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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 rest

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?

copperx 11y ago
> 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.
- personlurking 11y ago
  > 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).
- Natanael_L 11y ago
  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...)
  - jfaucett 11y ago
    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.
beachstartup 11y ago
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.
- thedavinci2000 11y ago
  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.
  - cryptotype 11y ago
    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/S0887617707000224 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887617707... 2. Gatt et al. (2015). http://ijb.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/13/1367006915572399.abstract http://ijb.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/13/136700691557...
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  - beachstartup 11y ago
    > 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.
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jasim 11y ago
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.

copperx 11y ago

> 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.

personlurking 11y ago
> 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).
Natanael_L 11y ago
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...)
- jfaucett 11y ago
  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.

beachstartup 11y ago

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.

thedavinci2000 11y ago
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.
- cryptotype 11y ago
  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/S0887617707000224 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887617707... 2. Gatt et al. (2015). http://ijb.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/13/1367006915572399.abstract http://ijb.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/13/136700691557...
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- beachstartup 11y ago
  > 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.

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jasim 11y ago

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.