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Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

journals.sagepub.com

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Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#31

Post by jacquesm »

ofalkaed wrote: post #13
jacquesm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it also helps wonders in acquiring a third language, which can be very useful in its own right. When all you know is the language you were raised with adding another is hard work, once you have that second one the next one is so much easier. But I readily believe that knowing another language isn't suddenly going to make you better at math or physics or geography. It wouldn't make much sense, if anything I would…

I would probably say if you are going to go to learning a third language than you would probably have been better off studying linguistics instead of that second language which will make all language acquisition easier. But hindsight, how many learn a second language with the intent of learning a third or forth? and once you learn that third you probably are going to have a decent intuitive grasp on linguistics even…

Where I grew up, a small EU country just knowing the local language would be super limiting. Here we learn Dutch, English, German and French in high school, and I picked up some Polish while living there. I'm not exceptional at all here and I'm nowhere near where someone who studies linguistics is.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#32

Post by [deleted] »

tshaddox wrote: post #25
eru wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say it like it's a bad thing. This is an awesome way to provide both an extra language when kids don't have much else to do and fit it easy to pick them up, _and_ it saves on costs? What could be better?

Yeah, kinda weird to point it out as if there is some conflict of incentives between costs and benefits. It's a pretty darn good language to pick even if you just wanted your child to learn another language regardless of costs.

[deleted]

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#33

Post by ofalkaed »

eru wrote: post #15
ofalkaed wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would probably say if you are going to go to learning a third language than you would probably have been better off studying linguistics instead of that second language which will make all language acquisition easier. But hindsight, how many learn a second language with the intent of learning a third or forth? and once you learn that third you probably are going to have a decent intuitive grasp on linguistics even…

How is studying linguistics supposed to make language acquisition easier? Linguistics is the academic study of languages. My toddler is learning three languages growing up (English, Mandarin, German). She picks them up just fine, because she hears them spoken around her; I don't think she'd benefit from learning linguistics instead.

The same way in that a CS PHD is going to be able to pickup programming languages better and more quickly than someone who has learned C++ and python, they understand the underlying mechanics of language, what makes it work. But a toddler is something different, they primarily mimic and play with the language gauging function on result, how do people react to what I say. Learning languages from a young age is why the OP study shows no cognitive advantage and why people with only a single language tend not to have a good understanding of their language, it is a part of them.

But I was mostly speaking of peers, the sort who would be posting on HN, don't think we have many toddlers on the site. Learning multiple languages from a very early age seems to result in the languages being a single language from the perspective of the speaker, they have different situations in which they speak in different ways much like the average monolingual will speak more formally in a job interview compared to when they are out at the bar. Second and third, and etc languages are very different things between those that learned them from the start and those that learn them later in life.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#34

Post by jacquesm »

eru wrote: post #15
ofalkaed wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would probably say if you are going to go to learning a third language than you would probably have been better off studying linguistics instead of that second language which will make all language acquisition easier. But hindsight, how many learn a second language with the intent of learning a third or forth? and once you learn that third you probably are going to have a decent intuitive grasp on linguistics even…

How is studying linguistics supposed to make language acquisition easier? Linguistics is the academic study of languages. My toddler is learning three languages growing up (English, Mandarin, German). She picks them up just fine, because she hears them spoken around her; I don't think she'd benefit from learning linguistics instead.

That's a cool combination.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#36

Post by throwawaylinux »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #5

That seems to reflect my lived experience. Do bilingual people in general seem to be more intelligent? I don't think so. But, like many other things in life, the access of even a second language in my opinion gives you another tool to use as intellectual leverage to gain greater or richer understanding to many specific domains that you would otherwise require someone else to digest the information for you. That doesn…

> But, like many other things in life, the access of even a second language in my opinion gives you another tool to use as intellectual leverage to gain greater or richer understanding to many specific domains that you would otherwise require someone else to digest the information for you.

What are some of those domains, do you think?

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#37

Post by paulsutter »

It would be pretty easy to come up with criteria that support or dismiss benefits of learning two languages, or any pair of specialties at all given inherent tradeoffs

For example, folks who learn programming languages early and intensively have a certain analytical advantage. But this is not a positive in all situations. We all have limited energy/time/focus, so each area we learn necessarily costs us in other areas.

And that’s great. We should develop strengths and build on them. Our lives are short and our attention is limited

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#38

Post by hydrok9 »

version_five wrote: post #14
jvanderbot wrote: post #9

I am a mild pariah among my parent friends for suggesting that 'spanish immersion daycare' was a way of recruiting lower-cost childcare workers (in the USA). They're everywhere , and it seems they are the most common type of daycare, actually. (upper midwest, usa)

Sort of related: in english Canada, french immersion often ends up being a way to send your kids to a better public school, and for whatever reason the english / french kids (as in enrolled in those programs) tend to split along socioeconomic lines.

and they often get away with a low level of fluency by the end of it.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#39

Post by qsort »

tstrimple wrote: post #27
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #5

That seems to reflect my lived experience. Do bilingual people in general seem to be more intelligent? I don't think so. But, like many other things in life, the access of even a second language in my opinion gives you another tool to use as intellectual leverage to gain greater or richer understanding to many specific domains that you would otherwise require someone else to digest the information for you. That doesn…

I have to imagine there are parallel benefits as well. Just as a Java developer will become a better Java developer by learning programming languages with other paradigms, I have to believe knowing multiple spoken languages has tangible benefits outside of understanding the language itself.

A Java developer becomes a better Java developer if they learn alternative concepts that Java doesn't empasize as much. Learning Lisp, Haskell or C is going to be useful, for example.

But a Java developer won't become a better Java developer if they learn C#, which is basically Java with different capitalization conventions.

I guess something like that happens for natural languages. You get those benefits if you actively learn new concepts. The difference of course is that you are unlikely to have done that purely by being bilingual. Many bilingual people just picked up 2+ languages as they were growing up.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#40

Post by version_five »

ofalkaed wrote: post #33
eru wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is studying linguistics supposed to make language acquisition easier? Linguistics is the academic study of languages. My toddler is learning three languages growing up (English, Mandarin, German). She picks them up just fine, because she hears them spoken around her; I don't think she'd benefit from learning linguistics instead.

The same way in that a CS PHD is going to be able to pickup programming languages better and more quickly than someone who has learned C++ and python, they understand the underlying mechanics of language, what makes it work. But a toddler is something different, they primarily mimic and play with the language gauging function on result, how do people react to what I say. Learning languages from a young age is why the…

> The same way in that a CS PHD is going to be able to pickup programming languages better and more quickly than someone who has learned C++ and python

Huh? This is about as convincing to me as the claim that learning linguistics makes it easier to learn a human language. It's also sort of a non-sequitor.

Someone who understands python and C++ would be trivially able to understand a massive swath of modern programming languages. I see little that having some deeper theoretical background would help.

And in human languages, even more so than programming, theory is almost irrelevant to regular practice. As the upstream comment says, we learn by practice, not by memorizing and applying rules.

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