Coming from a Scandinavian country, we started learning English around the age of 8, and at the age of 15 my English was good enough that I was reading the Harry Potter books in English as they were published, rather than wait six months for the translation. Then I was also learning a third language from age 13 to 19.
And it's well documented that learning new languages, similar to playing sports or doing crafts or other stuff, is very beneficial for brain development in children and young adults.
If your hypothesis made sense, the United Kingdom should have a huge advantage over other European countries within science and other fields where English is predominantly used. But it does not. You can e.g. look at metrics like "number of scientific publications per capita", where the UK is only number 20 in the world, and the US is number 33.
Coming from a Scandinavian country, we started learning English around the age of 8, and at the age of 15 my English was good enough that I was reading the Harry Potter books in English as they were published, rather than wait six months for the translation. Then I was also learning a third language from age 13 to 19.
And it's well documented that learning new languages, similar to playing sports or doing crafts or other stuff, is very beneficial for brain development in children and young adults.
If your hypothesis made sense, the United Kingdom should have a huge advantage over other European countries within science and other fields where English is predominantly used. But it does not. You can e.g. look at metrics like "number of scientific publications per capita", where the UK is only number 20 in the world, and the US is number 33.