The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages • Hacker News Board

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#71

Post by joubert » Fri, Jan 22, 2010, 5:49 PM UTC

gahahaha wrote: post #50

joubert wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afrikaans is not a "sort of a Dutch dialect". It is a separate language, derived from Dutch (note, there are difference Afrikaans dialects). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans Interesting write-up of what is considered a "dialect", and how it differs from "language": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect

If you put a lot of emphasis on "sort of" it is.

Only if you have an imperialist/colonist slant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_dialects#Sister_and_daugh...

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#72

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Jan 23, 2010, 4:15 PM UTC

timwiseman wrote: post #70

PieSquared wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aurgh! Your comment is on one hand something I really want to respond to, yet on the other hand difficult for me to respond to well. > At a higher education level (say College on up) I would be strongly inclined to agree with you. Give the students freedom and they will make the right choices for themselves, and they will be the only ones to live with it if they don't. > At the basic education level (high school and…

You make a lot of interesting points. It's teaching us to hate the 'mandatory' subjects, because everyone has to take them, and thus the teachers can't teach it well because 3/4 of their classes are utterly uninterested. I ran into this as well. I was fortunate in having a high school with a high percentage of AP classes and those were much closer to collage classes than high school classes. But remember in college t…

>But, as the original article pointed out, learning a second language helps develop your mind. It can also give you better perspective on another culture.

I never did Latin at school (my wife did, but I think I know more Latin vocab now than her!) but this can be a good argument for Latin or Greek - except instead of learning about a modern culture you're learning about a relatively ancient one; but crucially (at least in Europe) one that is still having a big impact (particularly Roman/Latin).

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#73

Post by kowen » Sun, Jan 24, 2010, 2:24 AM UTC

demallien wrote: post #60

kowen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard great things about language immersion. There is an American actress - can't remember her name - she speaks fluent French. I saw her in a French movie and spent half the movie trying to place her face. It turns out that she went to a bilingual school French/English.

Jodie Foster

You're right - that's the one.