Bilingual Education: Potential Brain Benefits | Hacker News Reader

Bilingual Education: Potential Brain Benefits

npr.org

68 pointscurtis21 comments

>"If it's just about moving the kids around," Steele says, "that's not as exciting as if it's a way of teaching that makes you smarter."

>Steele suspects the latter because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences.

This seems like evidence that bilingualism doesn't actually make you smarter with neuromagic, but the investigator chose to instead interpret it precisely the opposite way.

I think a simpler explanation is that reading is a skill which has a component that is invariant with respect to the language. Identifying glyphs, pronouncing the words in your head etc.

Fun fact, almost all Indians know 2 languages well. 1 their regional one, 2nd Hindi.. If they speak english, that's three..

Down south Hindi is less prevelant but 2 languages is like the norm for kids here..

Interestingly enough, I speak a regional language well and English well. Of course my regional language is also English, which makes bilingualism hard for people like me!

Actually I'm not just being a smart-ass here, I do have a point. The major reason that so many Americans are monolingual is that learning a second language doesn't have much if any day-to-day utility, whereas in India a second or even a third language may have tremendous day-to-day utility.

The native-English-speaking world is doomed to never have the motivation for this bilingual stuff.

It's not jut "motivation", you don't really learn language in a classroom...maybe you an get some tips and acquire some words, but you only really learn language in using it to communicate with people. If you have no people to,communicate with, it's like learning Java but not having a computer to execute programs on.

This isn't the case for the most part. It is easier to avoid learning a second language since so many people speak some english and doesn't make bilingualism such an important educational facet like it might in other regions.

But on the individual level, being an english speaker can make it harder. I'm living in Norway. I've had a couple years of immersive language classes. Most of the population speaks English, and many assume to simply use that when speaking to me. The accent and all. Some Norwegians don't see the point of an english speaker learning the language here. A fair amount of the popular music is in English, even Norwegian bands. Television? Childrens tv is dubbed, but a lot of adult television is English with subtitles. Advertisements? half and half. Telemarketers? Often english speaking.

Some books never get translated. Right now, I'm shopping around for a Norwegian copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide. Luckily it is available in Norwegian: Unluckily, it doesn't translate as well so it is a little different. And I'll probably have to order it. The local comic store, where I would normally buy sci-fi or fantasy, mostly sells English books.

Yet for all this, I'm highly motivated. It is really hard to be a part of normal society without Norwegian because this is what folks use in their everyday life. Not everyone here is strong in English, especially older folks. Some workplaces are in English, especially in the tech field, but many aren't. I'm not in the tech field, so learning it is. I'm getting there slowly :)

In the EU you usually have to learn two additional languages to your native language. It's not hard to find German, French or Spanish speakers outside their respective countries.

It's not like English is the only useful language.

The EU? You mean NL, Germany, and Scandinavia, anything south for that and even English is rare. Though, even in those countries, any program to learn any other language than English is too lazy, besides people seeing little value and getting too little exposure to these languages.

> It's not like English is the only useful language.

True, but in most of the U.S. the number two language isn't all that useful. Also I should add it's not just a matter of utility, it's also a matter of opportunity. I mean sure, if you go looking for speakers of another language you can find them, but it's not ambient. I hear many different languages spoken here in Seattle, but almost all of these speakers speak English well.

Also I should add that I'm not arguing against bilingualism, I'm just saying there are practical reasons why it is not so common here in the U.S.

Ya, and if you try speaking Chinese as a white guy in Seattle, it can get awkward really fast. It's like, what's the point of you speaking Chinese if we can all speak English!

Is that true? I know my son had to learn English and French in his urban German school, but my in laws out in the German countryside don't speak anything but German -- in fact there's hardly anyone in the village who understands anything other than German.

Even in tourist-soaked countries like France, good luck speaking anything but French out in the boondocks.

Very True. Like most Indians, my wife and I are fluent in English, Hindi and our regional language (Manipuri). Our kids are raised outside our region, so we have adapted the 2-language tactic (1 Parent - 1 language). So, English is the default and our regional language as the optional for our kids.

Indian languages are also pretty similar by regions. I spent 10 years in Bombay which made my Hindi really good. This also meant that I kinda know and can understand quite a bit of Marathi and Gujarathi. As I'm fluent in Hindi, I can also understand most people in the north and center speaking Hindi-esque languages too.

We are in the south for the past 6+ years, and I can begin to understand Kannada for the most common words.

Here is a personal fun-fact. I'm from the northeast and we have the "Asian" look and not the typical Indian. Most of the times, I default/pretend to not knowing Hindi unless communicated to. Lots of fun when people talk around me; assuming I would not understand them. More fun - when I'm outside India and Indians talk shit, defamatory, derogatory, embarrassing, things about other people and about themselves in Hindi - I always pretend I don't understand them at all.

> So, English is the default and our regional language as the optional for our kids.

Why is that?

I believe it is more circumstantial rather than our intention. The region where we originated also contributes to it. English is the common language amongst the many dialects and languages there. When I was growing up, it was only at home and the neighbor that I got to speak our language. The school was the ultimate mix of languages and English was the only way. If you know the North-Eastern India, it will be a lot easier to comprehend.

Now to our kids' generation, most of whom are raised outside of the region. And thanks to the intermingling marriages, it is even worst. Just in our family, our kids' cousins are Americans, Marathis, Biharis, Khasis, Tankhuls, Nagas, et al. I'm still discovering more and list will sure increase. Not just communities, our extended family is an amalgamation of Athiest, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and what not.

Sometimes, during fateful summer vacations or a big family ceremony, when all the kids play come together, their common language is — you guessed it — English. They all talk a blend of many but English remains the de facto that everyone can communicate.

if you want an easy language to learn, learn malay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_language

proven by chinese,indians,bangladeshis,nepalense,filipinos,burmese, cambodians

Malay has the advantages of being phonetic, using the Roman alphabet, and (I think) having a simple grammar, but is category 3. A phonetic alphabetic script is indeed helpful, but grammar isn't much of an issue. Chinese has a very simple grammar but is notoriously difficult to learn (category 5).

In my experience, the main problem in learning any second language is vocabulary acquisition, and for that you have to take into account the first language, which I'm going to assume is English.

Word frequencies follow Zipf's Law, so for any language, you can very quickly read about half the words on any given page. After twice the effort, you might be able to read another quarter, and with three times the effort another eighth, and so on. Most of the vocabulary of any language consists of non-basic vocabulary with high information content.

So which language should you learn? Obviously if you're going to live in Japan or Hungary, you have no option but to learn Japanese or Hungarian. But if your only goal is to learn a second language and you're not too particular about which one, I'd choose one which shares a lot of non-basic vocabulary with English. In practice, that means an Italic language: French, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, or Romanian (all category 1). If you want to optimize on number of speakers, your best choices are Spanish, followed by Portuguese. Alternatives to Italic languages are close relatives of English with simple grammars: e.g. Afrikaans, Dutch, or Norwegian (also category 1). But speaker of those languages generally speak excellent English.

For more information on language difficulty, see http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...

Any one know if math / programming languages count?

I've considered this in the past. Though I have nothing to back this up, I very much doubt it.

1. Math and programming are limited in their use - they are never primarily used communicate with other people. They are more like an expansion pack some people add to their language.

2. Language itself is more like a programming language for the brain: Without it, one's development suffers (this is why deaf folks were considered stupid in the past).

3. Math and programming languages require tools that are still developing when people are young. We take years teaching basic maths, for example. People have to be able to grasp the confines of programming languages - which are more strict than spoken language. Children really benefit from having the physical ability to type (for programming) as well.

As with everything else, I suspect learning more languages will just make you good at just that, learning more languages.

Some researchers claim that it helps to create new pathways in the brain which is useful for a lot more stuff.

>Some researchers claim

>helps to

>create new pathways

>a lot more stuff

could this statement be any more vague?

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