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Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment

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Re: Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment

#121

Post by mettamage »

Simply my own thoughts, but I think any cognitive activity that is intensely practiced protects against cognitive impairment.

My grandmother reads a lot of novels, including quite complicated ones and does a lot of language puzzles, yet only knows one language. I'm sure that if she would only watch television and not read a lot of (medieval-based) novels and language puzzles, then she will experience cognitive decline earlier in her life.

I think the mantra "use it or lose it" is quite true in nature, in general.

Re: Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment

#122

Post by hibbelig »

lentil_soup wrote: post #105
hibbelig wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to immigrate to Barcelona I would learn (Galician) Spanish, but perhaps not Catalan. (Though it’s a beautiful language.) I guess I would count as monolingual in their study.

Galician Spanish? Do you mean Castillian Spanish (which is another name for normal spanish)? Galician is a separate language

Thank you, I meant Castillian Spanish.

Re: Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment

#123

Post by phendrenad2 »

Agentlien wrote: post #82
phendrenad2 wrote: post #79

How do we know the cognitive impairment isn't causing people to not speak two languages (despite knowing two - as in they can't remember one of them), long before other symptoms appear? The only way to test that is to split a pool of bilingual people into two groups, and forbid one group from using one language. Was that done?

I saw a few comments here commenting this. It's a strange perspective to me. The people I know who are bilingual still prefer one language and use the other primarily to speak to people who don't know their primary language. As an example I am Swedish but fluent in English and Dutch. In my family we use a mix of Swedish and Dutch. But I use Swedish exclusively with anyone else who is Swedish unless someone is in the…

I guess someone might become fluent in a second language for work purposes, and then once retired, may not need to speak that language much.

Re: Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment

#124

Post by kriro »

Interestingly, my mother started learning a foreign language recently and it got me thinking. Is anyone here well versed in the state of the art of brain plasticity? I always wondered if you could slow down Alzheimer's disease by trying to "outpace" the brain decline by forming new connections at a faster pace. Learning a language was the first thing that came to mind.

I'd also be very interested in a comparison of two language vs. three language. Switzerland would be the obvious choice but children from partners that don't speak the same language and use English as a lingua franca or Canadians with one extra language (Chinese living in Canada etc.) should provide a big enough sample.

Re: Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment

#126

Post by aurelianito »

asveikau wrote: post #75
aurelianito wrote: post #25

Almost everyone is bilingual in Barcelona. They teach Catalan and Spanish at school, and both are spoken by the general population. How did they get non-bilingual people there?

I would expect there to be a fair amount of monolingual Castilian speakers there too. People who moved there from another part of Spain for instance.

If they tapped into this population they wouldn't be able to make any valid conclusion because they are intrinsically different.

Re: Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment

#127

Post by tgv »

That study might be not support the wild conclusion in the title.

They determined fluency in two languages (Spanish and Catalan) in people hospitalized in and around Barcelona. There are some hard-core Catalans that hardly --or even refuse to-- speak Spanish there, but not that many in Barcelona, but there are (many) people from other regions in Spain who are not fluent in Catalan, because they started working and living there a long time ago, when speaking Catalan simply was not needed, or perhaps still forbidden. These will be older, poorer and more frequently hospitalized. So they might simply be looking at two very different groups. Not a word about that in the abstract. I can't access the article.

If actively speaking two languages has an influence, I wouldn't expect much of a difference between Spanish and Catalan: they are close enough to be seen as dialects. They should test this on e.g. English/Urdu speakers or Hungarian/Rumanian.

Re: Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment

#129

Post by b0rsuk »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #116
b0rsuk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. In backwater countries like Poland English is caught at school, but people don't speak or write in it. Many still prefer polish-language media because LACK CONFIDENCE in their english. It typically goes like "Oh, I had English 4 years ago at school, I'm not that good". You use English skills to read a label on a shampoo or an instruction manual. English is not spoken or even written regularly . Before the pandemi…

> relatively unaffected - by the covid19 pandemic With 2k daily new cases, unaffected my ass.

I used the weasel words "so far". It's more like 2400 at the moment. The fact that the epidemic develops later supports my statement that Poland is a backwater country. Which doesn't mean it will go around us.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/poland/

The R (effective reproduction rate) coefficient is between 1.3 and 1.5 depending on the interval chosen, which is a very worrying trend. But remember Italy was 4.5 in February. Of course, if they cook books to hide financial deficit they sure can fake infection stats.

http://trackingr-env.eba-9muars8y.us-east-2.elasticbeanstalk...

Re: Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment

#130

Post by anon4242 »

luckylion wrote: post #95
majkinetor wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure that everything counts. Scientists like to measure natural language against dementia probably because its easier to do then some other form of knowledge (like being good in multiple disciplines). From the practical standpoint, learning more then 1 one language doesn't make any sense - practical value you get from it is next to 0 compared to for example learning medicine, electronics, IT, math etc. Especiall…

> From the practical standpoint, learning more then 1 one language doesn't make any sense - practical value you get from it is next to 0 compared to for example learning medicine, electronics, IT, math etc. That may be true if you're living in a country where English is the main language, otherwise adding English has a lot of practical value.

Or, if you're not a native English speaker who moves to another country where English is not the main language then adding that language tend to have a lot of practical value.
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