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>You lose nothing by learning other people's language That's not quite true. Bilingual speakers tend to have a smaller vocabularies in each individual language

>You lose nothing by learning other people's language That's not quite true. Bilingual speakers tend to have a smaller vocabularies in each individual language than monolingual speakers (even though they have a larger total vocabulary across both languages). According to some studies monolingual speakers also have faster word retrieval and better verbal fluency overall. Of course this has to be weighed against the benefits of learning another language, but there are costs.

jean- 8y ago
> Bilingual speakers tend to have a smaller vocabularies in each individual language than monolingual speakers Do you have any citations to support this? From the research I have read (and my own anecdotal experience) this is not necessarily the case, especially when taking into account the bilingual speakers' dominant language. See e.g. Pearson et al. (1993). Lexical Development in Bilingual Infants and Toddlers: Comparison to Monolingual Norms. Allman (2005). Vocabulary Size and Accuracy of Monolingual and Bilingual Preschool Children. – although note the difference in English vs Spanish vocabulary scores for monolingual vs bilingual speakers.
- learc83 8y ago
  That's not a controversial position. Neither of your links refute that bilinguals tend to have smaller vocabularies than monolinguals across each individual language. From your 2nd link: "However, on tests of vocabulary bilinguals frequently seem to perform at lower levels than monolinguals (Ben Zeev, 1977b; Doyle, Champagne, & Segalowitz, 1978). The reason for this seems to be that bilingual children have to learn two different labels for everything, which reduces the frequency of a particular word in either language" "These findings also support Bialystok’s (2001) suggestions that bilinguals have a greater Total Vocabulary than monolinguals..." The conclusion says nothing about vocabularies within individual languages, it's only talking about total vocabulary across languages. Here's another study: "The profile effects indicated comparable performance of bilingual and monolingual children in basic reading tasks, but lower vocabulary scores for the bilinguals in both languages." "The distributed characteristic of bilingual knowledge provides an explanation for the low standard scores that have often been reported in bilingual children on vocabulary tests in both the first language (L1) and the L2 (Ben Zeev, 1977a; Fernández et al., 1992; Pearson & Fernández, 1994; Umbel et al., 1992). The low scores do not indicate that bilingual children are poor vocabulary learners, but that some of the vocabulary possessed by bilingual children is encoded in the L1 but not the L2, and vice versa, the signature pattern of the distributed characteristic." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358777/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358777/ If you want to read more you can follow up with the citations from that last paper.

jean- 8y ago

> Bilingual speakers tend to have a smaller vocabularies in each individual language than monolingual speakers Do you have any citations to support this? From the research I have read (and my own anecdotal experience) this is not necessarily the case, especially when taking into account the bilingual speakers' dominant language. See e.g. Pearson et al. (1993). Lexical Development in Bilingual Infants and Toddlers: Comparison to Monolingual Norms. Allman (2005). Vocabulary Size and Accuracy of Monolingual and Bilingual Preschool Children. – although note the difference in English vs Spanish vocabulary scores for monolingual vs bilingual speakers.

learc83 8y ago
That's not a controversial position. Neither of your links refute that bilinguals tend to have smaller vocabularies than monolinguals across each individual language. From your 2nd link: "However, on tests of vocabulary bilinguals frequently seem to perform at lower levels than monolinguals (Ben Zeev, 1977b; Doyle, Champagne, & Segalowitz, 1978). The reason for this seems to be that bilingual children have to learn two different labels for everything, which reduces the frequency of a particular word in either language" "These findings also support Bialystok’s (2001) suggestions that bilinguals have a greater Total Vocabulary than monolinguals..." The conclusion says nothing about vocabularies within individual languages, it's only talking about total vocabulary across languages. Here's another study: "The profile effects indicated comparable performance of bilingual and monolingual children in basic reading tasks, but lower vocabulary scores for the bilinguals in both languages." "The distributed characteristic of bilingual knowledge provides an explanation for the low standard scores that have often been reported in bilingual children on vocabulary tests in both the first language (L1) and the L2 (Ben Zeev, 1977a; Fernández et al., 1992; Pearson & Fernández, 1994; Umbel et al., 1992). The low scores do not indicate that bilingual children are poor vocabulary learners, but that some of the vocabulary possessed by bilingual children is encoded in the L1 but not the L2, and vice versa, the signature pattern of the distributed characteristic." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358777/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358777/ If you want to read more you can follow up with the citations from that last paper.