Back

As thorough as an encyclopedia: How our brain manages languages in such an amazing way

German, English, Norwegian: Languages do not simply compete with one another in the brain – they are constantly active at the same time. ARI researcher Isabella Fritz is using electroencephalography to investigate how the brain processes multilingualism and why we find certain sounds so difficult to pronounce. For this work, she was awarded an ASTRA Prize by the FWF.

 14.07.2026
© Adobe Stock

People who speak multiple languages don’t simply “turn off” the other languages. Isabella Fritz aims to use brainwave measurements to decipher how multilingual people find the right words. She received this year’s FWF-ASTRA Prize for her research and is using the award to establish her own research group at the Acoustics Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). In this interview, she discusses the language-processing brain, mental dictionaries, and how basic research could improve foreign language instruction in the long term.

Read the full interview in German here

At a Glance

In her project “Phonology in the Bilingual Mental Lexicon,” Isabella Fritz investigates how similarities in the sound systems of different languages influence comprehension and speech. The FWF-ASTRA Prize supports outstanding postdocs in establishing an independent research profile. One million euros were awarded for the project.