticity and conditions. There are also individual differences. If you put different people in the same situation, some people will flourish and others will struggle.

Does a bilingual brain age differently than a monolingual one?

We know from studies that starting at the age of about 25, your brain starts to decline, in terms of working memory, efficiency, processing speed, those kinds of things. As you age, these declines become steeper. The argument is that as we get into older age, bilingualism puts the brakes on and makes that decline less steep. Evidence from older adults is the strongest kind supporting a bilingual advantage. (The second strongest comes from children.)

When you look at bilingual individuals who have suffered neurodegeneration, their brains look damaged. From their brain scans, you’d think these people should be more forgetful, or that they shouldn’t be coping as well as they are. But that’s not the case. A bilingual brain can compensate for brain deterioration by using alternative brain networks and connections when original pathways have been destroyed. Researchers call this theory “cognitive compensation” and conclude that it occurs because bilingualism promotes the health of both gray and white matter.

Could learning a language later in life keep Alzheimer’s at bay?

That is a working hypothesis. We’re doing studies where we teach a foreign language to people aged 65 and up with the goal of promoting healthy brain function, even at such a late point in life. What we’re testing is: Can we help people in old age by using language-learning? Does that give you some benefit in terms of a “use it or lose it” approach to brain health?

The initial signs are encouraging. Preliminary data look good. It seems that learning a language in later life results in positive cognitive outcomes.

Because language-learning and use is so complex — arguably the most complex behavior we human beings engage in — it involves many levels. You have speech sounds, syllables, words, grammar, sentences, syntax. There’s so much going on; it really is a workout for a wide brain network. And those areas of the brain overlap with the ones in which aging adult brains show decline or neurological pathological disease. As a result, we argue that learning a second language would be an optimal activity to promote healthy aging.

But not enough studies have been done to settle this once and for all. And we don’t know any of the details. How much language experience is needed? Does it matter which languages you learn? Do you need to achieve a certain level of proficiency? We don’t have answers to these questions.

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What advice do you have for parents raising bilingual children?

My advice would be to be encouraging and patient. Bilingual children have a tougher task than those learning only a single language. They’re learning two sets of vocabulary and speech sounds. It can be challenging for those of us living in a country with a dominant language to establish a functional purpose for the second language. A child needs to feel that the language is practical and has a use. Grandparents are great for this, and so is living in a community where there are cultural events or schools where children can be immersed in the second language.

Another concern parents bring up is worrying that their child might be mixing the languages. Don’t worry about what we refer to as “code mixing.” It’s a perfectly normal part of bilingual development. They’re not confused. It’s thought to be a sign of bilingual proficiency or competence to mix up the languages.

What other research are you doing in this area?

I’m interested in trying to understand why sometimes we see a bilingual effect, and other times we don’t. In one article, I proposed that maybe the language pairing matters. If you speak two distant languages, like Mandarin Chinese and English, would that result in similar types of brain changes as speaking two closely related languages, like German and English?

Maybe if the languages are closely related, they’re competing more and you have a harder job of separating them, to avoid using the wrong word at the wrong time. Maybe if they’re more distant, then you can’t rely on prior knowledge from learning the first one to learn the second. In that case, you’re starting from scratch with the second language, and that’s more effortful at the initial learning stages. But once you’ve learned the two languages, perhaps there’s less competition.

Ramin Skibba is an astrophysicist turned science writer and freelance journalist, based in San Diego. Reach him at raminskibba@gmail.com or @raminskibba.

–JOHN WILLIAMS

Born this week in 1922

John Edward Williams (August 29, 1922 – March 3, 1994) was an American author, editor and professor. He was best known for his novels Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus, which won a U.S. National Book Award. Wikipedia

BY CRAIG HAMILTON | SEP 18, 2020 | (craighamiltonglobal.com)

Question:

I find that my mind wanders a lot during meditation, and it’s hard not to follow my thoughts. Am I doing something wrong?

Answer:

This is a common experience, even for the most seasoned meditators. Many of us experience our minds wandering during meditation, and it can be very difficult not to follow our thoughts.  

In response to a wandering mind, many of us conclude that we aren’t meditating, or aren’t meditating correctly. This is probably the greatest source of frustration and discouragement I encounter among meditators. 

But a wandering mind is not a problem in the way most of us imagine it to be. And it doesn’t mean you can’t make progress with your meditation practice.

Think about this: The moment you realize that you have gotten absorbed in your thoughts, you’re actually no longer lost in thought. As soon as you realize  “Oh, I’ve just been lost in a daydream,” you’ve stopped being lost in a daydream. In other words, the fact that you’ve noticed it means that you’ve woken back up. You had simply slipped off into a metaphorical sleep, but now you’re back. 

So every time you realize that you’ve gotten lost in a stream of thought, you can just continue with the practice right where you left off. Just keep meditating as though you’d never gotten lost. Don’t make a problem out of it. Don’t draw any conclusions about the fact that you’ve gotten lost in thought. Don’t assume that it means “you’re not doing it right” or that you’re not taking your meditation seriously. You don’t need to do any of that. Just notice what’s happening, refocus, and keep going.

This approach is different from what a lot of us do. Onecommon response to getting lost in thought is to get overly involved in what we’re thinking about. Then we keep going down the rabbit hole. If we’re thinking about a difficult project at work, for example, we try to solve the problem before moving on. Then it goes on from there, and we end up being distracted the whole time. It’s a completely different response than simply realizing you’re lost in thought, and refocusing.  

A lot of people think that if they’ve been distracted a lot during their meditation, then they weren’t really doing it. That’s not true. Even if your practice is punctuated by periods when you weren’t focused, it doesn’t matter.  Every time you were present, you were meditating. 

Let’s pretend that we had an instrument that would allow us to scientifically measure every time you were lost in thought. And let’s say that during a 30-minute session, this instrument indicated that you were meditating for a total of 17 minutes, and for the other 13 minutes you were lost in your thoughts. That’s actually not too bad. Even though you were distracted for 13 out of 30 minutes, you were actually meditating for the other 17. And even better, every time you had the chance to re-focus and become present, you did it. You didn’t give up. That’s good. It means you didn’t actually fail at all. 

So, if you can consistently refocus each time you get lost, no matter how often it happens, you’ll find that your focus begins to improve. Every time you get lost, add a little more focus and intensity. Tell yourself, “I’m really going to stay focused and present this time.” With practice, you might be able to steadily increase the percentage of time you’re actually meditating. 

But even if you don’t, and you keep getting distracted, you’re still getting in some good, solid meditation. And, if you can approach this in the way I’m describing here, you won’t be  giving yourself any room to conclude that you’re failing. You won’t be making a problem out of it or struggling with yourself over it. You’ll be content with the fact that even though you spent some of the time lost in thought, you meditated as much as you could. 

This approach strengthens your intention, your resolve, and your confidence that you can meditate, because you simply kept going, in spite of all the distraction. You didn’t give up. And that kind of resolve is ultimately more important to your awakening than whether or not you stayed perfectly focused throughout a given meditation session.

Trismegistoaureo MAKE LIKE POGO

Music in this video

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Song

Incesticide

Artist

Foetus

Album

Null / Void

Licensed to YouTube by

[Merlin] Virtual Label LLC (on behalf of Ectopic Ents); ASCAP, The Royalty Network (Publishing), and 1 Music Rights Societies

Incesticide

Foetus

Come on sonny, don’t be scared
Gotta act like a Boy Scout, be prepared
I ain’t breaking any laws
Just dressing up like Santa Claus
Whiskers tickling open sores
It’s a kindergarten smorgasboard
They’re catnip to every tom in town
And Pogo is their favorite clown
They call me butcher… I call them cow
Cousins kissing canvas nowMake like Pogo- get on down
Make like Pogo – get on down
Fratricide – Patricide – Matricide – Incesticide
Fratricide – Patricide – Matricide – IncesticideNo Daddy no! No Daddy no no no!!!!!It’s past your bedtime, getting late
Don’t want you turning into gatorbait
All I want for Christmas is a chicken delight
And a tasty little morsel to hold on tightI like to swing and I like to slide
And I carry a can of incesticide
Y’know my son you’re just my type
Gotta pick that fruit before it’s ripeNo Daddy no! No Daddy no no no!!!!!Staring down the barrel of a loaded gun
Here it comes – somnambulumdrum
………it’s ten o’clock………
Do you know where your kids are?Sixteen boys on Pogo’s chest
Here’s your jammies… get undressed
In like a lion out like a lamb
Big fist… small hole… sugar ham
Look like a Jill and smell like a John
Shooting a wad from my loaded gun
I’m in a Bellevue state of mind
To err is human but it feels divineMake like Pogo get on down
Make like Pogo get on downFratricide – Patricide – Matricide – My Suicide
Fratricide – Patricide – Matricide – Incesticide
Fratricide – Patricide – Matricide – Incesticide
Fratricide – Patricide – Matricide – IncesticideIncesticide………IncesticideStaring down the barrel of a loaded gun
Here it comes – somnambulumdrum
Staring down the barrel of a loaded gun
Here it comes – somnambulumdrum
Here it comes – here it comes
Here it comes – somnambulumdrum
Here I come – here I come
Here it comes – somnambulumdrum
You’re……………(shante)

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Jim Thirlwell / Jim G. Thirlwell
Incesticide lyrics © Royalty Network