AskHN: The consensus is that each parent speaks his languge so as not to confuse the child. When the parents are taking to each other in the presence of the child, does each one talk to his own language? Or in that case it doesn't matter?
Bilingual brain boost: Two tongues, two minds
41–46 of 46 posts
Re: Bilingual brain boost: Two tongues, two minds
#42I love learning languages. I chose 12 languages and made a plan to learn each of them for a month, instead of watching TV. That way, in 5 years time, I will hopefully be very happy to have made this decision now.
Don't you think it will take more than a month? Or are you that solid at learning them already? If so, I'm very impressed!
No, but I don't care. There are some languages that are similar to languages I already know (e.g. Russian to Slovene, or Danish to English and German), some are different (Chinese, Arabic), so they will inevitably take a long time... But I'm not motivated by knowing languages, that is not my goal, learning languages is more important.
In any case, I don't think that the amount of time spent learning matters much, immersion is what is really important. If I ever go somewhere where I'm forced to speak a language for 2 weeks or so, I will learn much more than 6 months studying alone.
Re: Bilingual brain boost: Two tongues, two minds
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've noticed similar as I become more and more conversant in Polish - adapting to new grammatical forms definitely makes me think in a different manner. That, and a new, huge, appreciation for anyone that learns the easy-to-start, nightmare-to-master, English as a second language.
You might find interesting Anna Wierzbicka's essay on her own experience of bilingualism ( http://www.une.edu.au/bcss/linguistics/nsm/pdfs/double-life.... ). Wierzbicka is a Polish-Australian linguist specializing in semantic universals and their cross-cultural manifestations, so it's kind of an insider's account, but charmingly personal at that.
Hey, sorry for taking so long to reply, that's an awesome link, thanks! :)
Re: Bilingual brain boost: Two tongues, two minds
#44It would also be interesting to see how learning a non-phonetic alphabet, like Chinese or Japanese Kanji affects your brain. Learning tens of thousands of pictographs by heart is no easy feat, and I can tell you that bilingualism does not prepare you for that.
Kanji contain repeated elements ("radicals"), which form something of a graphical alphabet. Learning a new character's form is not too difficult then, you can identify that it's radicals A, B and C, in this kind of arrangement. Basically, it's neatly pre-chunked for memorisation.
The pronunciation of kanji is more difficult than their visual layout, and arguably where most of the burden is in Japanese. A single kanji can have pronunciations it's picked up from several periods in history. In practice, it just means that it might have a handful of different pronunciations in different contexts. Learning all these contexts takes time.
Re: Bilingual brain boost: Two tongues, two minds
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't you think it will take more than a month? Or are you that solid at learning them already? If so, I'm very impressed!
No, but I don't care. There are some languages that are similar to languages I already know (e.g. Russian to Slovene, or Danish to English and German), some are different (Chinese, Arabic), so they will inevitably take a long time... But I'm not motivated by knowing languages, that is not my goal, learning languages is more important. In any case, I don't think that the amount of time spent learning matters much, imm…
Immersion is the right path. But wouldn't be better to spend each of the next 12 years in a different country (feasible if you're a top programmer) rather than swapping every month?
Again, if you're a prodigy it can work.
Or is this all a parallel to learning technical languages?
Re: Bilingual brain boost: Two tongues, two minds
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but I don't care. There are some languages that are similar to languages I already know (e.g. Russian to Slovene, or Danish to English and German), some are different (Chinese, Arabic), so they will inevitably take a long time... But I'm not motivated by knowing languages, that is not my goal, learning languages is more important. In any case, I don't think that the amount of time spent learning matters much, imm…
Immersion is the right path. But wouldn't be better to spend each of the next 12 years in a different country (feasible if you're a top programmer) rather than swapping every month? Again, if you're a prodigy it can work. Or is this all a parallel to learning technical languages?
It would be better, if my goal was to know these languages. But, as I've said, I don't much care about that. Learning languages is an intellectually stimulating, past-time activity. If I learn something, great. If I don't, also great.
Also, I don't like planning too far ahead. Usually, I draw the limit at about 1 month, so 12 years is a very very long period of time.