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Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

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Re: Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

#21

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

Strictly anecdotal, but I'll mention it anyway:

My grandfather was bilingual, but his native tongue was Arabic. He held off dementia until his 90's, but when it finally set in, it hit hard. It got to the point where he often gave up trying to speak because he couldn't finish the sentence without forgetting a word he wanted and getting frustrated.

Surprisingly, however, he often remembered the word in English and started speaking that instead. To use a computer analogy, it is as though the sector of his brain where the Arabic was stored had become corrupted, while the English sector was still readable.

Re: Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

#22

Post by adrianN »

hollerith wrote: post #14
wibr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most programmers can learn a new programming language to reasonable "fluency" in a few weeks, for natural languages it's more like a few years. Totally different except when you think of formal terms like vocabulary, syntax etc. which can be found in both and may have led to the term "programming language".

The chairman of the department of English at my local community college told me that it takes the average student of English as a second language 7 years to get good enough that a native English speaker might want to have a conversation with the student.

It depends on which languages you know. For native English speakers there is for example this ranking of language difficulty

http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.go...

Re: Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

#23

Post by dahart »

It looks like there are multiple referenced sources of bilingualism contributing to "cognitive reserve". Pretty cool if there are direct tangible health benefits to learning!

But twice as likely is a very big number in this context. It sounds like the population sample was all from Hyderabad, not a global sample. Is it possible environmental factors are present? Or perhaps socioeconomic factors -- I'd speculate that bilingual people are probably on average wealthier, leading to a wide range of possible benefits, including healthier diet, and better living conditions and location. I know it's armchair critique, but I just can't help but be a little skeptical of this headline.

Re: Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

#24

Post by barkingcat »

grondilu wrote: post #11

Not quite related, but I'm wondering what it means to be bilingual. I mean, does the use of English on internet count? For instance, I'm French and I spend most of my time on the "english" internet, including YouTube, reddit, HN, IRC... I'd say 95% of my activity on the web is in English. I also watch american TV series and movies without subtitles. I understand english quite well and yet, I haven't spoken English fo…

Yes, that's exactly what bilingual (or multilingual) means. Doesn't have to be completely fluent or use it everyday, just that you literally know and can communicate in more than one language.

In Europe, it's more likely that any one person is bi- or multi-lingual just because there are more languages in contact with one another through close borders, etc.

In parts of North America, some people only know one language their entire life (whether it be Spanish or English, etc)

Re: Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

#25

Post by Choronzon »

"even after taking into account other factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and age" But not IQ and social status,bilingual people are more likely to score higher on both and this could be an aspect of healthier cognitive functions rather than how many languages you know.

Re: Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

#26

Post by barkingcat »

arbitrage wrote: post #18
grondilu wrote: post #11

Not quite related, but I'm wondering what it means to be bilingual. I mean, does the use of English on internet count? For instance, I'm French and I spend most of my time on the "english" internet, including YouTube, reddit, HN, IRC... I'd say 95% of my activity on the web is in English. I also watch american TV series and movies without subtitles. I understand english quite well and yet, I haven't spoken English fo…

Fluency in another language is typically understood to mean all aspects of the language ... reading, writing, speaking, and listening. You're not fully (bi|tri|quad)lingual without being able to do some part of those skills in another language. That being said, you don't need to be the worlds best writer or speaker. You just need to have those skills.

Certain languages are more difficult to master in the 4 quadrants that you refer to (read / write / speak / listen) - sometimes languages are much much more difficult to write than to read - it's important to keep those distinctions in mind when speaking about fluency in other languages because not all languages are like English / Roman / have an alphabet, and it's not fair to say someone is not "fluent" if they can't recall instantaneously how to write the thousands of characters that even a native-speaking child would be able to recall.

I'd say someone is fluent if they can perform and understand communications via the various aspects of language, but I don't think you need to be able to express each one.

(For example, being able to type Chinese on the computer via ping yin and fast computerized lookup is an expression of fluency, even though the person might not know how the stroke directions of the character would work if they had to write on paper unassisted)

Re: Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

#27

Post by pjonesdotca »

nathanasmith wrote: post #20
drd93 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would support your statement as well. I know three languages: one as my native language, other as my country's only official language, and the last one (English) is my general purpose language, meaning I use at to surf web, to study books, to watch films/series, to code, etc.. Would I learn any other language if I would be born in English society and English family? Doubt it. Maybe some other mainstream language ju…

As a native English speaker, born and raised in the US, it is a lament of mine that I can't justify the enormous time and effort needed to become bilingual. I guess I could learn Spanish, but why? It would be primarily recreational. And the time spent could almost certainly be more productively used picking up some other useful skill. Maybe I should just do it anyway in light of the more abstract benefits that the ar…

A side effect of living on a continent separated by two oceans and having one single language. It's far easier and practical in Canada to be bi-lingual as English/French are the official languages.

Having spent a portion of my childhood in Europe I saw first hand how much of a difference their default state of speaking 2 or 3 languages has on a society. Trust me, learning a second language is worth the time.

Re: Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

#28

Post by [deleted] »

Choronzon wrote: post #25

"even after taking into account other factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and age" But not IQ and social status,bilingual people are more likely to score higher on both and this could be an aspect of healthier cognitive functions rather than how many languages you know.

[deleted]

Re: Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

#29

Post by madaxe_again »

Choronzon wrote: post #25

"even after taking into account other factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and age" But not IQ and social status,bilingual people are more likely to score higher on both and this could be an aspect of healthier cognitive functions rather than how many languages you know.

Came here to say the same. Correlation is not indicative of causation. Bilingual people are more likely to be more upwardly mobile, and therefore likely have access to better care. Neurology probably has nothing to do with it.
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