
Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds - hunglee2
http://www.sciencealert.com/bilingual-people-are-twice-as-likely-to-recover-from-a-stroke-study-finds
======
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.

~~~
RobertoG
The same happens with my grandmother but the other way around. She doesn't
speak her second language anymore, she has returned to the one of her
childhood, but it seems like she understand it yet.

------
grondilu
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 for many
years. Does that count?

~~~
a-l-c-o
I'm in your exact situation.

And as a consequence (or cause) I am now seeing French as inadequate. It's
such a verbose and slow language.

I don't deny its rare beauty when used ideally (think poetry, good writers,
Francoise Hardy singing).

But in practice, what twisted collective mind could come up and stay with
"Qu'est ce que c'est ?" (What is it ?) ? That monster literally translate to
"What is this that it is ?".

In a fast and unifying world I am positive French is doomed.

When arguing this with people I always get rebutted with the likes of "French
is very rich.. It is just different..but none the less valuable.." I don't
think so. English is an efficient superset of french. You can express as much
or more subtlety, feelings or facts in English. Take only the vocabulary :
It's just larger in English ! (And in fact contains a good chunk of the
French).

~~~
johnchristopher
> But in practice, what twisted collective mind could come up and stay with
> "Qu'est ce que c'est ?" (What is it ?) ? That monster literally translate to
> "What is this that it is ?".

The same one who came up with "Au jour d'aujourd'hui". And "sociétal" in place
of "social". The usage of any given language is bound to evolve over time into
such... monsters.

Sarcasm apart, french is indeed a difficult language to learn (as a native and
as foreigner) according to my PhD linguist friend but the movie english, the
book english and the internet english is a poor subset of english. It's a
simple english like the basic english everyone speak around the world.

~~~
a-l-c-o
> The same one who came up with "Au jour d'aujourd'hui".

That one is indeed beyond stupid. And even "aujourd'hui" is long and strangely
build. Its english counterpart "today" on the other hand couldn't be shorter.

> but the movie english, the book english and the internet english is a poor
> subset of english.

I'm confused by your statement. Especially on 'book english'. Where else would
you find proper, complete English ? Maybe you meant that today's litterature
is poor ? And even concerning 'internet english' I find that in places like
HackerNews or Reddit one enjoys a high level (from my limited point of view)
of language. And, returning to my point, I find that equivalent people (in
this case middle-class higher-educated STEM) use a strinkingly broader lexicon
on the english side compared to the french.

~~~
johnchristopher
>> The same one who came up with "Au jour d'aujourd'hui".

> That one is indeed beyond stupid. And even "aujourd'hui" is long and
> strangely build. Its english counterpart "today" on the other hand couldn't
> be shorter.

You might find this tidbit of information interesting regarding « Aujourd'hui
» : [http://french.stackexchange.com/questions/727/evolution-
du-m...](http://french.stackexchange.com/questions/727/evolution-du-mot-
aujourdhui) and
[https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/aujourd%E2%80%99hui](https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/aujourd%E2%80%99hui)

If you don't read French - pardon me if you do - it states that « aujourd'hui
» is already a pleonasm where « hui » stands for « today », « this day ».

> I'm confused by your statement. Especially on 'book english'. Where else
> would you find proper, complete English ? Maybe you meant that today's
> litterature is poor ?

My mistake. I should have been more precise and stated that I was referring to
the current state of popular YA literature. I read a Stross book and Ready
Player One this summer and even as a non-native speaker I found some weird
grammar (I confirmed it by asking a native later). But it's true I also find
today's literature quite poor (at least the one making the headline).

> And even concerning 'internet english' I find that in places like HackerNews
> or Reddit one enjoys a high level (from my limited point of view) of
> language. And, returning to my point, I find that equivalent people (in this
> case middle-class higher-educated STEM) use a strinkingly broader lexicon on
> the english side compared to the french.

I believe it's a bias and we are (you, me and surely others) in a kind of
bubble. I notice my English grammar is getting less and less good over time.
So I believe I make a lot of mistakes that people won't correct - out of
kindness or tolerance - and that I certainly don't catch them anymore [0]. For
instance there are more and more sentences in posts I can't figure out because
the punctuation makes no sense or a verb is clearly missing. HN being a polite
place I don't correct the author or ask for a clarification (edit: and the
author could be on mobile and correct it later). I can't be the only one who
reacts that way though.

It surely has to do with the fact HN - and the Internet at large in the
Western world - is an international crowd and non-natives end up using some
kind of common English. Native English speakers sometimes can easily deduce
what is a person's native language from (written) grammatical or vocabulary
quirks but I couldn't (except for Indians, go figure).

I also believe the same thing happens with my native language: Internet is
lowering its users' language capabilty.

With that said HN is the only place I know of where comments are both
interesting, well thought out and well written. I am pretty sure most of us
come here for the comments.

[0] Which means that as time goes by I restrain myself from making complex
sentences. Which kind of bothers me because I love making them in french :].

------
barry-cotter
Abstract of referenced journal article

Background and Purpose—Bilingualism has been associated with slower cognitive
aging and a later onset of dementia. In this study, we aimed to determine
whether bilingualism also influences cognitive outcome after stroke.

Methods—We examined 608 patients with ischemic stroke from a large stroke
registry and studied the role of bilingualism in predicting poststroke
cognitive impairment in the absence of dementia.

Results—A larger proportion of bilinguals had normal cognition compared with
monolinguals (40.5% versus 19.6%; P<0.0001), whereas the reverse was noted in
patients with cognitive impairment, including vascular dementia and vascular
mild cognitive impairment (monolinguals 77.7% versus bilinguals 49.0%;
P<0.0009). There were no differences in the frequency of aphasia (monolinguals
11.8% versus bilinguals 10.5%; P=0.354). Bilingualism was found to be an
independent predictor of poststroke cognitive impairment.

Conclusions—Our results suggest that bilingualism leads to a better cognitive
outcome after stroke, possibly by enhancing cognitive reserve. (Stroke.
2016;47:00-00. DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.115.010418.) Key Words: aphasia ◼
dementia, vascular ◼ language ◼ risk factors ◼ stroke

[http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/19/STROK...](http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/19/STROKEAHA.115.010418.full.pdf+html)

Original press release

[http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2015/stroke-191115](http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2015/stroke-191115)

~~~
nonbel
This is probably some kind of testing artifact. Table 1 shows that 64.3% of
monolinguals were literate compared to 92.9% of bilinguals. Then in the
supplemental methods we see that illiterates took a different test than
literates. They defined cognitive impairment as a score of under mean - 2*SD
measured from groups consisting of ~80% literates:

>"The process of adaptation included culturally appropriate modifications of
the original English version of ACE-R by examining each item for cultural
relevance, translatability, comparable difficulty and adaptability with an aim
of tapping the domain identical to the original version. Translations and back
translations, and pilot testing were done based on standard procedures.3 ACE-R
was adapted for the illiterate population by modifying literacy dependent
items.4

Normative data and cut off values in the local languages- Telugu and Hindi
were developed by administering the test to healthy controls. Telugu control
group subjects consisted 907 literates and 199 illiterates, and Hindi control
group subjects consisted 436 literates and 109 illiterates. Mean and SD for
total scores and sub-scores in each domain were calculated across 4 age groups
(20-39, 40-59, 60-79, 80 and above), and three education levels (>12 years,
4-12 years, 0-3 years), using standard formulae of Mean-2SD. Impairment in
cognition was defined if the score on the ACE-R sub-domains was less than 2.00
SD below the mean level of age and education-matched norms."

Then we have the arbitrary age groups and education levels which makes this
look p-hacked, there needs to be some assessment of how much those arbitrary
choices affect the conclusions.

------
blfr
_This switching offers practically constant brain training which may be a
factor in helping stroke patients recover._

Another hypothesis would be that being in better neural shape to being with
allowed them to become bilingual. Can someone... obtain the full pdf? Do the
authors try to control this factor?

~~~
khgvljhkb
I'd wager most bilinguals are so not because they thought it would be a cool
self-improvement project. I speak English because all the good movies are made
in the US, and German because I live in Germany, and Swedish because that is
what my mother and father spoke to me.

~~~
drd93
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 just for fun,
but it wouldn't count as bilingual as I wouldn't push myself hard enough to
learn it.

~~~
nathanasmith
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 article touts.

~~~
jfaucett
"I guess I could learn Spanish, but why?"

Where are you from in the US? Im from the Atlanta area and bilingual
spanish/english. Most people I know from georgia, florida, even alabama can at
least understand spanish just from being around it so much. I really think to
not know spanish you would have to actively try to avoid it - especially if
you are young and from the city. In atlanta you can easily live without
knowing any english, when friends came from south america we always found
people fluent in spanish most native (at Starbucks, McDonalds, Grocery Store,
shopping, etc).

~~~
nathanasmith
I'm in Florida now but I did live in Atlanta for a few years and, if pushed,
yo puedo hablar espanol suficiente para un conversacion simple. La problema es
que no tengo oportunidad para bastante practica para fluente. So, I'm kind of
in this half and half limbo where I can understand and speak enough Spanish
but not enough that any native Spanish speaker would actually want to have a
conversation with me. And for the other person who brought up the buying and
selling to Spanish speakers aspect, the vast vast majority of Spanish speakers
I've ever came in contact with speak a hell of a lot better English than I
speak Spanish so that doesn't really make sense in practice either.

~~~
jarboot
>the vast vast majority of Spanish speakers I've ever came in contact with
speak a hell of a lot better English than I speak Spanish so that doesn't
really make sense in practice either.

Don't forget that part of the reason that English is well known across the
globe is because the US is a media powerhouse. The web is practically english,
US blockbusters are seen worldwide, and it's essentially the language of
international business.

------
djhn
My gut reaction would be to control for wealth or income, which they do not.

I am not very familiar with Indian demographics, but I would assume
monolingual people represent the poorest of the population?

~~~
usrusr
My gut reaction: "metric used to measure stroke recovery favors bilinguals"

The article mentions cognitive tasks that are likely to benefit on some level
from "thinking in language". Duo clearly unrelated tasks like motor control
also correlate? Is this really about brain activity keeping the system "fresh"
and more capable of repair, or is it maybe just a simple matter of someone
with "more words" pre-stroke having "more words" post-stroke?

My wildly uneducated guess, illustrated with computer analogies: when the
brain has to cope with multiple languages, "language thinking" overflows from
dedicated to general purpose "hardware" and due to some evolutionary dice
roll, the dedicated stuff tends to get taken out first in a stroke.

------
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.

~~~
madaxe_again
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.

------
sunwooz
A lot of people in India speak both English and Hindi, plus a host of other
regional languages.

"even after taking into account other factors such as smoking, high blood
pressure, diabetes and age"

Did they take into account that people who speak multiple languages are
potentially more financially secure and thus would have a healthier/more
nutritional diet/lifestyle?

~~~
sremani
In Hyderabad, people even with little education tend to converse in Telugu and
Urdu/Hindi to a level a fluency. Ability to speak English is reflection of
better social or economic status. You can still find a lot of people who speak
two languages and who are not well off in HYD.

~~~
sunwooz
It just seems like a contentious area to test this on. America would be better
considering many people are monolingual.

------
swsieber
If you want a lot more information about stroke and linguistics, I highly
recommend the book "One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir" It's about an older
married couple, both wordsmiths by trades (linguistics professors? I can't
remember). The husband has a stroke leaving him with a single word vocabulary.

It documents what they did in his recovery process as well as mentions the
various types of language impairments that can come with stroke. It's a great
book - touching and educational.

IIRC, the book mentions that strokes affect single native language, dual
native languages, and post childhood acquired languages differently. And that
if you want to be able to communicate after a stroke you best bet is to learn
another language. Though it's been several years since I've read the book.

------
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.

------
wangii
great, I know both HTML and CSS, and some javascript.

seriously though, I think it would also apply to programmers using both
functional and procedural languages.

~~~
wibr
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".

~~~
hollerith
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.

~~~
adrianN
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...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html)

------
VikingCoder
Si. Es muy bueno.

