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Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

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Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#121

Post by yonaguska »

pb7 wrote: post #116
jacooper wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Spanish should be on that list tooz since its one of the core languages out there right?

I mentioned it at the end but yeah, probably on par with the others. It "unlocks" all of Latin America minus Brazil and few Dutch/French territories, but even Brazilians speak varying amount of Spanish.

I've found that with Brazilians, even if they don't speak Spanish, I can speak Spanish at them and scrape by. It's much easier that me relying solely on English to communicate, fwiw.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#122

Post by kelnos »

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…

I don't really know much about linguistics or linguists (though I would certainly believe that linguists find picking up new languages easier), but I don't think the analogy holds for a CS graduate.

PhD graduates don't have magic in-depth knowledge about programming languages. PhD graduates (in any field, really, not just CS), choose to dive very deeply into a very specific topic in their field. They do not just "go to more CS classes". They spend time becoming an expert on a very narrow topic. And for a CS PhD, that very likely would not be "general principles of programming language design".

I would not expect your average CS PhD to be any better at picking up new programming languages than a CS undergraduate.

Also, you asserted downthread:

> Understanding a language and using a language are very different things and this is why toddlers can pickup languages with more ease than others

No, toddlers pick up languages faster than adults because their level of brain development is more receptive to language acquisition. As people age, their brain's change to optimizes learning skills for other tasks, and language acquisition skills usually suffer.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#123

Post by cfraenkel »

mpsprd wrote: post #109
version_five wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm curious about how french immersion works in English speaking Canada. It's something seen as "higher class"? I live the mirror situation: french speaking young parent intending to make my child bilingual at a young age. Here english is obviously seen as an edge and is studied a lot.

It's seen as a step up in quality, but almost entirely because you're self selecting into the pool of parents who are more invested into improved education. There's also a sense that the "problem" kids are going to be concentrated in the English track. So win win.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#124

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

Next you'll tell me there are no learning styles, that whole language instruction doesn't work and that college doesn't teach critical thinking /s

I wonder how we end up with these "myths" in the first place. Bad research? Great marketing? How many more educational holy cows will come apart in the next decades?

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#125

Post by pwthornton »

hackernewds wrote: post #80
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?

better could be having a work life balance system or remote work setting where the child can grow up with the love and attention a caring mother could provide

You know kids like hanging out with other kids. It’s fantastic for socialization. They generally enjoy getting to hang out and learn with other kids all day.

Back in the day when people had huge families and lived with their cousins, kids got this built in, but I think the idea of having a few kids that don’t get to see other kids every day with a stay at home mother is actually fairly unnatural.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#126

Post by School-Cotton »

fnord77 wrote: post #108
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?

> an extra language I learned spanish at a young age and I find it pretty useless. The last time I used it in the past 20 years was watching Casa De Papiel Really wished I learned something like German or Chinese instead

Probably depends on where you live or want to travel. Spanish is of limited use in Europe and Africa, of almost no use in Asia, and massively useful in the Americas.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#127

Post by makeitdouble »

lisasays wrote: post #104
bugglebeetle wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Switzerland be a bad example in this context? The point of the study is that bilingualism does not afford cognitive advantage, so you have to consider countries where bilingualism is not associated with the factors you cite to see if this bears out. Pointing at other countries that function in the same way as the US in regard to a dominant language would just demonstrate more of the same as is found there.

Most people live in countries that are basically monolingual ("dominant" as you say), though not in the the naive, sheltered way that the US is.

It's understandably hard to get actual numbers on the proportion of bilingual people.

There is a semi-random 50% number thrown around, but just to take the two biggest countries, there's no way we get accurate data on people in India and China given their size and lack of reporting of the inner regions. In China in particular, no one will boast about being fluent in a non-official language in a survey.

I think the same thing happen at smaller scale in european countries. There will be one official language, and whether people are bilingual or not won't be assessed more than striclty needed. The only study I saw were for educational purpose for small kids, out of that there will be no specific tracking of a Georgian immigrant starting a family in Germany, or a Spanish businessman being fluent in Italian because of his girlfriend.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#128

Post by yosito »

fnord77 wrote: post #108
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?

> an extra language I learned spanish at a young age and I find it pretty useless. The last time I used it in the past 20 years was watching Casa De Papiel Really wished I learned something like German or Chinese instead

Globally speaking, German is useless, unless you're European and trying to find a job in Germany because it pays better than your home country. The only German speaking country is full of educated people who also speak fluent English. You'll never meet an internationally minded German who doesn't speak excellent English. Spanish, however, is spoken in an entire continent, which also has a very low level of English, plus several other countries and is closely related to other latin/romance languages, giving you a head start on learning/understanding those.

Chinese/Mandarin might be super useful if you're living in China or a nearby country, but a) why would you want to live in China if you're not Chinese? And b) the language of international business in China is still English.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#129

Post by pazimzadeh »

lisper wrote: post #94

This study seems to focus on acquired languages and ignores mulitple languages learned in childhood. As someone who grew up speaking three languages (German, Hebrew and English) I feel as if this has expanded my ability to conceptualize and form abstractions because I know "what it is like" to think natively in languages with different vocabularies and syntactic structures. That comes naturally with no effort when yo…

I agree with you. I once had an argument with a monolingual English-speaking person who was convinced that language is necessary for thinking, or that thinking somehow comes from language, which couldn't be further from my experience where I will have an abstract thought and then try to put it into words.

However it took years for me to be conscious of the abstract thinking. I started out by thinking in my native tongue, then thinking in my native tongue and mentally translating into English, then thinking in English, before finally not thinking in any language at all.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#130

Post by paulpauper »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #124

Next you'll tell me there are no learning styles, that whole language instruction doesn't work and that college doesn't teach critical thinking /s I wonder how we end up with these "myths" in the first place. Bad research? Great marketing? How many more educational holy cows will come apart in the next decades?

social desirability bias. people think it's true because they want to believe it's true, it sounds plausible that it's true
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