[HN Gopher] Is being bilingual good for your brain?
___________________________________________________________________
Is being bilingual good for your brain?
Author : Anon84
Score : 133 points
Date : 2025-06-28 16:50 UTC (1 days 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.
| signal-intel wrote:
| I'm quite sure nobody here knows what you're point you're
| trying to make.
| 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.
| jraph wrote:
| uBlock Origin has lists that block most of these modals
| 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.
| tgv wrote:
| I'm not sure those people are hyperpolyglot (whatever that
| exactly means). They usually have extreme skills in two
| languages, one being their native language.
|
| However, a task like simultaneous translation is tough. It
| requires a different way of focusing, and has other demands on
| working memory. There is some evidence that it leads to
| "functional" changes in the brain. That could be a factor.
| OTOH, since the effect is bound to a small group living in a
| few places, it could just as well be a life-style effect.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Sometimes there is a thin line between a genius and someone
| with a mental illness. That is not to say those translators are
| geniuses, I am speaking more broadly.
| 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?
| hxorr wrote:
| Maybe he has imposter syndrome?
| 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.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| I've lived in Japan for a while and got N1 a decade ago and I
| still love using it every day and don't take it for granted.
| It's kind of like flying on a plane. It always seems amazing
| to me, that I am doing this. I started as 28 and always
| thought it would be impossible.
|
| It is funny that at the start literally everyone is
| interesting, even the most boring conversations. I was more
| of a blank slate and more likeable too. That's gone away, but
| the things I enjoy are more enjoyable in a deeper way, and
| the scope of things I can do is larger. Goes both ways imo.
| timr wrote:
| > It is funny that at the start literally everyone is
| interesting, even the most boring conversations. I was more
| of a blank slate and more likeable too.
|
| Yes! I've found the same thing.
|
| > That's gone away
|
| Also noticing this -- I knew that it would happen, but was
| surprised that it didn't take very much fluency before the
| natural human tendency to judge people re-appeared.
|
| > ...but the things I enjoy are more enjoyable in a deeper
| way, and the scope of things I can do is larger. Goes both
| ways imo.
|
| That's good to hear. I'm about to come back for another
| extended round, so I worry about the other stuff fading
| over time.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Do things that you enjoy doing. If learning languages is
| something you enjoy, do more of that. If not, do something
| else. I learned English as a side effect of doing things I
| really wanted to do. Programming, reading books, watching
| movies, etc. I moved abroad and have not picked up any other
| language like I picked up English. My native language is Dutch;
| I barely use it on a daily basis and have not lived in my home
| country for 20 years now. Most days, English is what I use even
| though I never lived anywhere where that is the native
| language.
|
| I lived in Sweden for two years, in Finland for three, and for
| the last sixteen years I've been living in Germany. I learned a
| bit of Swedish via a beginners course. No Finnish whatsoever
| (it's a hard language, there was no need, and Swedish is an
| official language). When I moved to Germany, I refreshed what
| little German I knew in high school. So, I can mumble my way
| through a phone conversation, order food, and sit in meetings
| understanding maybe 80% of what is being discussed. The
| language is similar enough to Dutch that I can usually pick it
| apart if people don't mumble too much. I butcher the grammar
| and have the vocabulary of a five year old. And this does not
| bother me too much.
|
| Undeniably, improving my German would be useful to me. But the
| thing is, people don't appreciate how much of a time commitment
| it is to learn a language properly. And the simple fact is that
| this is not an enjoyable activity to me. And we're talking many
| thousands of hours! I usually have more fun, useful,
| interesting, etc. things to do and am not exactly bored. And I
| need my downtime as well. Also, learning in your downtime
| doesn't work in any case. I know two languages well. Adding a
| third is not a priority to me. Certainly not getting that third
| language anywhere close to the level of the first two. So, not
| happening and I'm OK with that.
|
| These days with LLMs and machine translations you don't need to
| speak any language other than your own. We're not that far away
| from being able to have direct conversations with anyone on
| this planet. Real time translations are not quite there yet but
| are starting to get usable. Native speakers of whatever will
| lose their home advantage. They'll no longer be needed as
| intermediaries. I find this very interesting. I think it will
| affect the status of English as the world's favorite second
| language.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Physical activity is the clear winner just from an overall
| impact perspective, but you don't need much to reap the
| benefits, so there's plenty of time for other stuff.
|
| Beyond that, I'd say learning an instrument is probably a
| better investment than learning a language unless you need to
| learn the second language to live somewhere. This is because:
|
| - language learning takes a LOT of time investment to show
| utility compared to using a translate app, while a lot of
| instruments are fun to play stuff on even when you suck
|
| - Music is also a language, but it's a language of tonal
| relationships and how they map to emotion, and the emotional
| phrases they can form, which is more distinct than another
| spoken language.
|
| - Learning an instrument also forces heavy bidirectional
| communication between brain hemispheres. Normally humans are
| very "one half brain then the other" so this encourages more
| plasticity.
|
| Puzzles have been shown to be poor for cognitive development
| unless they closely model the cognitive task being measured, so
| don't bother unless you just really like puzzles.
| 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.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Could be explained by education systems. If all these children
| go through the same kind of schools, then the cognitive
| development may be limited there, allowing the monolingual kids
| to catch up, while wasting the potential of the bilingual ones.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| That comparison is meaningless without doing a proper meta-
| analysis. What is the sample size of these studies? What are
| the effect sizes? That's more important than the number of
| studies that go in each direction.
| mrangle wrote:
| I wonder how is this cognitive development progress was
| measured, and I question the results of whichever study this
| refers to.
|
| I acknowledge that "bilingual tots seem to outperform in
| cognitive development in the early years" seems both intuitive
| and logical.
|
| This is a string of words that we'd expect to find together.
| We'd almost be offended if they weren't. Because both
| bilingualism and learning more things are better.
|
| My concern over the reference to this research is that early
| cognitive development milestones are largely language
| acquisition milestones, and it has long been known that
| language acquisition is somewhat behind in bilingual tots.
| Rather than accelerated.
|
| Generally, it is assumed that bilingual child development
| metrics will later catch up to those of their peer group.
|
| Which is the inverse of "their monolingual classmates may catch
| up with them later".
|
| Bilingual children aren't actually cognitively delayed, if only
| marginally on the face of their assessments, but rather they
| tend toward having a temporary delay in language acquisition
| due to to their bilingual environment. With any cognitive
| development disadvantage that this could theoretically cause
| essentially being non-risk.
|
| However, I've never seen anything that indicates performant
| development due to bilingualism. Just the opposite, to a
| statistically relevant degree. Even if only marginally behind.
|
| This is textbook information and part of the body of knowledge
| of language acquisition. It's not a vanguard research topic.
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| I don't know but my limited personal experience has been
| totally different. Not only learn my children their primary
| languages faster, they also learn other languages more quickly.
| I don't know if that affects their IQ but I don't see math or
| science as a much different language.
|
| Of course, speaking a language is only part of the bigger
| puzzle: staying curious and immersing yourself in the cultures
| and thoughts of people from diverse backgrounds is IMO even
| more important and beneficial. While translation is excellent
| and very convenient today due to the globalization, I'd say
| it's very hard to understand the people of a particular culture
| if you don't understand what they natively and rawly say on
| various social media platforms. Mainstream media and news paper
| don't necessarily reflect these sentiments and predispositions.
| In fact, they may even hide these "small voices" very well. So,
| there are clear benefits to using many languages.
| 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
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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.
|
| When speaking in a foreign language, it is commonly the
| case that you will have a word in mind, but it will be a
| word from your native language. This can cause problems
| when, for example, you set up the sentence to use a noun,
| but the language you're speaking doesn't have a noun that
| fits into your context correctly. Now you have two
| problems:
|
| 1. You need to retroactively rephrase your whole sentence
| to present the same information in a different style,
| because that's the way this language does it. This works
| best if you can change the past.
|
| 2. You probably don't know the correct thing to say, or
| you wouldn't have made that mistake to begin with.
| timr wrote:
| > When speaking in a foreign language, it is commonly the
| case that you will have a word in mind, but it will be a
| word from your native language. This can cause problems
| when, for example, you set up the sentence to use a noun,
| but the language you're speaking doesn't have a noun that
| fits into your context correctly.
|
| Yeah, I get that. Then later, you get to a point where
| you're largely not translating from your native language
| at all (i.e. "thinking in X"), and you just can't
| remember the word in the adopted language, so you need to
| re-route. Worst case, that ends up kicking you back up to
| your native language, and you're back to translation,
| which is like shifting into 1st gear on the highway.
|
| I think my point is (to the extent that I have one) that
| being able to route around the issue _in the second
| language_ is itself a fundamental form of fluency. That,
| plus being able to reliably _receive definitions of words
| spoken in the new language_ are like the lambda calculus
| of speech. You can forget words all day long (and,
| believe me, many older people do!) but still be "fluent"
| if you never have to fall back to your old language as a
| crutch.
|
| Anyway, I'm not trying to disagree with the broad notion
| -- there's clearly a point at which you're grasping
| around less like a foreign-language person, and more like
| a native person.
| djtango wrote:
| I do that a lot in English because English is so deep and
| there's a perfect word for everything. Recently I was
| ruminating on just how many ways there are to say "walk
| slowly" in English: saunter, meander, stroll, amble,
| shuffle and I think there were others.
|
| Meanwhile in Chinese earlier I forgot how to say
| "shallow" so settled for "not deep"
| bmacho wrote:
| That's sub A1 level (per European language
| classification).
|
| Tho levels are often described and measured by what you
| are capable of, and not by what you do, or what you like
| to do. This includes: being able to understand others,
| and being able to create correct and appropriate text.
| fhars wrote:
| They were describing the level where you can create
| perfectly cromulent words in your second language out of
| thin air, that is well past A1.
| bmacho wrote:
| No, they were explicit about the opposite of it.
|
| > 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.
|
| There are several concepts/situations here weaved
| together, but the two main are: -
| artistic intent, playfulness - inability to speak
| correctly
|
| The second one is low level, and artistic intent is
| orthogonal to your level, and transfers from your native
| language.
|
| (edit: BTW these two are closely related, since both are
| mostly just _using patterns_ in places where they are not
| commonly used, and breaking them would be preferred)
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| I think your have the classification backwards
|
| A1 level is "can barely speak the language, can maybe
| order a baguette"
|
| C2 is ~native level
| 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?
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Can a non-native speaker go beyond C2?
| microflash wrote:
| Sure they can. It is just a matter of immersion.
| azangru wrote:
| Is the 'beyond C2' defined? C2 is the highest possible
| grade in the Common European Framework of Reference for
| languages. How would one ascertain that someone is beyond
| C2, given the lack of generally accepted criteria?
| rf15 wrote:
| It's just a certification level that is almost
| meaningless compared to the natural Version of the
| language. And with some native speakers you honestly
| wonder why C2 requirements are so sophisticated.
| throaway955 wrote:
| Close....You've typed this out in English after having
| achieved such AN unlockING.
| woooooo wrote:
| Online English can definitely use "unlock" as a noun like
| that, it comes from gaming culture.
|
| An unlocking would be less idiomatic IMO.
| timr wrote:
| Good illustration of the comment about true fluency being
| able to play with the language.
|
| English takes this to pro level, of course.
| ajuc wrote:
| > Isn't that a thing everyone does?
|
| It's much more common when you're multilingual, because you
| think in combination of all the languages you know and you
| only realize you're missing the specific word when you get to
| them trying to express the thoughts on the fly.
|
| Sometimes it's not because you're not fluent - it's simply
| because the concept isn't expressible in the target language
| with that particular sentence structure you started with.
|
| Typical example is English "I like him" vs Russian "on mne
| nravitsya" (+- he for me is desirable). If you start saying
| "I" you're already wrong.
|
| It even happens within one language in highly inflected
| languages - because you wanted to say one thing, then changed
| the word to a better - but the sentence structure doesn't
| work with that new word, so you have to go back mid-sentence
| or make a grammatical mistake).
| 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.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| (This is not intended as an adversial question.)
|
| I've always been curious about how the non-English world
| feels about hearing their language spoken with a strong
| "English" accent. Dont they just get on with it? As a
| native English speaker I'm totally unfazed by strongly
| accented English: Indian accents, Chinese accents,
| Italian etc. For example Italians rarely pronounce the H
| in house (presumably because H is silent in Italian).
| Even twists like unusual word stress patterns or
| prnounciations are easily figured out on the fly.
|
| I know that Parisians are supposed to be one exception:
| infamously snooty about visitors speaking French
| absolutely perfectly. But fpr everyone else, it's 2025
| and we live in a world of mass tourism and mass
| migration. Are the non-English still fazed by English
| accents and insistent on audible correctness?
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Yes. People are often actively offended by my Portuguese.
| It's like... would you prefer it if I just spoke loudly
| in English at you?
| trchek wrote:
| I have this in French.
|
| Despite having worked 10x harder at it than I did
| Portuguese or Spanish. When speaking those two languages,
| it's close enough to a correct accent that people often
| will ask if my family is Latino or Portuguese once they
| hear that im American or hear my English. This hasn't
| happened 5 times but so many, I just assume it will
| happen now.
|
| However my experience has been different in French, even
| if it's obvious I've worked very hard at French (C1 now),
| my French friends are not begging to speak to me in
| French unless they have limited English skills... just
| because my pronunciation/cadence/intonation isn't quite
| right or even remotely ok, despite having much more
| immersion in French than those other two languages.
| French also feels like I'm singing at a concert rather
| that just conversing.
|
| Just sometimes your culture/brain/ linguistic mix result
| in happy or unhappy accidents.
|
| Edit I'm sure someone will bring up cultural differences
| but I have several multilingual friends .. they all say
| my Spanish is beautiful and nearly to a person criticize
| my French (in a helpful friendly manner), this is true if
| they're Latin American or French. Just seriously it's a
| thing, brains are weird.
| mrtx01 wrote:
| I am a German native speaker fluent in English and living
| in Spain for a few years with not much opportunity of
| learning the language.
|
| I just finished A2 in community college. Many of my
| classmates were native English speakers or Russians.
|
| Most of them are elderly and Spanish is their first
| foreign language. My Spanish is not good enough yet to
| judge pronunciation, but my impression is, that the
| russian accent is much more pronounced when beginners
| speak German or English than in Spanish.
|
| The older Brits and Irish that learned no other foreign
| language before have a very hard time even realising
| their English accent.
| dgunay wrote:
| I don't know that it's necessarily about snootiness. You
| learn to understand thick accents through exposure, and
| many countries don't have such a high amount of non
| native speakers running around as English speaking ones
| do.
|
| I have a friend who struggled to understand thick Latin
| American accents. I understand a lot of accents by now
| well enough, but I somewhat recently spoke to a Nigerian
| person for the first time in my life and it was a
| struggle.
|
| I'm not even getting into languages that have a high
| degree of tonality or homophony going on. That's an
| entire extra layer of difficulty when your counterparty
| in the conversation is not fluent.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I just left London, my first time going and as a native
| English speaker I struggled more with understanding
| perfect English with a British accent than I ever do with
| someone who speaks perfect or imperfect English with a
| heavy accent where English is a second language.
|
| And when I first started working with Indians that were
| still in India, I had to adjust my speech and slow down a
| lot because they struggled with my southern accent.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| It's a matter of exposure.
|
| Growing up in the US I was similarly comfortable with
| accents. Having lived ~10 years in China/Taiwan I
| struggle now. For instance I often can't understand
| Australians at all. It's completely incomprehensible.
| British English is a bit of a strain sometimes
|
| Similarly Chinese in China have little exposure to non-
| native speakers so I often find people can't understand
| me. While in Taiwan you can use the wrong tones and
| grammar and people don't have any issues figuring it out
|
| But for instance a lot of local people really struggle
| with Indian English bc it's seldom used in the media
| landscape, while for me it sounds natural bc a lot of my
| colleagues speak it
| robocat wrote:
| > to my ear, I'll say something perfectly coherent and
| pronounced exactly as the locals do
|
| I noticed a similar thing listening to many English
| people trying to speak Spanish. I could hear that the
| native English speaker pronounced the vowel sounds of a
| Spanish word incorrectly - but that the English speaker
| could not tell. Very common if Spanish word learnt from
| reading and trying to pronounce it as English might. I
| also hear a similar reading mistake from other countries
| trying to speak English.
|
| English can have extreme vowel variation - e.g. jokes
| based on bending vowel sounds to change word meaning.
| Spanish has a few vowel sounds and they seem very similar
| in different countries. English accents often change
| vowel sounds dramatically - so English speakers are not
| as aware of the importance of speaking vowels correctly.
| As a New Zealander, our vowel sounds trip up other
| English speakers.
|
| I'm not sure how we learn to fix it when our hearing or
| sound formation is incorrect. Someone to incessantly
| correct one's mistakes does help but that level of
| patience is hard to find.
|
| I know that I still can't hear or say nasal sounds
| correctly in other languages.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Actors and singers do it by hiring a voice coach -
| someone who doesn't just know the sounds, but can explain
| how to adjust your mouth muscles to make them correctly.
|
| Most classes and individual teachers won't do that.
| They'll either think "Eh, good enough for a foreigner"
| and shrug, or they'll say "That's wrong" and repeat the
| correct sound at you, which won't fix the problem.
|
| Sometimes changes happen in one language. There is a
| _huge_ difference between the Received Pronunciation (RP)
| version of British English that was the standard up to
| around the early 90s, and the Estuary English that became
| mainstream after that.
| afiodorov wrote:
| I heard that actors & singers don't necessarily manage to
| fix the accent in the natural speech so they can only
| recite extracts perfectly well.
| bluGill wrote:
| Which is good enough for their purposes. It would be more
| effort to fix speach but mostly the same.
| alimw wrote:
| I think the issue here is that it's hard work for a
| native English speaker to keep track of the correctness
| of every single vowel sound because in English so many
| are elided or become "uh".
| robocat wrote:
| Listen carefully to different English accents, or even
| better try and mimic them.
|
| There's a massive variety of vowel sounds in English:
| Sydney, Irish, Boston, Indian, etcetera.
|
| English speakers can often hear the differences, and many
| people can produce the different vowels when mimicking
| the accents (country, city, person, foreigner).
| danans wrote:
| > My wife is a native Russian speaker, and despite making
| numerous grammatical errors is far better understood than
| I am.
|
| There's an explanation for this
|
| https://youtu.be/Pik2R46xobA?si=T2NpUGe-32HY42oh
| dontlaugh wrote:
| English has few single vowels, they're usually
| diphthongs. It's very obvious when native English
| speakers try to repeat pronunciations of names.
| _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).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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.
|
| _Friends_ does some interesting linguistic things. One of my
| favorite examples:
|
| _You told me to go out and be a caterer, so I went! I be
| 'd!_
|
| Monica isn't making a mistake there. But I would be very
| surprised if someone who was just learning the language
| understood that joke.
| hintymad wrote:
| Most likely not. That said, I could at least understand
| enough to enjoy the show. Not sure why understanding
| Spanish conversation has been so much harder.
| Akronymus 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.
|
| That happens to me more with my bative language (german) than
| secondary (english) nowadays.
| Zufriedenheit wrote:
| Same here. English seems to be a very invasive language for
| the mind.
| 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.
| self_awareness wrote:
| Big corpos, sure.
|
| But small confused individuals belive this.
|
| So I'm wondering why they won't learn a new language to bring
| more diversity.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I saw those TikTok videos where "women in tech" went into an
| empty office building from Google and Facebook and did
| absolutely nothing. Can I get a work like that, too, if I
| tell them I identify as a female? Genuine question.
| azangru wrote:
| Pro-diversity folks, especially in the humanities, did pick it
| up. There are several trends you can observe in popular
| literature on linguistics for general public. One, you will see
| linguists express regret that languages are dying out, and
| argue that diversity of languages is a general good (see e.g.
| Language Death by David Crystal). Another, you will hear
| linguists argue against the dismissive attitude towards
| regional dialects, and for a more permissive attitude towards
| the norm.
|
| The BBC admitted more and more announcers with regional
| accents; and in 2017, it launched an online news service in
| West African Pidgin English.
| 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
| throaway955 wrote:
| French-Canadians think they're French-Canadian, not "French."
| robomartin wrote:
| Oh, I am sure. And yet, I have also seen evidence to the
| contrary from some. People can be weird.
|
| The argument goes something like: We are direct descendants
| of French immigrants ("pure blood" argument). It's along
| similar lines as descendants of Italian immigrants in New
| York calling themselves "Italian"...not realizing how far
| they are from that being remotely real.
| 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_.
| mythrwy wrote:
| I don't think I agree that social interactions are necessary to
| keep one sharp. In fact excessive social interactions with
| people that aren't all that sharp might dull one a bit.
|
| Reading and thinking and studying can be done alone just fine.
|
| Now as far as effectiveness in the real world, yes, social
| interactions and fluency is needed, but I believe this to be
| different from being "sharp". It probably helps keep you
| looking sharp though.
| anonymars wrote:
| As someone content with being by myself, I get what you're
| saying but overall I don't agree. COVID was a good experiment
| and it busted up a lot of people.
|
| Even excepting COVID, in the elderly the difference with
| social isolation can be night and day. I have witnessed
| firsthand one's cognitive deterioration reversed when the
| person moved into an assisted living community and gained a
| social life, and then when COVID hit and everyone was locked
| down the decay set in again
| 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.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| 100%. Just knowing how other countries value different things,
| work and succeed in different ways, and what concepts they find
| important enough to give words to when we don't - all of this
| has been super interesting.
|
| It's probably why I was able to get proficient in Japanese but
| more Anglosphere-adjacent languages felt boring.
| 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.
| numpad0 wrote:
| As far as my anecdotal experiences go, it is true. Bilinguals
| do carry bilingual accents even in native languages. You
| notice it from first few seconds listening. In my first
| language it sounds as if the person is playing in 4-note
| chords instead of 3-note.
|
| It probably only matter as an item in the list of falsehood
| about speech recognition, definitely not something that
| deserve to be described as "messed up", but it's also not not
| true.
| throaway955 wrote:
| Yes, and the ones who can master pronunciation are the ones
| who realize that languages are just codified ways of
| expressing human sound. Then you can start to see them all
| as phonetic expressions, instead of as translations.
| Lio wrote:
| I can't speak about the American experience but as someone
| English I would say don't worry about erasing your accent.
|
| If an accent is _too_ strong, yes it can be a hinderance but
| English is a very flexible language and native speakers are
| very quick to adapt to variations because we grow up with large
| regional variations. We expect it.
|
| In most cases having some varience in accent is charming.
|
| I've been lucky enough to work with people from all over the
| world in my personal experience I may occationally ask you to
| repeat something but I'll lock in soon enough.
|
| We used to have a TV show in the UK called "Rab C. Nesbitt"[1]
| about a guy from Glasgow with a seemingly impenitrable accent.
| Here's the thing though, you'd watch the first 5 minutes and
| not understand a word ...and then sunddenly you get it. If it
| works for him it will work for you.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbhhE4i8V2c
| throaway955 wrote:
| Yes, I am an accent coach and many immigrants do not accept
| this fact. They resist and resist out of stubbornness or
| laziness. I try to explain to them that people will react
| better if they can speak the native language like the natives
| to but to no avail. It's not even a matter of "correctness."
| It's great that you speak Kenyan/Punjabi/Ukrainian English! But
| we don't speak that here!
| uncircle wrote:
| That said, if you have a foreign accent people expect a
| certain (low to average) level of fluency and can get quite
| confused if you use native idioms or slangs, which they only
| expect from native speakers with a native accent. There's no
| way to pull off an "innit" unless you speak like a native
| Brit.
|
| Vocab is easy to learn, losing one's native accent is
| exponentially harder the older you learn a language, and as
| you probably know only through hard work with an accent coach
| you can eliminate that uncanny valley between fluent second-
| language speaker and native.
|
| Also, not everyone wants to invest in a coach unless they
| really have to. You can learn a language on your own, not
| everybody has time, money and need to hire an accent coach.
| callmeal 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. There is
| always something off about their accent.
|
| in the case of Indian Americans or Pakistani Americans, I've
| seen that it's not about the accent, but about the
| vocalization: there are some sounds that are exclusive to
| English that simply don't exist in Indian languages. As an
| example: the "f" or "v" sound - made by lightly touching your
| bottom lip to your upper teeth and then blowing air through
| (unvocalized for "f" and vocalized for "v").
|
| Similarly for "th" - you stick your tongue out between your
| teeth and the sound of the air flowing through that restriction
| is what defines the "th" (vocalized or unvocalized). I
| guarantee that if you start making these sounds in these ways,
| you will be seen as closer to a native speaker of English.
| 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.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| You'd rather spend hundreds of hours learning enough Spanish
| to read 100 Years of Solitude, then read 100 Years of
| Solitude, then hundreds _more_ hours learning Russian, then
| read Dostoevsky - when both of these works have already been
| translated to death by some of the world 's most talented
| translators into English?
|
| I side with the utilitarian here. You're in a very small
| class of people if the inherent joy of language learning is
| so strong for you that that sounds like a good idea.
|
| Like, think of all the other things you could do with that
| time. Why not go to the gym instead or something? Why not
| read 20 classics instead of 2?
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| I've read these classics in the languages I know. I've also
| read translated classics from my mother tongues and I know
| how woefully inadequate they feel.
|
| I think our time scales are on different scales. I treat
| this as a lifelong pursuit and savour it slowly in a
| leisurely manner. I don't need to sacrifice anything that
| way.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| >I've also read translated classics from my mother
| tongues and I know how woefully inadequate they feel.
|
| This is an interesting point where our experiences
| totally differ. I have myself read a few classics in both
| original and translation, between the English-Latin-
| Spanish triumvirate, such as _Cien Anos de Soledad_ as
| you mentioned. I percieved little if any drop in quality
| between Marquez and the translation - indeed I often
| thought the translated work was superior to the original.
| It 's not a classic in the same vein, but I similarly
| found the modern Latin translations of Harry Potter were
| much more fun than the original English prose, which even
| as a kid felt very workaday and even uninspired at times
| to me.
|
| So I see this more as evidence that you put a very high
| aesthetic value on linguistic purism than anything else.
| You don't just want the thing, you like working really
| hard to get the _original_ thing. You like pushing the
| boulder up that hill. To be clear, I consider that an
| extremely commendable character trait, I just also think
| it means you 're living on another planet compared to
| most of the population. Which isn't a bad thing, it's
| nice here.
|
| >I don't need to sacrifice anything that way.
|
| It may be a sacrifice you're happy to make, but you are
| absolutely making some kind of large tradeoff every time
| you invest 500-1500 hours into learning a new language to
| C1 level, man. Like come on. That's like the economic
| definition of an opportunity cost.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| ... Although, there is one really interesting possibility
| I failed to account for here.
|
| The Indian subcontinent is ancient, and so is its
| literary tradition. It's possible that truly ancient
| works like the various parts of the Mahabharata genuinely
| _can 't_ be translated at a high enough level of quality
| - because they _actually happened_. They are not entirely
| fictional accounts of a time and place so fundamentally
| different to our own, that no attempt at a translation
| within a secular context could work well, because the
| whole semantic space of modern language is just too
| divergent from it. It would be like handing a caveman a
| copy of _Accelerando_ or something. I did know one guy in
| college who learned Aramaic for a few years years, and
| eventually recoiled in horror and stopped because this
| was the conclusion he came to.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Nah man, I'm not aiming for any linguistic purity or any
| such thing. All I want is to experience the sounds,
| smells, quirks, slangs and unique things that make up the
| culture. e.g. when I read ,,Stasiland ", I knew exactly
| what Miriam felt. When I read the ,,Kite runner", as an
| ex-kite runner, I felt one with Aamir and Hassan.
| Linguistic purity reminds me of casteism/accentism which
| I abhor.
|
| I just want to be as close as the original experience as
| possible, and it maybe my naive thinking that original
| languages capture that nuance better?
|
| However your point about English-Latin-Spanish
| triumvirate is interesting and may explain your
| reasoning. Indian works like Mrityunjaya or Godan can
| easily be read in many Indic languages without any drop
| of quality.
|
| You might be surprised but I've actually found German
| translations of Mahabharata or Tripitaka to be much
| better then English ones.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Why not go to the gym instead or something? Why not read
| 20 classics instead of 2?
|
| Because as Nabokov said, what a scholar one could be if one
| could only read five or six books. Real knowledge lies in
| depth, full exploration, individuation. Knowing five books
| totally, having one unique experience, is worth infinitely
| more than checking books of your Goodreads list.
|
| Oppenheimer learned Sanskrit just to read the Gita. Was
| that "utilitarian"? No, but he didn't care, because
| utilitarianism is a suckers philosophy anyway. Don't try to
| be good by some stupid quantitative metric, try to do
| something interesting.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| One notes that Nabokov did not in fact only read 5 or 6
| books. Curious.
|
| Let's take him at face value, though. Why not read 2
| classics 10 times instead of just once, then? Most every
| language with a writing system has at least 2 classics
| these days. Finnish, for example: _Sinuhe egyptilainen_
| and _Seitseman veljesta_. English: The Bible and Bart
| Simpson 's Guide to Life. Etc.
|
| Re/ Oppenheimer, I wouldn't necessarily point at the guy
| who rained atomic hellfire upon Japan as someone with an
| especially sound moral compass, or even an interesting
| view on anything except how to dispense violence at
| scale. It is true there's a lot of violence in the Gita,
| so, I dunno, maybe he was just trying to read it as a
| self-insert fic or something. I don't think you have to
| be a utilitarian to say he probably did a lot of really
| bad things, in fact I think it helps not to be. A
| deontologist can at least say "I don't care if you think
| someone else will do it anyway, it's still bad and you
| shouldn't pull that lever."
| azangru wrote:
| > I can't imagine the fun of reading "Cien Anos de Soledad"
| in Spanish or Dostoevski in Russian.
|
| I wouldn't call reading Dostoevski fun in any language (and I
| did read it in Russian) :-)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| As a US emigrant, the joke I was told when I first arrived
| (with B2 german and nearly nonexistent french and italian) in
| my adoptive country went as follows:
|
| Q. What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? A.
| Trilingual Q. What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?
| A. Bilingual Q. What do you call someone who speaks 1 language?
| A. American Q. What do you call an American who speaks multiple
| languages? A. CIA
| 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/
| kiru_io wrote:
| Can you give more info on that? the website is not very clear
| what it is, so basically it's an app to learn languages?
| xvilka wrote:
| It's learning languages by employing "thinking method" where
| you learn new language using English, mostly, as a basis. In
| the case of some languages, like Spanish, using the knowledge
| of common Latin roots. And thinking method itself focuses on
| learning the rules rather than memorizing individual words.
| Here[1] the author explains his method in details, in a
| guidebook for writers of new courses.
|
| [1] https://www.languagetransfer.org/guidebook
| 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.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| You're talking about the huge amount of content you can consume
| but speak nothing of creation. No matter what you enjoy, there
| is an unfathomable spectrum of the human experience you have
| not been a part of. Your particular preference is not superior
| to anyone else's.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| You brought in ,,superiority" into this not me.
|
| BTW how are monolinguals immune to the charge you've laid
| against me? At least we multilinguals can enjoy the
| "unfathomable expanse" in more dimensions than them.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| You said it was part of being human, that we are meant to
| be multilingual (so monolinguals aren't human enough?), you
| clarified "it's not a brag" (i.e. it sounds like a brag),
| you said you pity them.
|
| > BTW how are monolinguals immune to the charge you've laid
| against me?
|
| Monolinguals have to learn languages from scratch. This is
| a massive investment of time. You can do other things with
| that time. Some people spend their whole life creating art,
| music and writing. Are they superior to to people who only
| consume? Some people volunteer or travel the world, are
| they superior to those who cannot? Nobody can do
| everything, we all have to choose.
| 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...
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| 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.
|
| This is true for most people. I'd say the exception is if
| you're learning a language that's native to the place where you
| live. This reduces the effort required to get conversation
| practice AND makes it more fun. So rather than choosing between
| Netflix and language study, you're choosing between Netflix and
| chatting with people in a bar.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Well, Finnish is native to the place I live, because I also
| live in Finland. My experience even here suggests that even
| this exception is only true for maybe 10-15% of immigrants,
| which is already a small pool of people.
|
| Part of this, of course, is that we're now talking very
| different goals with different levels of commitment required.
| You can pick up enough of any language to be fun at a bar in
| a single digit precentage of the time it takes to become
| professionally fluent with it. The opportunity cost really is
| at least one, and maybe two, orders of magnitude lower here,
| depending on how much "My practice needs to be fun" matters
| to you.
|
| Empirically, from both personal experience and personal
| observation: Most people who move countries, if they're not
| already moving as working class professionals with a
| preexisting command of the native language, just find it much
| easier to settle into enclaves of similar immigrants and try
| to interact with the broader society with help from that
| community. This was as true in the US as it is in Finland,
| and I've known a lot of immigrants from a lot of different
| backgrounds throughout my life. Like seeks like everywhere
| alike.
|
| My attempt at being the opposite of this person puts me at
| odds with most other immigrants I have known. I'm actually
| the only person I've met here so far who has actually read a
| complete, non-selkosuomi book in Finnish without being a
| native or heritage speaker, for example. "Can read an
| ordinary book written for adults" is not exactly a high bar
| to pass in absolute terms for any language, but it's higher
| than what the vast majority of people will ever do in one
| they didn't grow up with.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > it's [...] hard to justify learning a foreign language [...]
| to a normal adult person's cost-benefit analysis.
|
| A "normal" existence in a populous, monolingual country may not
| involve other languages... But human language is remarkably
| _various_ in the world. Even on HN, knowing a set of non-
| natural semantics (e.g. coding) is a _common profession_.
|
| Most employers don't pay handsomely for multilingualism, but
| they do pay software workers well.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| I... don't really understand what this comment means.
|
| I don't see why the situation would be any different if your
| airdropped, say, a 25 year old person who grew up in eg
| quadrilingual Luxembourg into eg extremely monolingual
| Yakutsk, and act like their childhood means they can suddenly
| master the native tongue there _without_ hundreds to
| thousands of hours of unpaid effort.
|
| They would probably do a lot better spending that time, well,
| getting out of Yakutsk. Assuming no one is holding them there
| at gunpoint.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| People do make practical choices.
|
| To focus on the linguistic challenge of living in Yakutsk,
| we can agree that a) learning a new language takes time,
| and b) the Luxembourgish languages might be some help (but
| not much) for learning Turkic and Russian.
|
| > act like their childhood means they can suddenly master
| the native tongue
|
| But there are many cases where those languages _would_ be
| an advantage. Say, in learning Spanish and English.
|
| People _can and do_ learn languages. Some people are better
| at it than others. But people emigrate (or escape, as you
| say) and adapt.
|
| Programming languages are a (simplified) subset of human
| languages. Programmers learn a marketable skill. (I use
| about five programming languages at work.) Employers will
| pay people well for programming -- better than I have seen
| people paid for speaking several _human languages_.
|
| The way that people complain about programming languages
| (simplified as they are!) is somewhat related to broader
| struggles with learning human languages.
| kazinator wrote:
| I suspect the benefit is greater when the second language is from
| a completely different family, and has a different writing
| system.
| hartem_ wrote:
| https://archive.is/20250628212925/https://www.economist.com/...
| ur-whale wrote:
| https://archive.is/lSCR2
| qprofyeh wrote:
| The way looking up words in your vocabulary works kind of like a
| vector db search. Then sometimes I think of something and the
| query result returns only the thing in language 3.
| Caelus9 wrote:
| If you want to slow cognitive decline or improve mental
| flexibility, then learning a second language, even if it's
| started later in life, does make sense, but expecting it to
| improve intelligence or memory overall is probably a beautiful
| but unrealistic fantasy.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| > then learning a _second_ language
|
| Strange way to phrase it. Lots of people know more than one
| language already.
| sandbach wrote:
| 'Second language' is a technical term meaning a foreign
| language learnt after early childhood. For example, if
| someone grows up speaking English and German natively and
| then learns French at school, French is a second language to
| them, even though you could say it's language #3.
| qoez wrote:
| My theory is that being bilingual isn't good so much because you
| know two languages, but because you get to know two _cultures_. I
| 'd probably go crazy if american was the only culture I was
| exposed to on a deep level and didn't have a second language to
| help filter out the bad ideas from the good.
| esperent wrote:
| There are so many cultures that speak English though. I'm only
| fluent in English, but as an Irish person who spent parts of my
| childhood in England and Scotland, I feel like I have a deep
| (fluent) understanding of Irish and English culture, and a
| second language equivalent of Scottish and American cultures,
| maybe at a third language equivalent level I could add
| Australian.
|
| All of these cultures are easily as different from each other
| as non English speaking European cultures like German, French,
| Italian.
|
| I've also spent the last few years living and running a
| business in Vietnam, and while I've failed hard at learning the
| language, I do work with Vietnamese people everyday and I am
| growing to have a reasonable understanding of Vietnamese
| culture, even while I would struggle to have any kind of deep
| conversation in the language.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| America has endless subcultures
| lvl155 wrote:
| I have a theory that being bilingual in early ages and having
| constant exposure to both languages, the latter being key, create
| two cognitive centers in your brain. It also matters when you
| picked up your languages. Exposure later in life may mean that
| you basically and merely "installed" a translation layer.
| HichamCh wrote:
| It's not just about delaying dementia, either. I've heard it
| improves cognitive flexibility and multitasking abilities. Makes
| sense, you're constantly switching between mental frameworks.
| Hashex129542 wrote:
| These kinda articles are 2nd language imposition propaganda we've
| seen lot.
| Pearledlang wrote:
| Here in Finland, we have a good trial population: Finnish-Swedes.
|
| They are genetically very similar to Finns, but despite being bi-
| lingual, and wealthier than native population, they are very
| slightly duller. (1-3 iq points).
| firefax wrote:
| I don't think it's _bad_ for your brain.
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