Do Bilingual People Have a Cognitive Advantage? | Hacker News Reader

Do Bilingual People Have a Cognitive Advantage?

blogs.discovermagazine.com

39 pointsDiabloD343 comments

This is a little misleading because its dealing only with the "bilingual advantages in executive functioning" and stating they "either do not exist, or are restricted to very specific and undetermined circumstances.”. As the article states as pertains to the task of cognitive control there is little to no evidence supporting the theory that bilinguals have an advantage in that area. This isn't dealing with other perceived benefits of being bilingual as far as I can see.

Me and most people in my immediate family speak 3 or more languages fluently. Still, in my non-scientific observations I've noticed little difference between say, multilinguals and monolinguals when it comes to tasks not related to well, speaking languages. It seems to me that in actuality monolinguals usually speak one language with greater fluidity since with multilinguals you are constantly mixing up the languages all the time to greater or lesser degrees.

Is is quite rare (I can only think of one occasion in my life), where I have listened to an articulate and intellectual communicator / speaker, who was not monolingual in whatever language they were speaking.

I think being multilingual has advantages - you can speak multiple languages :) but beyond that I have often wondered if it is really as advantageous as scientific news media makes it out to be. Would you be just as well served by spending your energy building in your workshop, playing music, painting, studying mathematics, etc?

> Is is quite rare (I can only think of one occasion in my life), where I have listened to an articulate and intellectual communicator / speaker, who was not monolingual in whatever language they were speaking.

This has been my experience, too.

In my case, I speak two languages every day, and have done so for decades. I often say or write things that are syntactically incorrect in both languages. If I pay attention, I can correct them, but it does affect my fluid production of speech. Correct grammar rules have become a blurry mess, and I hate that.

> In my case, I speak two languages every day, and have done so for decades. I often say or write things that are syntactically incorrect in both languages.

I also have spoken two languages (EN/PT) almost every day for 15 years, but it's my spoken English that, at times, adopts the syntax of my Portuguese. I'm very careful to not let English "corrupt" my PT for fear of sounding off, but I'm wondering if I'll end up following your lead in about 10 years (mixing up both).

How long have you known your second language?

I'm Swedish and mostly learned how to speak and understand English during approximately age 6-10, after which I'd say I had learned the basics of the language and then expanded my knowledge of the language like any native would do. As far as I can tell, my understanding of syntax, grammar and semantics in both languages is a bit above average compared to natives of both languages (including other bilingual swedes, so maybe I'm not very representative?). My speech is typically correct when I speak casually, in both languages. Mostly I just have a strong Swedish accent while speaking it for the simple reason that I very rarely talk English IRL. (native = speaking it as their mother tongue)

The main problem is the cultural associations in many English phrases which I don't have a deep understanding of, which means they can be misapplied or require asking for explanations, but that's really only a problem of lack of knowledge of the definitions, even within the same language every subculture has its own terminology (and I'd say while I know more English words than many Americans, I know fewer phrases than most of them). It is easier to realize you came across completely new words and figure out their meanings than to pick up on that a particular series of words is a phrase carrying a nuance you don't know when you aren't frequently exposed to them in varying contexts.

(SwiftKey's autocorrect is typically responsible for more errors than I am...)

I think what copperx is talking about, and certainly what I was talking about is not your ability to speak and communicate at a native level in the languages you speak, but your inability to achieve a very high level of competency i.e. talk with the clarity of a Steven Pinker or Noam Chomsky or generally anyone you consider to be highly articulate. IMHO this is largely due to actively speaking multiple languages on a daily basis. Its wierd because I can't really explain the types of mistakes but its things that second language learners won't ever do, like starting a sentence in one language and finishing in another, or adopting a verb from one of the languages you know, for instance in DE/EN, "gimme den ball" or "er hat gesagt he's sold.". It requires active concentration to not do this and can often lead to slight pauses where you are searching in your head for the X language equivalent of the term in language Y (only then to realize you should have started the sentence in a completely different way to articulate the same sentiment).

Given there aren't many people in general that attain a high level (Novel Authors, Great Lecturers, Debaters, etc.) of linguistic competency, still the few that do attain this, seem to almost always be monolingual or do whatever they are best at in only one language.

For me, with one side of my family everything is german/polish, with another english/spanish, and its very easy to casually speak in whatever language for daily tasks because if you are with family you can just use whichever word comes to mind regardless of what language it is in, and if not the vocab is so common and easy there is no difficulty just saying everything in the one language (even though your grammar is at times influenced by your other languages like copperx says - ahh). But once you go to writing an essay, giving a lecture or presentation, especially in one of the languages you don't usually do that in - you immediately realize how segmented your vocabulary is (or at least that happens to me :).

Not to mention that in informal settings with family, you are constantly mixing stuff up because your mother in law is speaking polish your wife is answering in german and you're asking you're wife something in spanish.

Well I for one seems to have learned my languages as two independent things as compared to what you describe. When I'm writing here now I'm thinking in English uninterrupted, not in Swedish (my native language), although I am capable of switching at will without trouble.

Maybe it is because I was simultaneously exposed to both languages heavily when growing up but almost always from separate contexts (as in reading in English and listening to Swedish or vice versa, also including other media like TV and games, and music - our radio maybe plays 70% English / 30% Swedish). Since mixing up the languages would be noticed quickly, perhaps that's how I learned to keep them separately better than most? Far from everybody I know was as interested as I was in actually communicating in English. And I wasn't much around groups with individuals talking both languages informally in a way that could get them mixed up. It was typically one language or the other in any given context.

When in English speaking crowds, I've been mistaken for American more than once. Don't know the nationality of all those people however, perhaps they too had English as their second language. But I've never had anybody point out flaws like those you mention in my speech.

I would like to note that I do seem to have an intermittent "speaker mode" when I become a whole lot more fluent and eloquent, usually while I'm very focused and have something that I know I want said, and it happens in both languages (it's quite weird, both I and listeners notice the difference), and I think this state of mind is related to these concepts;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-dependent_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

> But once you go to writing an essay, giving a lecture or presentation, especially in one of the languages you don't usually do that in - you immediately realize how segmented your vocabulary is

Annoyingly true - 99% of my tech vocabulary is English only, 99% of my day-to-day vocabulary is Swedish only (stuff like names of kitchen tools and such that don't come up if you don't live in a country speaking the language).

I would like to note that when I said "casual" I meant "not formal", as in dealing with somebody in some authority or business people, not simply informal with the family. Haven't had acquaintances notice such things either. (And regarding formal conversations, I simply spend too much time thinking it through in advance for linguistic bleedthrough to become relevant.)

If you go away and everyone in your environment only speaks one of your languages you will get better at all of your languages.

Languages are ways of communicating, if you can use more than one then your mind will start creating connections where they "shouldn't" exist, i.e. "everyone speaks english and spanish so I can use them interchangeably so it must be one language" and you'll start talking a hybrid language.

Regarding cognitive advantages of being multi lingual I'd say they are mostly related to abstractions and thinking patterns. You learn how to express yourself through different patterns and have new abstraction to understand the world around you. The same is true for learning any way of expressing yourself (not just languages but also math, programming, dancing, music, whatever...)

For example: Some people speak math+english as one language but most people don't know the abstractions that they use even if they know 'the language' (english) and therefore sometimes have a hard time understanding their way of thinking.

Sry english third language not prefect

i grew up with some people who spoke 2 languages pretty poorly (english and chinese). they essentially had bad grammar and accents in both languages. i know for a fact their parents made them speak chinese at home. unfortunately, by the end of college (i.e. entering the real world where linguistic skills really count), they hadn't improved much if at all.

it's almost as if they had a 'total lingistuic aptitude cap' and it was spread out among two languages. i bet if they chose to stick to one language, they'd speak it better.

Sounds like something a monolingual would say/snark

Anecdotes are just that. I know plenty of people that can dominate two languages fluently.

Recently read a study where a stroke patient can recover faster if multilingual or that dementia can be kept at bay longer.

Regarding fluency, bilinguals and monolinguals often have often have similar total vocabulary sizes, but bilinguals tend to have a significantly smaller vocabulary in each language.[1, 2] In other words, vocabulary size(L1, monolingual) ~= size(L1 + L2, bilingual), and size(L1, monolingual) < size(L1, bilingual).

1. Portocarrero et al. (2007). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887617707...

2. Gatt et al. (2015). http://ijb.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/13/136700691557...

> Sounds like something a monolingual would say/snark

how do you think i knew they had poor grammar in both languages?

most people can't even speak or write a single language well, of course a huge number of people of average intelligence/aptitude who are forced to speak two languages are going to be terrible at both.

how many people can 'dominate' their native tongue? not many.

I am fully bilingual and know quite a bit of a third language. Given I have learned my second language fairly late in life - around 16 - I do have some accent. But I do not mess up grammar in a way that would make your ears or eyes bleed. Or so I think ;-)

I have two kids that we raised with two languages since birth. And now the interesting part: - daughter is fully bilingual, native speakers of both languages cannot tell she is not native, - son has some handicap in one of the languages.

I really think it goes the other way - having some cognitive advantage will allow you to be bilingual 100% and not the other way around. This is why my daughter can pull this stunt and my son not so much.

It may go back to women have strong executive functions them men generally do. Both my kids are learning Chinese, but my daughter is much better at pronunciation then is my son. For that I credit her ability to sing.

What even is speaking better?

I grew up bilingual, mostly speaking Spanish at home and English at school. I think growing up with a different language can be a disadvantage if the children don't spend lots of time reading and learning English but fortunately my parents encouraged that heavily.

One thing being a bilingual speaker taught me and having older family members with differing grasps of the English language was not to ascribe too much value to 'correct' grammar or pronunciation. People who are well spoken English speakers have a way of seeming intelligent regardless of actual aptitude and it's easy to dismiss someone with syntax that is unusual or cobbled together from different languages.

I rarely if ever work with Latino engineers, but working with lots of Chinese nationals, it has been easy for me to ignore their grammar mistakes and diction choices and focus on the underlying message of what they are saying. For that I'm grateful. Grammar snarkiness is one of the most useless traits of English speakers I've encountered in my adult life.

It's funny when Americans claim that British people just 'sound smarter' when British people are just that: British. Same with bad grammar sounding less intelligent, it's not actually any less intelligent as long as it still communicates the message.

There's certainly a stigma in the US that affects non-native speakers of English. It reminds me of this post that was upvoted a week or so ago: http://antirez.com/news/61

I'm not sure I agree that grammar proficiency is not an indicator for intelligence, however. In my mind it's an aspect of intelligence, but one that is irrelevant when talking about science, math, or a variety of other fields.

Grammar is absolutely relevant in science, math and various other fields. Noone wants to have to parse ungrammatical documentation or scientific papers.

It's certainly possible to get by in STEM with poor grammar, but it is harder to excel that way. Grammar below a certain threshold impedes natural language communication, which is important even in technical fields.

What is good grammar? Good grammar is simply however the current people in power speak.

"A language is a dialect with an Army and a Navy".

Good grammar is something that helps large groups of people understand each other quickly and clearly. It helps those armies and navies succeed.

> Good grammar is something that helps large groups of people understand each other quickly and clearly. It helps those armies and navies succeed.

Sure, but this has little to do with perception of good grammar (in the US at least).

There's a really big difference between terse academic written language and the kind of mode switching that goes on when speaking out loud for bilingual speakers. Most people have a much easier time following rules of grammar when writing language than when speaking it. Papers in english from academics around the world are often more readable than their spoken english.

How well would you consider yourself to speak Spanish: "very well", "well", "not well" or "not at all"? Your English writing is perfect, and I assume you speak English just as well.

> Same with bad grammar sounding less intelligent, it's not actually any less intelligent as long as it still communicates the message.

Where do you draw the line, though? For example, using "bad" instead of "poor" seems acceptable and not an indication of low linguistic competence.

However, consider the sentence "dum talk no mean u dum". It communicates the message, but would you consider someone who said that to be as intelligence as someone phrased it "Same with bad grammar sounding less intelligent, it's not actually any less intelligent as long as it still communicates the message"? I wouldn't.

There is a line between being a snob and being someone who expects something above bare-minimum competence. I can understand the meaning of phrases like "dum talk no make u dum", but I find such speech unacceptable.

> It's funny when Americans claim that British people just 'sound smarter' when British people are just that: British.

That situation is indeed funny, but I think it's beneficial overall. Having a prestige dialect discourages the development of parochial dialects, and helps unify speakers of the language across different regions.

It's the same within the United States. My parents are both monolingual English speakers, but have heavy regional accents. My wife and I both have standard American ("CNN English") accents, and occasionally make fun of their accents between the two of us. As American English is to British English, so is regional English to standard American English.

We recently moved to another region of the country. Noone here speaks our parents' regional accent, and most of the locals also speak our standard American accent. I think we've met new friends easier than if we both had our parent's strong regional accent.

I speak Spanish very well though I have several structures I've imported into Spanish from English. Spanish speakers are much less likely to assume I'm dumb or insinuate I am doing something 'wrong' than English speakers in the reverse; presumably because I'm American and Americans are 'well-educated'. I think that's the real grub there in my experience, what we think of bad can be really abritrary depending on what we assume about an individuals background.

English as a code is now universally shared by both native and non-native speakers. What is not always shared or recognized are the manifestations of a specific culture embedded by the writer in the language. Though the language can now be taken for granted, what cannot any longer be taken for granted are the cultural deposits transmitted by the language. To understand them, the reader, especially if he is a native speaker, must equip himself with a knowledge of the writer’s sociocultural milieu. Would he not be expected to do so if he were to read an English translation of, say, the Mahabharata or, for that matter, the Iliad?

Culture determines literary form, and the form of the novel from cultures within India has been strongly influenced by those cultures themselves, resulting in something different from the form of the novel in the West. Rao himself is of the opinion that an Indian can never write a novel; he can only write a purana.

-- Introduction by R. Parthasarathy for Kanthapura by Raja Rao.

Meh. Maybe speaking two languages fluently doesn't have the advantage that psychologists are trying to measure. But it seems to me almost absurd to assume that there are no advantages. They might not justify the effort of learning a second language, though. But anyone who knows two or more languages has at least a better grasp of semantics as two meanings that are mapping to the same word in one language are often different words in another. For example: "sky" and "heaven" are the same word in German, but obviously different concepts that have their own words in English. Likewise, the noun "lead" has many meanings that map to different words in most languages.

Who is assuming anything? People are conducting science and the evidence doesn't support an advantage for this particular function. Also, not only do I not think it is not absurd to consider that maybe a second language does not offer any significant advantages, I also think it's a possibility that learning more languages than one could be harmful overall. To assume anything else without supporting evidence is showing a bias.

Fair point - knowing more bears the risk of mixing things up. What overall harm are you thinking of?

Nothing in particular, just admitting the possibility.

Most people in India speak at least 2 languages. Their regional, national and the ones in metros also English..

For context, I grew up in the US with parents who moved here from India, so I'm wondering what others think about this. In my experiences with Indians, few seem to have a native understanding of a language with comprehensive vocabulary. It seems that many students take later science/math classes in an English-language school or university, for example, and so they use those words in English when speaking an Indian language. Colloquially at least in a city in India where some of my family lives, it seems like nearly every sentence includes an English word for something few would know the equivalent of in the Indian language.

It's worth clarifying that I don't see this as a problem or limitation, but it can create difficulties with regards to English fluency.

Well, a lot of languages around the world have the problem where somethings are just better said in English. Like router, internet, download.. Using their local variants is weird. Yes, Hinglish(Hindi English) is pretty common.

I wouldn't vouch for the level of language control (of English)the majority of people have here in India, but, it's definitely improving..

If not directly, still certainly it broadens your horizons though & exposes you to a different way of thinking, which is pretty good.

One thing we don't take into consideration is the question itself.

> Do Bilingual People Have a Cognitive Advantage?

Is the same as saying bilingual people are smarter. Now a monolingual will disagree because why should someone be smarter simply because they speak more languages.

And the bilingual will feel good about the fact that the question suggest that they are smarter. It becomes a fight about who is smarter instead of any real studies. So far all the paper I read are mostly fueled by this argument.

I speak four languages on a daily basis (work, work, family, friends). Many of my colleagues do the same. Some don't. I can't say I have noticed any cognitive difference between the two sets that can be explained by multilingualism.

Purely subjective - I have noticed that people in my workplace who exercise more or play music more have a bit of an edge over those who don't.

Most Indians are bilingual and some are even tri-lingual. Haven't noticed anything special due to this.

Linguistic differences are a major cause of regional tensions within India.

as some one who speaks two languages and is commonly labelled a genius (against my wishes) i feel i have some valid input here...

i do not have particularly great self-control and discipline.

one data point, but still, since its myself i do feel quite strongly that the idea that bilingual people have better discipline is an over generalisation.

in particular, living in the uk, where most people speak english as their only language, most of the people i consider to be substantially smarter and more eloquent than myself are not bilingual.

so the idea that bilingual people have a cognitive advantage is completely at odds with my personal experiences.

TLDR; no.

Relevant Wikipedia article on why the answer is almost always no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

Relevant thread on how people on HN always bring up Betteridge's: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4842803

Maybe there should be a law about people mentioning the meta law about HN on HN?

lol. I wish I could +1 this again.

IMHO probably yes. But other benefits out weights this. I speak or understand some 7-8 languages. Being able to enjoy movies and music from a wide variety pool makes it awesome!

IMHO no. I speak 4 languages. But one of the best benefits is being able to understand humor/comedy of those languages and see cultural differences.

I say music/movies and you say humor/comedy. How's that any different? Cultural differences is not necessarily reflected thru language.

Also, 7 >> 4. I win :)

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