
Language learning makes the brain grow, Swedish study suggests - llambda
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121008082953.htm
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tokenadult
From the submitted press release about a preliminary study:

"Previous research from other groups has indicated that Alzheimer's disease
has a later onset in bilingual or multilingual groups."

That's reassuring to any of the many Hacker News readers who know some
language besides English. A correlational finding like that, of course,
doesn't demonstrate the direction of causation even if it is replicated many
times. The kind of preliminary treatment-control finding reported in the press
release submitted here would have to be replicated across several matches of
experimental conditions and several variations of experimental conditions to
figure out which learning programs, if any, reliably result in clinically
meaningful increases in sizes of brain structures. (Then the next step would
be following up on what the size changes really do for the patients over the
long term.) All the usual considerations for evaluating preliminary research
reports apply.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

Having noted that, I'm curious about what other languages Hacker News
participants speak. English is far from the only language known among us.
Languages I have studied include (Modern Standard) Chinese to a proficiency
level sufficient for employment as a translator and consecutive interpreter,
German for reading professional materials, Japanese, Russian, other Sinitic
languages, the original languages of the Bible, samplings of Latin and of
various Romance languages, interesting constructed languages (conlangs), and
others.

Here's a link to language-learning advice:

<http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html>

Here's one of my favorite links about one constructed language:

<http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/>

~~~
alinajaf
> Having noted that, I'm curious about what other languages Hacker News
> participants speak.

I think there is a relatively large Japanese-English bilingual(ish) contingent
on HN, myself included.

~~~
w1ntermute
幼年時代にアニメと日本のゲームに興味あった方がこんなサイトでは多いからかもしれませんね。

~~~
tokenadult
Yes, I agree it is likely that this site includes many participates who have
been interested in Japanese anime or Japanese games since childhood, as I have
children like that at home.

名探偵コナン (Detective Conan)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Closed>

is a favorite anime series in our household. My older children first watched
it on broadcast TV when we lived in Taiwan (dubbed in Mandarin). Now our
younger children watch it as Web videos in the original Japanese.

~~~
w1ntermute
現在は西洋でも日本のアニメは子供のなかでは主流になってきたと思いますね。おそらくネットとファンサブのおかげでしょう。うちの中学生のいとこはほとんどアニメを楽でダウンロードして見てるんだけど、僕は同じことしたいた千年紀の変わり目のごろに、一つのビデオをネットから手に入れるのにはもう何時間かかったんです。残念ながら、Xboxの発売のごろから日本のゲームの人気は落ちてしまいました。

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velodrome
I wonder if this also applies to learning a programming language. Programming
is a form of communication.

~~~
CoffeeDregs
I was wondering the same thing. I was once nearly fluent in Spanish, but let
it slide because I never used it (in California...). On the other hand, I know
many more programming languages than I did 10 or 20 years ago. Is my brain
growing?

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gregsq
London cab drivers also show an increase when acquiring 'the knowledge'.

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=london-
taxi...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=london-taxi-memory)

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ken
While I'm completely in favor of people learning new languages (because it's
fun, not to mention the communication aspect), I'm not sure how much I believe
this particular study.

They admit that this is a unique school for languages: from zero to fluency in
just over a year, by practicing every waking hour of every day, at a pace not
seen in any other language school. Do the medicine and science students used
as the control group study as hard as this, and on the same deadline? Did they
try looking at people who studied languages, but not at breakneck speed?

It seems to me that it's entirely possible, based on this data, that the
causative factor is not that they studied languages, but that they studied so
intently. I don't doubt that science students study hard, but language
immersion schools can make it so everything you read, write, hear, or speak
all day every day is 100% in the language you're studying. That's a hard feat
to match: how do you make eating breakfast or checking email a medical lesson?

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jfaucett
interesting. But from the very little I know about neural plasticity (ie.
according to current research it continues throughout life see:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity#cite_note-
Rakic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity#cite_note-
Rakic_2002-2)), I'd want to ask how this is any more significant than other
brain growth that occures any time you learn a new task.

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peterjmag
To those who haven't, I wholeheartedly recommend learning another language. I
think it's one of the most important things you can do for your mind—I believe
it truly changes the way you think on a fundamental level.

Sometimes, when I tell people this, they argue that they're "too old" to learn
a new language. When they do, I tell them the following story.

I was in Berlin this March, and I met a Belgian who spoke 6 or 7 languages
fluently (as many Belgians apparently do). I was currently on "vacation" from
a semester abroad in Italy, where I was taking an intro Italian class and
really enjoying it so far. I mentioned this to the Belgian, but I expressed my
concern that I was too old to become fluent:

"You can't learn new languages properly once you're my age."

He scoffed. "Sure you can. You just have to open your mind!"

That line stuck with me. Now, it may or may not be true that your brain can't
fully "accept" new languages past a certain stage in your development, but
that's not the point. The point is that I _believed_ that I couldn't, and that
belief was actively discouraging my progress. So I followed the Belgian's
advice: I stopped telling myself I was too old, I went out of my way to speak
the language, and I pushed myself harder to become conversational. By the end
of the semester, I'd achieved that. (I'm by no means fluent, but I'd like to
live there again soon with fluency as a goal.)

I do wish that I'd started earlier, because I've uncovered a real passion and
knack for languages that I didn't know I'd had. But—perhaps contrary to
popular belief—it's never too late to start.

(As an aside, I found it interesting that after just three months, I spoke
Italian better than I spoke German after three years of high school classes. I
attribute this partly to actually living in Italy, but also to a broken
language learning system in our public education. But that may be a comment
for another day.)

~~~
flojito
I met a Belgian who spoke 6 or 7 languages fluently (as many Belgians
apparently do)

I've been many times to Belgium and never knew anyone talking more than 4
languages. Of course that's not a rule, but "just" French, Dutch and German
(residual) are official languages. In Wallonia (French-speaking regions), many
people don't speak Dutch and there are a lot of people who just talk _some_
English (not to mention the difficulty to pronounce some sound).

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gtani
It's likely lots of intellectually challenging activities produce
structural/chemical changes in the brain:

piano tuning

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19398413>

playing musical instrument

[http://www.sott.net/articles/show/216086-Mental-muscle-
six-w...](http://www.sott.net/articles/show/216086-Mental-muscle-six-ways-to-
boost-your-brain)

I would expect similar effects from learning diff eq's or haskell and maybe
from challenging sports like rock climbing, paragliding, or maybe Ashtanga
yoga.

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nachteilig
I kind of wonder if this research would translate to _programming_ languages
at all.

~~~
saraid216
I suspect it doesn't. The reason I don't think so is because programming
languages aren't _spoken_ ; even when we learn a dead natlang, like Latin, we
are taught how to speak it even if we're missing the social context.

But that's a guess on top of a guess, so grain of salt and all.

~~~
Todd
I would agree with that. Programming languages are more about logic and
modeling (algorithms and data structures).

Learning a human language uses a part of the brain which has evolved for that
purpose. It not only requires learning thousands of words, and mapping them to
concepts, but also learning how they fit together (syntax) and change
(morphology). And this needs to be done in real time, both recognition and
production.

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Gustomaximus
Would this also apply if one has a good vocabulary within a single language?

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klrr
This was on the SVT news yesterday, very interesting study...

