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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

#281

Post by eru »

fnord77 wrote: post #174
yosito wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, p…

Everyone says learn Mandarin but actually I'd rather learn Cantonese than Mandarin. It's the 3rd most spoken language in the US

You can learn Cantonese for fun, but Mandarin is more useful for business or travel.

> It's the 3rd most spoken language in the US

That's interesting, but why would that influence your decision which language to learn? Almost all the Cantonese speakers in the US probably speak English, and there aren't that many in the grand scheme of things? (Especially compared to total number of Mandarin speakers.)

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#282

Post by The_Colonel »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #219
decaffjoe wrote: post #201

This topic misses the forest for the trees. Even if there is a cognitive difference in people who speak multiple languages, the magnitude of the advantage/disadvantage pales in comparison to the far more impactful difference in the understanding of the world that proficiency in another language gives you. If you're a monolingual American born English speaker and you learn Chinese and go live in China for a year, you'…

> This topic misses the forest for the trees. Even if there is a cognitive difference in people who speak multiple languages, the magnitude of the advantage/disadvantage pales in comparison to the far more impactful difference in the understanding of the world that proficiency in another language gives you. But that's not what the paper studied. It's long been stated in popular culture that learning a language increa…

> It's long been stated in popular culture that learning a language increases cognitive ability: improves memory, reasoning, and helps reduce onset of senility etc. This study suggests it isn't.

The study is about "bilingualism", not about "learning". Bilingualism is a passive property, e.g. children born to parents speaking different languages will acquire those languages, but in adulthood no longer be in the process of learning them.

"learning" is an active mental process and those beneficial properties you mention are ascribed to this.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#283

Post by eru »

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

Why specifically a caring _mother_?

You know what would be even better? If everyone got a pony and a puppy and a million dollars! But that's not really feasible to provide for everyone (at the moment).

Life is all about trade-offs.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#284

Post by eru »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
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.

That's a cool combination.

German comes from my side, the rest comes from Singapore.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#285

Post by eru »

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…

Natural language acquisition uses specialised circuitry in brain, and doesn't really run on general logic / intelligence, like programming languages do.

That's why analogies between the two are of limited use at best.

The rest of your comment isn't really wrong. I even agree with most of it. It's just not really relevant to your point.

> 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.

Last I checked the research was still open on that one. What you are saying might work as a gross simplification, though.

> 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.

Yes. And exactly when you learn them and in what context also seems to make some context.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#286

Post by watwut »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #186
wudangmonk wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't relate to most of your points. Words either come naturally as they do for everyone else or you don't use the word in that language therefore you will try to guess it or think of a similar one. This just means that you are not exposed to the same vocabulary in both languages. All my Comp Sci and Math vocabulary is in English because of school/online/talking to others. All my botany and plant knowledge k…

I don't see why its ridiculous. Brains are not magically above the constraints of information lookup from a database. The more you know, the more you have to sort through somehow.

That is not how it works? People who know a lot are not in general slower then people who know only a little.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#287

Post by zuminator »

The_Colonel wrote: post #282
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This topic misses the forest for the trees. Even if there is a cognitive difference in people who speak multiple languages, the magnitude of the advantage/disadvantage pales in comparison to the far more impactful difference in the understanding of the world that proficiency in another language gives you. But that's not what the paper studied. It's long been stated in popular culture that learning a language increa…

> It's long been stated in popular culture that learning a language increases cognitive ability: improves memory, reasoning, and helps reduce onset of senility etc. This study suggests it isn't. The study is about "bilingualism", not about "learning". Bilingualism is a passive property, e.g. children born to parents speaking different languages will acquire those languages, but in adulthood no longer be in the proces…

On the contrary the beneficial properties are popularly ascribed to bilingualism itself.

For example:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefi...?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-being-bilingual-make-you-s...

Although it seems that skepticism about this truism goes back a few years as well.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797614557866

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#288

Post by mschild »

AdamN wrote: post #270
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's the moving to China for a year that would increase your understanding of Chinese culture and people far more than learning Chinese by itself. sure, go to China for a year, only speak English, surround yourself with English speaking friends and going to English friendly restaurants and in the end come back with an increased understanding of Chinese culture and people and probably get jobs based on that understan…

That's not totally true - in Berlin there are lots of English speakers (many/most English as a second language) and so people including myself live here with pretty basic German (A2 probably). Those people are certainly learning alot about a different culture from wherever they came from even if they aren't speaking the dominant language. Obviously if I had B2 German it would be awesome and I would chat up more peopl…

Berlin is not Germany.

Yes, every city and region is a bit different but Berlin as a whole has such a different culture, especially if you predominantly speak English.

Most of my colleagues are English speaking only and they sometimes complain that its hard to do certain things where I have no problem with it. Getting appointments, doctors and Bürgerbüro especially, they always seem to struggle with. You can certainly get by without or very little German in Berlin, but there are things that are significantly harder to do. I'd argue you're generally missing out on a lot of smaller aspects of the culture if you experience the English version of it.

Though I get its hard to learn German. Not an easy language and all the English in Berlin doesn't make it easier.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#289

Post by soco »

thevagrant wrote: post #263
paganel wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the moving to China for a year that would increase your understanding of Chinese culture and people far more than learning Chinese by itself. I've never set foot in the US and yet I know lots of things about the country and its people because I can speak and write in English, certainly I do know more about the US compared to my fellow countrymen who cannot speak and write English. The same goes for French, eve…

I see your point, although do you think that being bilingual gave you significant cognitive advantage? Or could you be quite intelligent with above average memory and your existing cognitive advantage has helped you to become bilingual?

I'm pretty sure everybody can do it wherever the average is. It's a matter of wanting to do it, that's all. Foreign workers come and pick up whatever host country language yet they're not always the brightest and also don't have exactly ideal conditions to do it. Like a sibling comment touched, you can go to Berlin and complain the language is difficult, talk English with Berliners happy to practice their English, and you'll come back learning almost nothing while they'll polish their English without even needing to travel outside Berlin. Because of choices. Learning something new is a challenge and like with every challenge, can be accepted or not.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#290

Post by GoblinSlayer »

oblio wrote: post #254
wenc wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak 7 (4 acquired as a child, 1 in school, and 2 as an adult) and I find I'm able to understand understand cultural nuances better, which helps me to bridge cultural gaps and have multi-perspectival views on most things. (this is quite apart from the unproven Sapir-Whorf hypotheses stuff about language influencing thoughts -- it's not like that at all). Having multiple languages simply gives me affinity for multi…

You've probably invested thousand of hours in learning all of those languages. Some just by circumstance/luck (maybe something like this? mom speaking 1 language, dad speaking another, both speaking a common language, the place you were in having another secondary language), some through your own efforts. As always, the real question we can't really test is: what could you have done with probably literal person-years…

There's a post nearby where people are said to spend their time watching braindead youtube videos. My niece does that too.
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