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Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

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Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#381

Post by cjohnson318 »

joeyzm wrote: post #280
cjohnson318 wrote: post #170

I think the real question is: does this battery of 12 tests of executive function really measure intelligence? If so, why don't we use these when hiring engineers, CEOs, or any other valuable asset? I'm pessimistic that these tests measure intelligence in a meaningful way.

Because IQ testing is de facto illegal. Companies would much rather use them instead of proxies with varying degrees of accuracy.

> Companies would much rather use them instead of proxies with varying degrees of accuracy.

I sure wouldn't. I'd much rather ask someone about relevant experience than put them through an IQ test, or similar set of abstract puzzles.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#382

Post by florakel »

tharkun__ wrote: post #175
nohaydeprobleme wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You seem to speak 4 languages so well that at least in one of them you can't count to 5 ;) " For what it's worth, I counted 4 languages instead of 5, assuming the comment wasn't edited. The commenter wrote: "Í speak 4 languages and I love it: Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German and English." Brazilian Portuguese is a single language as the dialect of Portuguese used in Brazil [1], versus the European Portuguese…

Touché! Does that count as #5 ;)

I guess I was too precise when I wrote "Brazilian Portuguese" and caused some confusion. ;) It is actually quite different from European Portuguese, especially when spoken.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#384

Post by lisasays »

makeitdouble wrote: post #127
lisasays wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

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

It's not "easy" to get the data but it's a well-studied topic. As attended to by people who presumably have thought about the matter and know what they're doing.

So I'll take their number (at around 60 percent for multilingualism) at face value. Seems to correlate with observations from traveling (through which one rapidly makes the amazing discovery that no, not "everyone" speaks English or is otherwise bilingual).

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#385

Post by lisasays »

cubefox wrote: post #300
lisasays wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone else nowadays is bilingual anyway. Uh, no. According to statistics (and everyday observation), slightly less than half of "everyone" is.

I think those are older people who didn't learn English in school.

Or they're from somewhere besides Europe:

English is not very widely spoken in Mexico overall, with only around 12% of the population speaking it, and only a small number of these being truly fluent.

Estimates are that only 5% of Brazilians can speak English, and most of those speakers are middle- and upper-class professionals living in larger cities.

etc.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#386

Post by Vuizur »

cpursley wrote: post #264
fnord77 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Show me any German native speaker under 50 who’s not fluent in English. Language groups with small numbers of English competency is going to get you much further.

I think this applies to people with a university degree, it is rare for them to speak bad or no English. (Many speak it absurdly well.)

But an average young nurse will probably only speak bad English and can maybe say a few broken sentences.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#387

Post by wheels »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #294
wheels wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that German isn't especially useful globally, but you're wrong on a couple points: - There are several countries with German as an official language, and a few other with German-speaking minorities. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Belgium all have it as an official language (though the last few are not terribly significant). There are also around half a million native German speake…

> All internationally minded Germans do not speak English. That means they aren't internationally minded then.

Yeah, you're totally right. Angele Merkel was definitely not internationally minded. (She does not speak English well, nor did her foreign minister.)

It's also a pretty terrible thing to assume that everyone who wasn't born into the upper class isn't internationally minded. Again, my girlfriend doesn't speak English well because she's from a working class family from the east, but she's been to a couple dozen countries, and manages a team of people from several countries.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#388

Post by wheels »

yosito wrote: post #223
wheels wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that German isn't especially useful globally, but you're wrong on a couple points: - There are several countries with German as an official language, and a few other with German-speaking minorities. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Belgium all have it as an official language (though the last few are not terribly significant). There are also around half a million native German speake…

Good point about the other German speaking countries. I don't really know why that slipped my mind. But the social class thing you mentioned is kind of my point. I think it's pretty much true in all of those German speaking countries, that if you only want to interact with service workers in cities and professional, college educated, internationally minded people, you will have plenty of people to talk to and might n…

Again, Angele Merkel is a pretty convincing counterexample.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#389

Post by cubefox »

lisasays wrote: post #385
cubefox wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think those are older people who didn't learn English in school.

Or they're from somewhere besides Europe: English is not very widely spoken in Mexico overall, with only around 12% of the population speaking it, and only a small number of these being truly fluent. Estimates are that only 5% of Brazilians can speak English, and most of those speakers are middle- and upper-class professionals living in larger cities. etc.

Interesting
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