
The Strange Persistence of First Languages (2015) - spac
http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/the-strange-persistence-of-first-languages
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tacon
In the late 90s I was on a US project which included a small Dutch software
company. The founder told me about Dutch people who had been living in the US
for thirty plus years, speaking perfect English, now in nursing homes, who
with age or dementia or whatever, can lose their ability to speak English.
They revert to their native language only. I've never heard of this as an
issue again, but I wondered how this might turn into a serious problem caring
for many immigrant people who lose the ability to speak English in their later
years.

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Anchor
Same thing has happened in Sweden. There's a cohort of elderly people who
arrived to the country as children during WW2, e.g., from Finland. Many were
under 10 when they arrived, and now that they have gotten old, some of them
have lost most of their ability to speak Swedish, and are only able to speak
in their native language from early childhood.

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cataphract
There are also studies that suggest that people's morality changes depending
on the language used. In particular, they become less utilitarian with a
foreign language: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-morality-
chan...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-morality-changes-in-a-
foreign-language/)

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peter303
From the article title I thought this article would be why FORTRAN, LISP, and
COBOL still survive after over 60 years of use. First, these computer
languages started with a lot of good ideas and evolved to incorporate ideas
from subsequent decades like structured programming and objects. Second, there
are massive institutional code bases in these early languages that are too
difficult to rewrite. These languages might even make it into the 22nd
century.

