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Comment by torben-friis | Hacker News Reader

This might be me being overly cautious here, but I would be wary of the political implications of the study.

It's from an open University that's a project for lifelong learning funded as a public service in Catalonia - promoting the catalan language in the region is a key point of the project, so studies finding out that bilingualism is something great to have raise red flags about the nationalist agenda behind it.

To be clear, I'm not trying to make a point against catalan people or taking a position in any political side whatsoever. I'm just pointing out the potential for local context affecting the scientific method here.

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It is a common point of view from modern Catalan nationalism that the bilingual status-quo is conducive to the minoritization of the Catalan language long term. Bilingualism can also mean Catalan and English. On the other hand, pro-union parties [0] and organizations [1] often defend bilingualism under the opposite premise: that supposedly Catalan has an advantageous position over Spanish.

[0] https://www.elmundo.es/cataluna/2019/04/25/5cc192b4fdddff712...

[1] http://convivenciacivicacatalana.blogspot.com/p/administraci...

If you see past the rhetoric you will find that Catalan nationalists would like Catalan to be the dominant language in Catalonia while Spanish nationalists would like Spanish to be the dominant language instead. Neither of them are really concerned about English because English is not in a position to replace either Catalan or Spanish.

Replace "spanish nationalists" by "everybody else" and you have it. The idea that the main language of a nation, the only that everybody share and knows, should be deterred from part of the territory is surrealist.

It's bizarre that people want to eliminate the language that is historically from a region, and people in there speak it.

Spain is not a single nation, its a state with several historical nationalities.

Deter who from what? I don't think you know what deter means.

Enlighten me, please

It's not the meaning so much as the choice of prepositions. When you say "deter X from Y", usually Y is the thing being reduced/prevented and X is the actor who is now less likely to Y.

So the use of "[action] deterred from [region the action might occur in" was surprising and possibly incorrect. If you'd said "[...] deterred in [...]", it would have been perfectly grammatical English.

It's a weird nit to pick in such harsh language, especially on a comment section that's more likely than the typical HN comment page to attract people who are not native English speakers.

Okay. Well, X is specified in the phrase "... The main language of a nation... should be deterred..."

Spanish is the main language in Spain, the only spoken by everybody, therefore can be inferred easily that X = Spanish

Having this in mind, 'Y' can be inferred easily also.

"the idea that Spanish should be deterred from [being used in] part of a territory is surrealist"

Territory means 'Spain' in this context.

Hope this helps

No, it doesn't help, sorry. A language can't be deterred. Only animated objects, such as animals and people, can. Your sentence doesn't make sense.

Actually, deter has two uses. From MW:

    Definition of deter

    transitive verb
    1 : to turn aside, discourage, or prevent from acting
      she would not be deterred by threats
    2 : inhibit
      painting to deter rust

I have also seen "crime" and "war" given in examples of sense 2. To "deter the language", in sense 2, would be to deter speakers from using the language. You can sort of unify the two senses by treating "rust" or "war" or "crime" as willful entities - but in that case I don't see a reason you couldn't do the same for a language.

Do you actually fail to understand what pvaldes was trying to communicate?

Well, I know the general idea that he's trying to convey, since it's the same sort of message that I read in the nationalist press (e.g. El Mundo) day in day out, but I think if you intend to have a productive discussion you have to talk precisely, otherwise it's a waste of time. To say that a language is being "deterred" is not precise, it's vague and confusing, even if not technically incorrect (although I doubt that).

In general, Catalan nationalists tend to see bilingualism as a process by which one language (Catalan) is gradually being supplanted by another (Spanish). They are not really advocates for bilingualism.

I recall "Catalunya si, España también" being a unionist slogan. Did I misunderstand?

TIL there's an ¡Ay Carmela! movie. Recommended or not?

As an aside, here's a breakdown of who speaks Catalan vs Spanish, in Catalonia, as of 2018:

https://www.idescat.cat/novetats/?id=3446&lang=en

The quick version, in a single image, with the lightest area being the region of Barcelona:

https://i.imgur.com/tPiOuiz.png

Weird to call it "Spanish". Catalan is also "Spanish" (though you'll find a very small number of speakers in Southern France). Usually Catalan is opposed to Castilian.

The common term for the language we're talking about here is Spanish (in the English language), which is a distinct language from Catalan. Catalan may originate in Spain (and thus could be called Spanish-the-adjective, though that doesn't seem terribly useful conversationally), but it is most definitely not a dialect of Spanish-the-language.

Castilian Spanish, when used in English, is often used to denote the dialects spoken in Spain, as opposed to the dialects spoken in Latin America. This is not the topic at hand here, so there isn't much point in calling it Castilian (especially since many English speakers would not be familiar with that term) over Spanish.

Spanish /ˈspanɪʃ/

adjective

    relating to Spain, its people, or its language.

noun

    1. the people of Spain.
    2. a Romance language spoken in Spain and in much of Central and South America.

Yes It is.

It would be interesting to see how the described effect depends on linguistic proximity. Does bilingualism of e.g. English and Chinese or German and Turkish protect better against cognitive decline than Castilian and Catalan?

That would be interesting. FWIW the US State Department has observed a factor of 3 difference in time to teach anglophones various languages (think dutch vs mandarin) to B2 level:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24677256

I understand your point but you can make the same for a lot of research. You do research on what you get founding for.

They may simply research on topics they get founding and publish the nice results.

It's always good to be wary, but so far it seems that most studies in this area are in agreement, and that this phenomenon isn't specific to language, it seems to be the same for musicians.

So in theory you could potentially realize similar benefits without learning another spoken language.

Which could just as easily be a congratulations on the world creating the convoluted incentives to research this

By the same token, anyone claiming that this must be agitprop designed to promote a political agenda, is promoting their own agenda of nationalism.

Vielleicht sind die zweisprachigen Sprecher jedoch besser darauf vorbereitet, die Wahrheit zu finden: Sprache ist Politik - Es wird besser, je mehr Sie es verwenden.

Ganz meine Meinung. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23858477

> "The facts—man, happening, amount, place, time—are true in each case. They could be sworn to by the whole membership of an interfaith conference. But the interpretation placed on them—who communicates these facts to whom? why? when?—makes them into propaganda."

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