[HN Gopher] Is being bilingual good for your brain?
___________________________________________________________________
Is being bilingual good for your brain?
Author : Anon84
Score : 58 points
Date : 2025-06-28 16:50 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| muneeer wrote:
| https://archive.is/lSCR2
| Groxx wrote:
| > _We value your privacy_
|
| > _... Together with our 173 trusted partners..._
|
| In a full screen, multi-stage permissions pop-up.
|
| Yeah how about no. No need to lie, tell me how you really feel,
| maybe "we will sell anything we can to anyone we can because we
| need the money".
|
| (It is a very detailed pop-up tho, in a good way - breaks down
| each toggle with individual companies, and there's a search
| across all of them)
| signal-intel wrote:
| If your user agent is providing strangers with information you
| don't want it to, find a better user agent.
| whoisyc wrote:
| Your comment would be much more persuasive if you provide a
| concrete actionable suggestion instead of vague handwringing
| about "finding a better user agent" (and don't get me started
| on how "user agent" is basically just an ingroup signal these
| days)
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Let me do it on their behalf:
|
| Firefox + uBlock Origin + EasyList Cookie List
|
| ...until Firefox learns to dismiss cookie banners on its
| own (they're working on it).
| ashwinsundar wrote:
| "User agent" is a technical term. what ingroup does it
| signal that you're part of, by using the term correctly?
| signal-intel wrote:
| The most despicable group of the modern era: folks who
| expect their own software to act on their own behalf.
| whoisyc wrote:
| Thank you for the snark. I am sure this will work wonders
| to persuade more people to take their privacy seriously.
| fsckboy wrote:
| english usage aside: you could accuse him of handwaving,
| but he's not complaining, so his comment is not
| "handwringing". you are complaining (about his comment) so
| your comment is closer to handwringing.
|
| "find a better user agent" is not handwringing; "i can't
| find a better user agent" is handwringing.
| Groxx wrote:
| Already doing that, they don't really have a choice.
|
| I still have to deal with the awful UX they've chosen to
| inflict on everyone by "valuing our privacy by selling our
| info to over 100 companies", and they can still sell data
| they collect directly.
| signal-intel wrote:
| Indeed. Blame the regulators that required this, and/or the
| engineers that have developed a system that gives away your
| data.
| kgwgk wrote:
| They don't lie! When they say "We value your privacy" they mean
| that your privacy is valuable to them. Of course, they need to
| convert that value into money.
| TMWNN wrote:
| I have heard that hyperpolyglots, such as translators at EU
| headquarters who work with many languages, are more susceptible
| to mental illness.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Could be from listening to politician talk all day every day
| though.
|
| Just look at how much mental illness politics seems to produce
| in people who interact with it less frequently.
| dehrmann wrote:
| With time being limited, I wonder if using a second language,
| playing an instrument, solving puzzles, physical activity, or
| some other activity is "better" brain stimulus.
| basisword wrote:
| Would any effect be limited once you achieve mastery (or close
| to it)? After 25 years playing my instrument when I play it my
| brain just switches off. No thinking at all. Doesn't matter
| whether I'm looking at sheet music playing something new,
| improvising, or playing something I know well. It's all easy. I
| imagine it's similar with a second language if you fully
| immerse yourself in it for a long time.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| When did this transition happen? I have tried to play but
| found that even after four or five years it was difficult,
| required a lot of concentration, and gave me little pleasure.
|
| The only physical skill I have that might be comparable is
| typing, but (as a programmer) even after typing for over 40
| years, while I can type without "thinking" about where the
| keys are, I can usually type only three or four words without
| needing to make a correction.
| basisword wrote:
| Probably not until the 12 year mark. Maybe a little before
| that. I would say that it was a combination of time +
| actively learning certain skills. There were periods where
| I rested on my laurels for a few years so I probably could
| have reduced the time by a few years (if that was the aim).
| I would say 7 years is around where it got really enjoyable
| though and I knew enough that it wasn't too much effort to
| learn new songs and skills.
|
| Worth mentioning I started when I was a kid. Learning
| something when you're young is so much easier due to the
| available time and the ability to obsess (this was also
| pre-internet mostly). When I try learning new instruments
| these days it takes much longer because I have
| responsibilities.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I try to play guitar. For simple songs, I can play them
| without thinking about it. My fingers just find the next
| chord, almost like driving a car and not remembering the
| last minute of driving. For more complex things, I have to
| think.
|
| So may it really is about the journey, and any learning is
| good learning.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I reckon differences between them are dwarfed by the constraint
| of which one you're willing to do every day.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| For things like this I don't think you can view it as a
| destination, but rather a journey.
|
| Your mind, body, and any skill will deteriorate over time if
| not regularly trained, so it must become a part of your life.
|
| And because of this, the answer is easy - do what is
| permanently and realistically sustainable for yourself. It
| doesn't matter what's best when you're only going to really
| keep with things that are personally satisfying for yourself.
| heigh wrote:
| My father was 76 and started to forget things, basic things
| like what he did yesterday, who we met the week before (family
| from overseas who we haven't seen in years)...
|
| This is when I realised it was getting serious. But he's a
| Norwegian born in the 40s, so talking about his mental health
| and opening up to him is near impossible.
|
| I did call him out on these massive lapses in memory, but
| jokingly though.
|
| However, without formally addressing anything, he started out
| of no where and never, ever before doing it my entire life:
| sudoku.
|
| 1-2 hours a day, then more, all the time.
|
| He's now in his mid 80s and as sharp as ever.
|
| I know he went and saw a GP, and they prescribed sodoku.
|
| But the effectiveness of it, taken seriously, is absolutely
| incredible.
| SlowTao wrote:
| I forgot who said it but they had the theory that the way to
| stay sharp is to take on new mental tasks that create new
| though patterns.
|
| You know when you are learning something and you get to that
| point where it is kind of a strain. That feeling that is kind
| of tense, exhausting but intriguing, all because you are
| about to get that thing. It is the transition from something
| being purely cognitive and moving into behavior intuition,
| like playing an instrument.
|
| That is the thing that, in part, is keeping you sharp.
|
| I say in part because don't forget your physical health, diet
| and social health. They all contribute.
| tmtvl wrote:
| I am quite familiar with various languages, have learned an
| instrument, and engage in regular physical activity and I am
| probably the stupidest person on Earth. I don't think any of
| those things are universally beneficial to people's mental
| capacity. At least physical activity has the benefit of
| improving quality of life in one's later years, so that should
| probably be the go-to.
| polotics wrote:
| Ok, let's see... Mantis fist practitioner living in Belgium.
| Daily driving GNU/Linux since 2012. Interested in C, Scheme,
| Lisp, Perl, and Java. This does _not_ sound like the
| stupidest person on earth, at all. Were you concussed when
| you wrote this maybe?
| timr wrote:
| I started learning Japanese after age 30 (currently around CEFR
| B1; JLPT N2), but I did it by moving to Japan. I don't know if
| the "language study", _per se_ , provided the benefit, but the
| act of moving there so radically transformed my daily life that
| it was like being 20 years younger.
|
| David Sedaris did a long interview on learning French (he also
| became proficient late in life) where he said something like:
| _when you first start learning a language, everything is new
| and interesting. Eventually you become fluent, you get into a
| pattern, and 'living in a foreign country' is just 'living'._
| (heavily paraphrased -- I'll try to find the original).
|
| Anyway, my point is that I think "learning a language" is
| probably as good as anything else when it comes to "brain
| stimulation", but in my opinion, the real value comes from
| being completely immersed in a new culture and kicked
| forcefully out of any sense of routine.
|
| Edit: interview is here -
| https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/transcript
|
| Relevant bit:
|
| ---
|
| Someday, David says, he'll be more comfortable in French. His
| accent will improve and that daily anxiety will be removed from
| his life.
|
| David Sedaris: But when it is removed from me, then I probably
| won't be interested in living here anymore. I'll probably
| leave.
|
| Ira Glass: Because it'll be just like living back home.
|
| David Sedaris: Plus the more you learn, the more disappointed
| you wind up being. It's easy to like somebody when you don't
| know what they're saying.
| b0a04gl wrote:
| it maynot magically boost my IQ or anything but it's surprisingly
| good at making my brain switch gears faster .like i'm on a call
| in English and my mom yells from the kitchen in Tamil and i just
| reply back without even thinking .or i'm writing code, then get a
| message in WhatsApp in Hindi, i reply, and jump right back into
| the code without losing track . my brain getting better at
| handling midstream flips .
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The most interesting part:
|
| > Age plays a role too. Studies suggest that the effects of
| languages on the brain are stronger for young children and the
| old than they are for young adults. Bilingual tots seem to
| outperform in cognitive development in the early years, but their
| monolingual classmates may catch up with them later. One meta-
| analysis on the topic found that 25 studies of 45 found a
| bilingual advantage in children younger than six, while only 17
| found them in children aged 6-12.
|
| That's gonna be a let down to most people who read the title and
| make assumptions.
| instagib wrote:
| Need to learn the second language and use it over years switching
| thinking between the two languages. Learning it in university
| then not using it does not count.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I think that most people working in tech that don't have English
| as their native language are bilingual. What that means, I am not
| sure, the article suggests some benefits and the next logical
| step is to assume these people should be slightly better on
| average than native English speakers, but this is just
| speculation.
| afiodorov wrote:
| I use my third language, Spanish, every day, and my second,
| English, for work. On top of that, my partner is a native
| Portuguese speaker, so I'm passively soaking up a fourth. (I
| usually reply to her in Spanish, but we watch everything in
| Portuguese--though this month it's been all Italian, just for
| fun).
|
| To this day, I still find Spanish a bit more challenging than my
| native language or even English. I think it's because even though
| I moved to Spain over seven years ago, I never fully immersed
| myself in the culture. I'm pretty sure I haven't read a single
| book in Spanish.
|
| I still do that classic thing non-fluent speakers do: I'll get
| halfway through a sentence, realize I don't know a specific word,
| and have to rephrase my thought more simply. To be clear, I'm far
| from a beginner, just not yet fluent.
|
| Anyway, I can attest that grappling with a language you haven't
| quite mastered is a daily mini-puzzle that definitely keeps the
| brain working a bit harder than it otherwise would.
|
| On a side note, I love that LLMs can handle so many languages
| now. After 17 years of living abroad, I still feel most at ease
| speaking my native language, Russian, even though my vocabulary
| is a bit lacking these days for more complex topics. It makes me
| completely understand why people prefer to receive medical care
| in their native tongue.
| timr wrote:
| > I still do that classic thing non-fluent speakers do: I'll
| get halfway through a sentence, realize I don't know a specific
| word, and have to rephrase my thought more simply. To be clear,
| I'm far from a beginner, just not yet fluent.
|
| Isn't that a thing everyone does? I don't have as many
| languages as you, but when I finally got to the point where I
| could reliably do what you're describing in Japanese, I felt
| like I had actually achieved a baseline level of fluency for
| the first time. The flywheel became self-perpetuating vs. my
| French, where every sentence is a struggle.
|
| Not asking to be argumentative, btw -- just wondering what's on
| the other side.
| afiodorov wrote:
| There's another level after fluency (C1), which is near-
| native fluency (C2). At the level of such mastery you don't
| feel the need to simplify just to be understood, your
| utterances now define the language itself as you've achieved
| the level of the crowd whom the language belongs to in the
| first place.
|
| P.S. I've typed this out in English after having achieved
| such unlock.
| xvilka wrote:
| With a certain level of language skill, you start to
| experiment more with it, create new words, change grammar
| intentionally to accent your point, and simply stop caring
| about the correctness of what you say or write.
| timr wrote:
| Yeah. That's a level beyond -- You're "fluent" enough
| that you can break the rules -- but that's partially not
| about _language_ , but about being _perceived_ to be
| native. Changing the cultural presumption, so to speak,
| so that people give you the benefit of the doubt when you
| 're saying something non-standard. I think anyone who
| attempts humor in a foreign language runs into this wall,
| hard.
|
| The C1/C2 divide does seem to mix up that concept and the
| idea of "looking for the right word". I sort of
| understand what it's getting at, but it's unclear.
|
| I still think (as a native English speaker), it's fairly
| routine to stop and re-think what you are saying because
| you're grasping for the right word.
| afiodorov wrote:
| When you spend some time transcribing live, impromptu
| speech, you'll notice that it often doesn't follow the
| rules of written grammar; speakers frequently abandon
| sentences midway through.
|
| For example, in the linked clip[^1], the speaker says:
| "uh the European Union uh that's not a US creation that's
| a you guys creation so don't ex..[abandoned word] the
| strength of the west [abandoned sentence] and the west is
| a really I don't know what"
|
| For a moment, she struggles to express herself. Yet,
| there's a qualitative difference between not knowing what
| to say because a thought is not fully formed, and knowing
| what you want to say but realizing you've forgotten the
| specific word you need. For instance, you might be about
| to say "cherry," only to find you've forgotten the word
| and instead say something more general, like "forest
| fruit (fruta de bosque)," which is still correct but less
| precise.
|
| [^1]:
| https://youtu.be/_hBd8w-Hlm4?si=7-kvpUoeYo5ODPiI&t=787
| senkora wrote:
| I would describe it as: natural human languages with native
| speakers eventually develop a grammatical way to complete
| the vast majority of incomplete thoughts that speakers tend
| to have.
|
| So, if you know the entire language, then you can complete
| your thought. But if you only know the common parts of the
| language then you may need to start over with a different
| sentence structure in order to express your thought.
|
| Maybe that maps to C1 vs C2? At C1 you can express your
| thoughts with occasional backtracking, but at C2 you almost
| never need to backtrack?
| celeryd wrote:
| Do you find there's a similarity between Spanish and Russian?
| In my limited experience, Russians who speak Spanish also seem
| to speak it quite well.
| afiodorov wrote:
| The phonetic similarity between Russian and Spanish is a huge
| relief. As a Russian speaker, pronouncing English has always
| felt like a workout for my mouth; the sounds are completely
| alien. Spanish, on the other hand, is effortless. It just
| flows, since I'm using the same phonetic toolkit I grew up
| with.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Yeah, I have the opposite problem, being a native English
| speaker living in Portugal - to my ear, I'll say something
| perfectly coherent and pronounced exactly as the locals do
| - and they won't understand a bloody word. It isn't just
| the phonemes, it's the cadence - syllabic vs rhythmic
| stress. I'll be like "um galao" and they'll be like
| "galao?", "sim, um galao", "um... que? Galao?", "sim,
| galao", "ahhh, um galao!" and I just can't seem to be
| understood.
|
| My wife is a native Russian speaker, and despite making
| numerous grammatical errors is far better understood than I
| am.
|
| German, I have no such problem despite being far weaker at
| the language imo.
| afiodorov wrote:
| European Portuguese sounds very Slavic; I'm sure Russians
| have a blast with it. English is a phonetically isolated
| language, largely due to the Great Vowel Shift. Unlike
| English, most languages have a closer linguistic
| relative. This makes English challenging for most people
| to learn, and it also makes it difficult for native
| English speakers to learn a foreign language without a
| heavy accent.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| German is my third language and this has been exactly my
| experience - I find it more challenging than English, my second
| language. I feel like my brain is at 100% when I want to speak
| German.
|
| however, my kids are soaking up languages like a sponge. we
| speak Hungarian at home, English and Hungarian with our
| friends, and they speak both Swiss German and German at school,
| so they are already trilingual.
|
| I know several families where the parents brings their own
| language, they speak English as a common language at home and
| the kids learn German/Swiss German at school, so that makes
| them... quadlingial?
| hintymad wrote:
| > To this day, I still find Spanish a bit more challenging than
| my native language or even English
|
| I feel the same, albeit on a much lower level. Somehow Spanish
| just feels strange to me. For instance, a subject in Spanish
| often gets placed after the verb in a sentence, so I constantly
| have to figure out where the subject is: is it before the verb?
| after the verb? Or there's no subject and the conjugation of
| the verb implies the subject? I guess it's just a matter of
| time to get familiar with the verbs and it takes time. Also,
| listening comprehension is a huge problem for me. Even
| discerning words from conversations is very challenging. When I
| was learning English as a second language, I could understand
| most of what was said in an action movie or a simple sitcom
| like Friends after I could read simple novels like Sheldon's If
| Tomorrow Comes. However, I can read simple novels like El
| Alquimista now, yet I could only understand what was said in
| Extra at best with a super focus. In contrast, listening to
| Japanese is much easier for some reason, even though my level
| of Japanese is way below N5 (equivalent to Spanish's A1).
| self_awareness wrote:
| I wonder why pro-diversity folks didn't pick it up yet. What
| could be more monocultural if not the language? We need more
| language diversity.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| No one is pro diversity. Including Google, Microsoft and Apple.
| They just think it's good publicity to make more money. And
| getting women and immigrants put to work drops drive down
| wages. More workers equals less pay.
|
| You can see this by how those companies operate with their
| divisions in the Middle East. You won't see a pride flag. If
| you were really taking a stand, you'd fight the hard fights,
| lose money. Not just do things where you think you can get away
| with it.
|
| In fact, if I'm not mistaken, most of those companies changed
| their policies on DEI hiring as soon as Trump said anyone with
| contracts with US government could not participate in DEI or
| they lose those contracts. But there is no uproar all.
| robomartin wrote:
| > A study from 2019 showed that a moderate amount of language
| learning in adults does not boost things like executive function.
|
| I guess these days a few paragraphs qualifies for an "in depth"
| article. No links to any of the sources referenced, except to one
| of their own pages. Not very useful.
|
| That said, sure, as someone who speaks several languages and can
| mostly understand a few more, I think there are interesting
| insights gained by having this ability. For me, a lot of it has
| to do with, perhaps, less-than-verbal communication. Each culture
| has a certain way to communicate in person during conversations.
| Spanish spoken in Spain, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and Argentina,
| while different, also drag along non-verbal cues that are
| distinct in each culture. Same with English in various parts of
| the UK, US and other anglo-speaking countries. As much as some
| Canadians think themselves to be French, there are differences
| there as well with France. Non-verbal cues in the Arab world (and
| Middle East in general) are different as well. How you sit, move,
| pace, use your hands and gesticulate during in-person
| conversations are linked to both language and culture. Etc.
|
| Who remembers the bar scene in Inglorious Basterds? Yup, very
| true. Instant communication.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Ckh80mLlQ
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| What is "good for one's brain" (apart from proper nutrition and
| absence of concussions) is a strong education and healthy
| lifelong social interactions. Human language is essential for
| these interactions. Having multiple human languages _opens more
| books, interactions, and cultures_.
|
| The opposite is to remain closed. This is a dangerous state of
| mind and culture.
|
| From TFA: all these studies take for granted
| the uncontroversial mental superpower that you get from language
| study: being able to talk to people you could not have otherwise.
|
| Not just to talk to people, but to unlock an understanding of
| their culture and perspectives.
|
| Talking to more people in more contexts is a _practical_
| affordance: having more tools in the shop means being able to
| handle new and different types of problems effectively. People
| solve problems _working together with_ people.
|
| Having the _cognitive adaptability_ to use new and different
| tools is certainly a valuable quality. We can nurture it as a
| learning objective, but it may may not be as universalisable as
| we have hoped. That said, the cost of not trying to educate
| people is to _fail even worse_.
| keiferski wrote:
| These studies always miss the obvious cultural point to me, [1]
| which is that knowing more than one language usually means you
| deeply understand more than one culture. This by default makes
| one a bit more capable of nuance, seeing other perspectives, etc.
| Languages are not just interchangeable collections of words, but
| are whole worldviews. Language in this sense is a kind of
| knowledge and not a different brain state, akin to reading books
| about history to understand a conflict better.
|
| 1. Maybe that's not their fault, as they are ostensibly
| interested only in the biology. But it still seems like a major
| hole when discussing the benefits of being bilingual.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| I wonder if these studies also take in account indigenous
| languages and its native speakers.
|
| People from Paraguay speak both Spanish and Guarani. A lot of
| people from Mexico speak both Spanish and Mayan.
|
| Does that have the same effect as the son of a family that
| speaks English and German?
| keiferski wrote:
| In terms of the knowledge sense I mean, I think it is logical
| that the more distant the worldviews of the languages, the
| greater the effect. Even more so if they both have a large
| media / cultural sphere.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| I think so, yes. My daughter speaks English and German
| fluently and I can see she has deep insights into these
| cultures. (She also speaks 2 other languages)
|
| She once told me that she likes to read conversational books
| like "Greg's Tagebuch" in German while "Harry Potter" type
| books in English.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Personally, being half lifed and busted mentally, I found
| surprising how refreshing it was to learn bits of latin. It
| rewires concepts all across the brain in a smooth way and connect
| news ideas that you don't in you native language.
| dumroll wrote:
| I have a different take. I am an immigrant. I speak 3 regional
| languages fluently and can partly speak German. While I always
| had English exposure since the age of 5 or 6, my parents spoke
| different language.
|
| Everyone in my neighborhood who was not economically okay spoke
| different language than English.
|
| I think it hurts more than helps when you are polylingual if you
| decide to spend majority of time in country like United States.
|
| I have collected a lot of data around this. Time and time again,
| I can prove with data, that native english langauge speakers
| outperform anyone else. Whether it is college admissions,
| admissions to incubators like Y Combinator, job opportunities,
| sports opportunities, housing opportunities and more. If language
| is the sole factor to be considered, then polylinguals do not
| win.
|
| When you speak a foreign language than English, you accent is
| bound to be messed up. Look at Indian Americans or Pakistani
| Americans or other people who speak dual langauge. There is
| always something off about their accent. This leads to acceptance
| and at time getting asked "are you american" or "were you born
| here?"
|
| I am not saying dont learn foreign language. But, language is one
| aspect of being polylingual. You just dont speak words. Words
| have meaning and they are deeply ingrained in cultures.
|
| If you know long term where you want to be, learn and speak and
| immerse yourself in the culture. Otherwise you are just creating
| more noise for social media points and making it harder for
| yourself to be a master of one language.
| seszett wrote:
| > _When you speak a foreign language than English, you accent
| is bound to be messed up. Look at Indian Americans or Pakistani
| Americans or other people who speak dual langauge._
|
| That's not true, in this case it is simply the accent they
| learn because everyone around them has this accent.
|
| But learning different languages when young doesn't mean one
| develops a foreign accent. I know Flemish people of Vietnamese
| origins who speak correct Vietnamese as well as Flemish with a
| perfectly good farmer accent from West Flanders. And their kids
| speak native French with a neutral (French) accent in addition
| to native Flemish, because the French speakers in their family
| are French and not Belgian.
|
| When learning languages young, accents don't creep from one
| language to the other, that happens when one learns a language
| later on.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Unless you love the culture, there's no reason to learn a
| language besides English. I would ditch the knowledge and
| thousands of hours spent on my native language to improve my
| English, or really any other skill. Always funny watching
| Americans try to larp as cultured cosmopolitans by learning a
| language they'll never actually need. Especially in 2025, when
| you can just point an AI at something and ask it to read it for
| you.
| swat535 wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. I speak 3 language fluently, I think
| its important to nurture your native language. Perhaps because
| we partially identify our personalities and cultures based on
| our mother tongue, but I would feel like a part of me would be
| lost if I drop it.
|
| I agree with your point regarding English however, I think
| everyone should learn it regardless and I can't help but feel
| like it's a lighthearted language.
|
| I wonder if others are the same, but I feel like a different
| person based on the language I speak.. somehow I'm "kinder" (is
| that the right word?) when I speak English for example..
| BuckRogers wrote:
| You should be complementing people trying to be cosmopolitan
| and learning another language. There's nothing wrong with that.
| And as people have commented here, it's good for their mind.
|
| It seems that Americans can never win. Either the most racist
| xenophobic people in the world that deserve to have foreigners
| take their country over. Or, they're fake cosmopolitans
| larping. Of course the real answer is that people are just
| envious of Americans. But we won't go into that.
|
| It's true that AI is making nearly any intellectual endeavor
| pointless from a necessity standpoint. But that's OK, we're
| going to be able to intellectually dive into things that we
| actually want to do for enjoyment in the future. People will
| still learn languages and study whatever they want.
|
| I find foreign language is interesting and fun. I don't know if
| it's the brain stimulation or just the sheer joy of having a
| secret language that many people around me don't understand.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| This is such a sad and utilitarian take.
|
| I would rather do the opposite and try to learn as many
| languages as possible. I can't imagine the fun of reading "Cien
| Anos de Soledad" in Spanish or Dostoevski in Russian.
| nayuki wrote:
| I think English monolingual people have a harder time learning
| and distinguishing homophones (words with same pronunciation but
| different spelling) - such as to/too/two, there/their/they're,
| its/it's, etc. If you know another language and correspond the
| aforementioned English words with those in the other language,
| you can see that they become quite distinct. For example,
| to/too/two in French is a/aussi/deux.
| xvilka wrote:
| Mandatory mention of Language Transfer project[1].
|
| [1] https://www.languagetransfer.org/
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Sometimes I really pity the monolinguals who can't witness the
| beauty of the varied linguistic cultures of the world.
|
| It's not a brag but here's a sample of how my polylingustic life
| looks like: In the past week I had discussions about Clausewitz's
| "Vom Krige" and "Ret Samadhi" by Gitanjali Shree, discussed
| Marathi poetry with my daughter, listened to mellifluous Tamil
| songs like "Nenjukkul Peidhidum", appreciated my wife's Uttara
| Kannada accent, all the while consuming English media in copious
| amounts.
|
| Languages and accents are a unique part of being human and I
| firmly believe that we're meant to be multilingual.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| n=1 data point here, but most of my free time these days is spent
| learning Finnish, a notoriously difficult language for English
| monolinguals. (I haven't always been in the monolingual camp, but
| a decade away from Latin has 99% put me back there.)
|
| For the most part, I don't feel like it has made me any sharper.
| Had I taken the ~2000 hours I'm in the hole for so far and spent
| them on going to the gym and sleeping more I'm nearly certain
| that would have had a much larger effect on my day to day mental
| acuity. Had I spent it on my career I'd probably be substantially
| richer. I probably have another ~2000 to go before I reach a
| level where I'm happy plateauing.
|
| In general I think it's very hard to justify learning a foreign
| language when subjected to a normal adult person's cost-benefit
| analysis. I persist mostly because I just really, really, really
| want to reach true proficiency, not the fake proficiency that
| gets you an A in Spanish or Latin class, as I outlined in [1]. If
| you don't have a similar drive your time and energy is probably
| better spent elsewhere.
|
| [1]: https://andrew-quinn.me/thoughts-on-language-learning-at-
| the...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-28 23:01 UTC)