

Bilingual brains: Variety makes you mentally fit - anishkothari
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/10/johnson-bilingual-brains

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hawkice
There's also evidence that we are less susceptible to biases when given
hypothetical scenarios in foreign languages. I am considering keeping my todo
list in a foreign language, in case that helps me prioritize e.g. sales, where
things like loss aversion might stifle it.

[http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/04/18/095679761143...](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/04/18/0956797611432178)

~~~
nrinaudo
I've tried that, and it does not really work. Turns out I'm just as averse to
paperwork in English as I am in French.

It can also have a significant downside: I've tried maintaining a todo list in
a language that I'm not very good at, only to realise that looking up highly
specific vocabulary was such a chore that after a while, I'd unconsciously
skip writing some entries that looked too complicated to translate.

Have a go, it might work out better for you, but this particular experiment
was a failure as far as I'm concerned.

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melling
My "nights and weekends" project for the past few years has been writing iOS
language learning apps. The niche that I'm looking to fill is to create enough
"games/drills" to help alleviate the incredible repetition needed to learn
another language. Anyway, I'm looking for suggestions so I can find my niche
in a really crowed market...

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-
lite/id388918463?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-
lite/id388918463?mt=8)

I'd really appreciate any ideas or suggestions.

~~~
xiaoma
As someone who spent years studying and teaching languages, my single biggest
advice is to remember that _learning a language is not simply a matter of
learning words_. Don't fall into the trap of throwing a dictionary full of
words into an SRS and hoping for the best. Focus on input, not production.

Include phonetic training. Make the user distinguish between each minimal pair
in the language, possibly even every single syllable in the language. This is
simple, but rarely done.

Include an extensive reading component. This is a monumental task that could
be broken into many apps or many short stories that are in app purchases.

Good luck! I'm really, really hoping to see something better than the very low
bar hit by existing apps!

~~~
vegedor
>Make the user distinguish between each minimal pair in the language, possibly
even every single syllable in the language

I have so much trouble spelling words like definately^W definitely, because
they sound the same to me ;)

~~~
xiaoma
Memorizing how to spell a word like "definitely" would be one of the worst
possible uses of a language learner's time.

What I was suggesting was aural training—learn to distinguish words such as
"his" and "he's", to hear the differences between bat, bet, bit, bot, but,
bait, beet, bite, boat, and boot, etc...

Various idiosyncrasies of an orthographic system are far less important than
being able to hear difference between the sounds of a language.

------
ajani
I am somewhat amused by the multiple studies and articles on Bilingualism.
Simply because I happen to be just one of the many pentalingual (if that's a
term) people I know. My entire family speaks five languages. English, Hindi,
Marathi, Kutcchi and Gujarati. Kutcchi and Gujarati are what I was born into.
The rest are mandatory through school here (Mumbai, India). So anyone who went
to school is at least trilingual. In fact most students are fluent in at least
3 languages by the time they are 6 or so.

If there is any good at all in being bilingual, what does it mean to be
trilingual? Let alone pentalingual? Does the law of diminishing returns apply?

~~~
maga
Aside from English, they're all closely related languages (Hindi, Marathi,
Gujarati). I wouldn't really expect knowing related languages to give the same
payoff as say knowing languages from different groups or families of
languages.

~~~
ajani
Let's take three families of languages:

((Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese),

(Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati),

(English, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Latin))

Are you saying that knowing one from each set is more beneficial than knowing
three from any one set?

~~~
maga
I wouldn't group them like that, English/German/Dutch are Germanic languages,
while French/Italian/Latin are Romance. Japanese also a bit removed from
Mandarin/Cantonese. But, yes, I would argue that knowing unrelated languages
broadens ones perspective far more than knowing similar ones.

~~~
ajani
Interesting. I was looking at:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEurop...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg)

There are subdivisions like Germanic and Romance in the language family which
do seem sufficiently far apart. However, there are quite a few subdivisions
that seem very closely related.

I wonder if there is a way to draw entirely new subdivisions based on benefits
of knowing languages from each subdivision.

Also, intuitively, what you say about knowing unrelated languages makes sense.
I am curious however, if you had some deeper insight or knowledge into why (if
true) this might be?

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erokar
I wonder to what extent using several programming languages has the same
effect. If the hypothesis about language switching as an inhibitory mental
exercise is correct, then polyglot programming should have some of the same
benefits.

~~~
josu
I don't think it applies. Being bilingual means thinking in two different
languages. I'm talking about your inner voice.

As far as I know, people don't think in Python or C. I would say that a
programming language is like math. You can use it as a plugin in your
language, but you still need the main program which is your language.

~~~
emgeee
I might not be so much about the language but about the paradigm. Certainly
going from Java to C++ might not be that different but through in something
like Haskell and you almost have to entirely rethink your solution.

~~~
josu
One thing is setting your logic to follow a certain way of thinking, and a
completely different thing is the language you are using to think.

Furthermore, programming languages are written in English. A real language
cannot be written in another language.

I'm not a linguist nor a programmer, but I'm trilingual, and I have scripted
at a basic level. And honestly, although I see the resemblance, I don't think
that programming languages and real languages work the same way.

~~~
blalabro
I'm trilingual (Spanish,French,German) and program fluently in at least 3
languages (Python, Javascript, PHP). Things in common: You build an idea in
the air and shoot it in the language. Happens to me a lot in German where I
don't have a vocabulary as wide as Spanish on English that the brain will have
to build a sentence maybe 30% longer but it will eventually bring out
something that does the job. When I'm coding I just know the program needs to
do certain thing. Python is very straightforward while with PHP usually I need
to build some auxiliary function (same as German , not that the word doesn't
exist but I don't have it in my Head at the moment). Also, very obscure
concepts like "Dativ" conjugation do exist in spanish but since it looks the
same as "Genitiv" and "Akkusativ" , nobody pays to much attention. However
when you are speaking German you'd better understand that as you need them to
correctly build a sentence of the fly. An example analogy with coding would be
generic data structures like arrays in PHP but in Python are more rich like
Lists, Dictionaries and Tuples(IMHO)

~~~
estebank
You're not trilingual, as you also speak English :)

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prteja11
I wonder if knowing (and using) a third language or even a fourth will reduce
the dementia/ increase the positive effects even further.

~~~
corylehey
also makes me kind of wonder if there is any benefit of only knowing one
language

~~~
sho_hn
I dimly recall reading an article on a study that tried to compare the
performance of monolingual and bilingual people. From what I remember the
bilingual individuals tended to have an edge in the more complex tasks, but
monolinguals were significantly faster at some basic operations like sorting
lists of words or finding a word in an unsorted list.

~~~
mastre_
The last part makes sense, it's similar to a game where they introduce more
and more unfamiliar symbols to you as you progress to higher levels, the more
unknowns you have to deal with the more you slow down. Eventually, if/when you
learn them well you get most of the speed back. I guess most people learning
2nd languages don't learn them well enough to know the 2nd language really
well; technically, if you know both languages equally well, the speed
penalty/overhead will be minimal, similar to expanding one's vocabulary in the
same language (as long as you don't exceed some threshold of mental capacity).

~~~
sho_hn
I'm not sure that's it. I need to preface this by saying that I'm working from
really dim memories here, but from what I recall they were using a definition
of 'bilingual' that people who learn a second language after a certain age
don't fit, and the tested bilinguals should feel at home in both languages.

Rather, it seems that having more than one language active in the brain
concurrently (which requires them to be similarly well developed and in
regular use) requires the brain to do more active selection work. I'm not sure
this actually makes sense or is just my reading of it, but basically it can't
jump to one thing immediately, but has to eliminate the alternatives first.
This gives the bilingual brain an edge in tasks that benefit from being well-
trained to do that step (and seems to help stave off dementia, where
inhibitory control goes out the window, which is a necessity for this
selection process to happen), but slows it down in other tasks that would
benefit from not having to do the extra work.

In other words, if you're asked to sort or bin a list of English words, it
seems to help if your brain doesn't have to wade through a soup made of
multiple languages. But if you're asked to do something that exercises similar
muscles as wading through this kind of soup (maybe "process strained
analogies"? - I kid), it gives you a different sort of edge.

------
sytelus
I want to be careful about these sort of research. Too many times I've seen
these kind of "research" is often funded by commercial entities that teach
foreign languages. It's like what PG had described in his "Submarine" essay.

There is a big industry to teach foreign languages to toddlers and even new
born. There is quite a bit of reputable research to back up positive effects
however no one seems to be doing research on if there are any negative
effects. This is like every research starts with a hypothesis like there are
either positive effects or nothing . But on the other hand there are proven
facts that toddlers/babies learn only certain number of words in a given
period. This implies kids at that age have limited capacity to memorize and
recall things. So wouldn't that imply that bilingual training at that age
would halve that capacity? Could bilingual babies have less volculbary in each
language and late start in figuring out deeper nitty gritty of grammar? Is it
possible that bilingual training at early age exchanges depth for a breadth?

~~~
blackkettle
What you say about research being partially corrupted by agendas is generally
true and applies to pretty much every area of science to varying degrees.

The claim that second language acquisition is defined solely by this is,
however completely false. It is a large and well-researched academic
discipline and there exists plenty of research regarding negative effects.
Here is a pretty decent summary, with a very compact abstract:

Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent

[http://www.yumingschool.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/Bilin...](http://www.yumingschool.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/Bilingualism.-The-good-the-bad-and-the-
indifferent.pdf)

> The present paper summarizes research showing that bilingualism affects
> linguistic and cognitive performance across the lifespan. The effect on
> linguistic performance is generally seen as a deficit in which bilingual
> children control a smaller vocabulary than their monolingual peers and
> bilingual adults perform more poorly on rapid lexical retrieval tasks. The
> effect on cognitive performance is to enhance executive functioning and to
> protect against the decline of executive control in aging. These effects
> interact to produce a complex pattern regarding the effect of bilingualism
> on memory performance. Memory tasks based primarily on verbal recall are
> performed more poorly by bilinguals but memory tasks based primarily on
> executive control are performed better by bilinguals. Speculations regarding
> the mechanism responsible for these effects are described.

------
trumbitta2
Anedoctal evidence:

I'm 37, italian, always been good at speaking english (since I was 7).

In the past few years, my command of english improved so much that I started
forgetting words both in italian _and_ in english. /facepalm

~~~
grokys
Ha, I'm English and I've been living in Italy for two years (so my Italian is
still not exactly incredible) and I'm starting to find the same! I wonder if
this happens because the two languages can be very similar at times and at
other times very different. Would things be a lot different if I were
learning, for example, Japanese I wonder?

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a8da6b0c91d
I've been around a lot of people who were raised bilingual in English and an
oriental language and most of them complained that it was too hard. They felt
that at the high school and college level it's not possible to fully develop
advanced vocabulary and usage in both languages. You can risk coming across as
non-native or stupid in both languages. I think a lot of this stuff about
bilingualism is biased toward people learning two related indo-european
languages, which isn't that hard.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Perhaps it depends on the languages. I was raised in English; French was added
starting at 5. Today, at 49, I am fluently and idiomatically bilingual in
English, French, and various idiomatic variations on both common to the
provinces in which I've lived (I can switch from stock-standard English to
various idiomatic dialects and accents, as many of you can, e.g., formal
English Vs the street or town English you spoke growing up, from those used
here in Ontario to lilting dialects and accents of Nova Scotia; I can do the
same with a few Quebec Joual dialects.)

With a couple of days in Paris, I am taken for a native. Same thing in New
Orleans or Chicago (I have to be very careful about not drifting into local
accents, I just sort of go there.)

So it is possible to be perfectly bilingual - but it requires early exposure
to the second language and an ear (which can be developed - you have to stop
listening to specifics, to particulars, and listen holistically, letting the
language flow over you so that you understand the intent without understanding
individual words - practice that for a while, and the words come).

I also speak passable remedial Spanish and have learned and forgotten a whole
lot of Turkish, Arabic, German, and Greek.

After a while, your inner voice switches to non-linguistic (which I think
might mean it returns to what it was before you had language, i.e., as a
child). I used to think mostly in English, but nowadays I think in, well,
viscera. I then have to find the words that most closely match the viscera.
For simple things, that happens quickly. For complex things or subtle
differences, it can take time, during which I sputter.

About 6 months ago I ask a friend's daughter whether this had happened to her
yet (she was raised in French, added English much later, then some Spanish,
and finally did intensive German prior to heading o'er the pond for her
M.Eng).

Her eyes went wide and she shrieked "OUI! OUI! Exactement!" She turned to her
mother: "M'man! Il comprend exactement qu'est ce qui m'arrive!"

(Yes, yes, exactly! Mom! He understands exactly what is happening to me!)

She'd been going through the same thing and didn't know it had ever happened
to anyone else.

It's a truly strange thing, mind blowing - and mind expanding.

Sometimes, I can sort of disconnect from language. It frees my mind in a most
powerful way. It's tricky to get there, though, and sometimes even harder to
get back.

~~~
dkarapetyan
I don't think this has anything to do with learning languages. This kind of
processing is also very common among mathematicians, physicists and
programmers. More generally it is probably more common than you think
especially among people whose default mode of thinking is not linguistic.

