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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

#421

Post by gastlygem »

zirgs wrote: post #362
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smartphones have changed this. You can write characters directly on a touchscreen. It's not as popular of an input method as pinyin, but it's not uncommon either. There's also Bopomofo, as an alternative to pinyin input.[0] 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo

Writing characters on a touchscreen seems horrible.

You can write the most sloppy cursive Chinese character and your phone would recognize them just fine. Together with text prediction it's quite easy to get 40 characters per minute (probably equivalent of 80wpm in English), much faster than most people writing on paper.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#422

Post by AdamN »

varjag wrote: post #342
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, not every specific example translates perfectly to every other scenario under the same class. However, I'm in Denmark. And I've lived in Germany. And I have an Italian wife and family. In my experience in Denmark basically everybody without a language learning disability or extremely advanced age speaks English to a far higher degree of competence than the average German in Berlin, in fact Danes almost speak Eng…

Right on money. It's easier to delude yourself that you comprehended an European culture without knowing the language simply because everything is so superficially familiar and all nuances are comparatively fine.

Nobody's suggesting that speaking the local language isn't a major contributor to integrating in and understanding a local culture. It's just not the only contributor.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#423

Post by Planktonne »

isaacfrond wrote: post #276
rjzzleep wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this discussion absurd. Here's a paper that most people have not read and then add their own subjective anecdote to it to confirm their personal opinion. Has anyone bothered to look at the tests that determine cognitive ability in this context? Here's one(or it's advanced version the double trouble test): “assess the ability to inhibit cognitive interference that occurs when processing of a specific stimulus f…

Hear hear! Exactly my point. Can knowing a second language be a benefit. Well if you like Spanish movies, then being fluent in Spanish will certainly increase you enjoyment. Nobody denies that. Will it make you a better chess player? The simple answer appears to be: no. It one my gripes with classical education. What benefit is there of learning Latin? Well, you can read Virgil in the original, and if that is your th…

If you speak a language that has been influenced by Latin, learning Latin is really useful for understanding our own language.

Additionally, because of the way that Latin is taught, you learn a lot of classical history and philosophy through the process, which - given the impact of Rome on the world - is useful across a wide range of disciplines.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#424

Post by Aerbil313 »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #129
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 ton…

Do people not able to think without language normally? Does everyone have an internal sound for everything they think all the time? I don’t, I am bilingual but I don’t think this is true. I’m surprised to hear that.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#425

Post by Aerbil313 »

thejackgoode wrote: post #256
pazimzadeh wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ton…

This. I know it has very little scientific merit, but Roger Penrose's argument that "consciousness is quantum" always rang that bell to me, the thought (or a solution to a problem) comes to me always entirely at once, not one word at a time.

The working of a neural network makes total sense to me since I learnt it. Ideas emerging out of blue, etc. I believe it’s how brain works.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#426

Post by Kretinsky »

isaacfrond wrote: post #276
rjzzleep wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this discussion absurd. Here's a paper that most people have not read and then add their own subjective anecdote to it to confirm their personal opinion. Has anyone bothered to look at the tests that determine cognitive ability in this context? Here's one(or it's advanced version the double trouble test): “assess the ability to inhibit cognitive interference that occurs when processing of a specific stimulus f…

Hear hear! Exactly my point. Can knowing a second language be a benefit. Well if you like Spanish movies, then being fluent in Spanish will certainly increase you enjoyment. Nobody denies that. Will it make you a better chess player? The simple answer appears to be: no. It one my gripes with classical education. What benefit is there of learning Latin? Well, you can read Virgil in the original, and if that is your th…

Knowing well Latin makes it easier to learn new languages that inherit from it, both on the vocab side and the grammar side. French doesn't really have declinations, for instance. My wife studied it extensively during her studies, and she can pick new languages much quicker than me due to this.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#427

Post by Kamq »

mejutoco wrote: post #250
Kamq wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I almost never find myself accidentally sticking English words into sentences, but I will frequently mix words from my second and third languages. Which is perfectly valid english.

I sympathize with your point, but it depends. Entschuldigung, what time is it? Is that valid English? Auteur, oeuvre, etc. are now English terms, but Remmidemmi? My take is it is a gradient, and at some point you would be speaking broken English. Far from, mix words and it will be _perfectly_ valid English. I believe your assertion is more of a rhetorical tool to make a point, and I agree with that point, though.

> Entschuldigung, what time is it? Is that valid English?

It will be if you use it enough.

Sort of like how schadenfreude got added to english.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#428

Post by eru »

carlosjobim wrote: post #372
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?

> What could be better? Paying better salaries to working people.

If you have money burning a hole in your pocket, I suggest you have a look at https://www.givewell.org/ and pick any of their top charities.

Randomly giving people more money, just because you happen to interact with them seems cruel and patronising.

Compare https://web.archive.org/web/20220705105128/https://blog.jaib...

(And in case you don't care about helping people, why do you bother?)

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#429

Post by [deleted] »

wheels wrote: post #388
yosito wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#430

Post by eru »

wheels wrote: post #419
yosito wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll keep that in mind when I'm trying to socialize with the likes of Angele Merkel

Yeah, probably the chancellor and foreign minister were the only two from their generation that were educated, internationally minded and don't speak English.

Huh? What makes you think they don't speak English?

Angela Merkel can definitely speak English.

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