111–120 of 161 posts
I understand the concerns about p-value but the causal pathway is such a clear one (make brain work harder each day and it stays elastic and effective longer) that this should be a slam dunk for more research grants
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I cant find the episode now, but a few years ago an episode CBC's science show Quirks and Quarks interviewed a researcher that found being bilingual seemed to delay the onset of dementia by a couple of years. Although it doesnt sound like much, from a public policy pov, its pretty significant when you look at what that can mean for quality of life as well as costs for our public health system.
Unfortunately, you can't take an 50-something english only American and tell him to "go learn Italian", for health. It's hard enough to make people eat less, exercise, or quit smoking - picking up new language without another motivation than "for health" is going to be even harder. Most schools introduce more languages today, no ? And I guess there is no motivation to keep language skills active beyond school, so any…
I enjoyed Bon Cop Bad Cop (2006), a bilingual flick which IIRC can be found with either english or french subs.
Do you think Python and JavaScript Count?
I am sure that everything counts. Scientists like to measure natural language against dementia probably because its easier to do then some other form of knowledge (like being good in multiple disciplines). From the practical standpoint, learning more then 1 one language doesn't make any sense - practical value you get from it is next to 0 compared to for example learning medicine, electronics, IT, math etc. Especiall…
Compare https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/ (600-2200 class hours for B2 proficiency)
This might be me being overly cautious here, but I would be wary of the political implications of the study. It's from an open University that's a project for lifelong learning funded as a public service in Catalonia - promoting the catalan language in the region is a key point of the project, so studies finding out that bilingualism is something great to have raise red flags about the nationalist agenda behind it. T…
It would be interesting to see how the described effect depends on linguistic proximity. Does bilingualism of e.g. English and Chinese or German and Turkish protect better against cognitive decline than Castilian and Catalan?
This might be me being overly cautious here, but I would be wary of the political implications of the study. It's from an open University that's a project for lifelong learning funded as a public service in Catalonia - promoting the catalan language in the region is a key point of the project, so studies finding out that bilingualism is something great to have raise red flags about the nationalist agenda behind it. T…
As an aside, here's a breakdown of who speaks Catalan vs Spanish, in Catalonia, as of 2018: https://www.idescat.cat/novetats/?id=3446&lang=en The quick version, in a single image, with the lightest area being the region of Barcelona: https://i.imgur.com/tPiOuiz.png
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I’m pretty sure the only places where being monolingual is common, are the countries where English is the dominant language. If you look at the whole population of the world, it’s more common to know more than one language than it is to know only one. If you’re born in a place that speaks a language other than English, then learning English is very common, and a lot of places (like Singapore) have multiple common lan…
No. In backwater countries like Poland English is caught at school, but people don't speak or write in it. Many still prefer polish-language media because LACK CONFIDENCE in their english. It typically goes like "Oh, I had English 4 years ago at school, I'm not that good". You use English skills to read a label on a shampoo or an instruction manual. English is not spoken or even written regularly . Before the pandemi…
With 2k daily new cases, unaffected my ass.
This might be me being overly cautious here, but I would be wary of the political implications of the study. It's from an open University that's a project for lifelong learning funded as a public service in Catalonia - promoting the catalan language in the region is a key point of the project, so studies finding out that bilingualism is something great to have raise red flags about the nationalist agenda behind it. T…
So in theory you could potentially realize similar benefits without learning another spoken language.
I understand the concerns about p-value but the causal pathway is such a clear one (make brain work harder each day and it stays elastic and effective longer) that this should be a slam dunk for more research grants
>make brain work harder each day and it stays elastic and effective longer Would this extend to learning in general? E.g. learning more than one musical instrument?
Until someone finds some bacterial or pathogen cause for Alzheimer's and dementia, funding should go on the "we don't use it we lose it" assumption. Yes there may be other factors of course, and given the surprise over stomach ulcers it's entirely possible the use it or lose it idea is wrong.
But science funding needs to be a smart money play not a scattergun.
This might be me being overly cautious here, but I would be wary of the political implications of the study. It's from an open University that's a project for lifelong learning funded as a public service in Catalonia - promoting the catalan language in the region is a key point of the project, so studies finding out that bilingualism is something great to have raise red flags about the nationalist agenda behind it. T…
Vielleicht sind die zweisprachigen Sprecher jedoch besser darauf vorbereitet, die Wahrheit zu finden: Sprache ist Politik - Es wird besser, je mehr Sie es verwenden.