5 ms·

Yes, I haven’t read the paper but how can you control for correlated stuff here, e.g. bilingual people are likely to be richer, more intelligent, exercise more,

Yes, I haven’t read the paper but how can you control for correlated stuff here, e.g. bilingual people are likely to be richer, more intelligent, exercise more, eat better more varied food and have richer social lives. Maybe.

drdrey 6y ago
Are immigrants and their children likely to be richer, eat better, etc?
- Koshkin 6y ago
  Those who are bilingual, yes.
  - The_Precursor 6y ago
    > Those who are bilingual, yes. Wouldn't immigrants by nature have to be bilingual because they have to be able to communicate in the nation they immigrated to?
    - tuatoru 6y ago
      Go out. Look around. Talk to some people about their parents.
    - umanwizard 6y ago
      At least in the US, there are millions of people who don't speak English well or at all. Source: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2014/acs/acs-26.pdf https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2014/acs/acs-26...
    - Franciscouzo 6y ago
      There's a lot of immigration from Latin America though.
  - pvaldes 6y ago
    People that speaks fluent clingon must appear in the Forbes list then.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      Someday I'd like to hear the lines - What says Lord Stanley? will he bring his power? - My lord, he doth deny to come. - Off with his son George's head! in the original Klingon. Pursuing the synergy-recognising creative destruction of a Stanley[1] is no doubt in the wheelhouse of some on on the Forbes list. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bosworth_Field#Stanleys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bosworth_Field#Stanl...
- andy_ppp 6y ago
  There would need to be research done, nothing has been said if these people were all immigrants to Barcelona or the wages they were on, my guess is they are probably not truly random and replication will be difficult if we chose say bilingual in Wales, for example.
  - lolc 6y ago
    This study was not about an immigrant population: "we looked at whether in Barcelona – where everyone is more or less bilingual..."
  - pvaldes 6y ago
    There is not reason to think that inmigrant population is over-represented in the hospitals. Would be more logical to expect the opposite, in fact, as some immigrants could be more reluctant to go to the hospitals.
- hibbelig 6y ago
  If I were to immigrate to Barcelona I would learn (Galician) Spanish, but perhaps not Catalan. (Though it’s a beautiful language.) I guess I would count as monolingual in their study.
  - lentil_soup 6y ago
    Galician Spanish? Do you mean Castillian Spanish (which is another name for normal spanish)? Galician is a separate language
    - hibbelig 6y ago
      Thank you, I meant Castillian Spanish.
    - pvaldes 6y ago
      You can speak Spanish tainted by Galician words and modisms also. Is very common in Spanish speakers. The whole communication can be a 90% spanish and 10% Galician (or the opposite).
tropdrop 6y ago
This is why they chose Barcelona, where the use of 2 languages (Catalan and Spanish) was "highly variable" and everyone in the city spoke or at least understood 2 languages: "We wanted to take advantage of this variability, and instead of comparing monolingual and bilingual people, we looked at whether in Barcelona – where everyone is more or less bilingual – there was a certain degree of bilingualism that had neuroprotective benefits."
- andy_ppp 6y ago
  I think this doesn’t disprove the theory I’ve set out that people who know more languages than the average local population are likely to have other markers correlated with lower Alzheimer’s risk.
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    It's not about knowing more languages (I would be surprised to learn that they only knew two, after all it's Europe). This paper instead studies differences between people who actually use multiple languages, against people who don't. There's still corellation here, like professions where the lingua franca isn't the local language (programming, medicine, music (to some degree), sciences, etc). The paper claims the effect appears equally strong in all occupations though.
  - lentil_soup 6y ago
    But that's not the case here, Barcelona is a bilingual city. The average population speaks both Catalan and Spanish.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  Very obvious propaganda to promote an agenda, not more, not less. And don't make me start to talking about how normal is the mental health of the same people that trashed and burned Barcelona last years, because they felt "oppressed" by a man that died 30 years before they born. Or the lobby trying to erase the history claiming than Leonardo Da Vinci, Cervantes and "put your name here" were really from Catalonia. Very sane behavior, for sure. Trust me (or your gut if you prefer). You can find crazy people equally among bilingual, monolingual, translingual and people with just mischieving tongues. Just take a look at how mental asylums are distributed. This is just one of thousands of articles that support a patriotic narrative so are published. Is politics disguised as science. The opposite idea would never reach the journals.
pier25 6y ago
Between Catalan, Basque, and Galician, many people in Spain are bilingual (if not trilingual since English is quite common). Rich, poor, intelligent, idiot, etc.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
Have you got a source for any of that? I imagine a lot of demographic factors could confound such a study, but I don’t see why multilingual people would be richer/healthier/more educated. In a lot of western countries, I’d imagine a huge amount of the multilingual population would be made of less well off immigrants.
- princeb 6y ago
  in singapore, it is the opposite. the working class tend to be multilingual - nurses, deliverymen, (food) hawkers, construction workers, odd-job labourers. when you think of someone who has to juggle multiple languages - mandarin, cantonese, malay, tamil, a smattering of english - often as a necessity, it's someone who's had to hustle at the lower rungs of society. the educated class tend to be monolingual - researchers, policy makers, lawyers, bankers - they've only ever had to operate in environments where the only language used is english.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    I’m pretty sure the only places where being monolingual is common, are the countries where English is the dominant language. If you look at the whole population of the world, it’s more common to know more than one language than it is to know only one. If you’re born in a place that speaks a language other than English, then learning English is very common, and a lot of places (like Singapore) have multiple common languages, where people often speak more than one. Singaporeans will tend to speak English, and the language of their ethnic heritage. Plenty of Malaysians speak Malaysian and Chinese or English. Most people in Indonesia speak Indonesian and their local regional language. A lot of people in India speak their regional language and English or Hindi... I’m not sure it’s a sign of social status in English speaking countries. The wealthier you are, the more you can just expect everybody around you to speak English. Where I live, the most common language I’d expect somebody to know besides English is Spanish, and the local Spanish speaking population isn’t known for their excessive wealth.
    - b0rsuk 6y ago
not_a_moth 6y ago
While sampling equally from different income groups might clear up these variables, from what I've been able to find some of highest rates of dementia are in relatively small rich European countries. Those countries have longer life expectancies so it's hard to do apples-to-apples for rich countries to poor countries. I do think the "use it or lose it" model for neurodegeneration makes a lot of sense, in the same way you lose muscles if you don't use them, so bilingual is an interesting proxy for greater brain use. Although I also think the lack-of-sleep model makes sense too so I really don't know.

drdrey 6y ago

Are immigrants and their children likely to be richer, eat better, etc?

Koshkin 6y ago
Those who are bilingual, yes.
- The_Precursor 6y ago
  > Those who are bilingual, yes. Wouldn't immigrants by nature have to be bilingual because they have to be able to communicate in the nation they immigrated to?
  - tuatoru 6y ago
    Go out. Look around. Talk to some people about their parents.
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    At least in the US, there are millions of people who don't speak English well or at all. Source: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2014/acs/acs-26.pdf https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2014/acs/acs-26...
  - Franciscouzo 6y ago
    There's a lot of immigration from Latin America though.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  People that speaks fluent clingon must appear in the Forbes list then.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Someday I'd like to hear the lines - What says Lord Stanley? will he bring his power? - My lord, he doth deny to come. - Off with his son George's head! in the original Klingon. Pursuing the synergy-recognising creative destruction of a Stanley[1] is no doubt in the wheelhouse of some on on the Forbes list. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bosworth_Field#Stanleys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bosworth_Field#Stanl...
andy_ppp 6y ago
There would need to be research done, nothing has been said if these people were all immigrants to Barcelona or the wages they were on, my guess is they are probably not truly random and replication will be difficult if we chose say bilingual in Wales, for example.
- lolc 6y ago
  This study was not about an immigrant population: "we looked at whether in Barcelona – where everyone is more or less bilingual..."
- pvaldes 6y ago
  There is not reason to think that inmigrant population is over-represented in the hospitals. Would be more logical to expect the opposite, in fact, as some immigrants could be more reluctant to go to the hospitals.
hibbelig 6y ago
If I were to immigrate to Barcelona I would learn (Galician) Spanish, but perhaps not Catalan. (Though it’s a beautiful language.) I guess I would count as monolingual in their study.
- lentil_soup 6y ago
  Galician Spanish? Do you mean Castillian Spanish (which is another name for normal spanish)? Galician is a separate language
  - hibbelig 6y ago
    Thank you, I meant Castillian Spanish.
  - pvaldes 6y ago
    You can speak Spanish tainted by Galician words and modisms also. Is very common in Spanish speakers. The whole communication can be a 90% spanish and 10% Galician (or the opposite).

tropdrop 6y ago

This is why they chose Barcelona, where the use of 2 languages (Catalan and Spanish) was "highly variable" and everyone in the city spoke or at least understood 2 languages: "We wanted to take advantage of this variability, and instead of comparing monolingual and bilingual people, we looked at whether in Barcelona – where everyone is more or less bilingual – there was a certain degree of bilingualism that had neuroprotective benefits."

andy_ppp 6y ago
I think this doesn’t disprove the theory I’ve set out that people who know more languages than the average local population are likely to have other markers correlated with lower Alzheimer’s risk.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  It's not about knowing more languages (I would be surprised to learn that they only knew two, after all it's Europe). This paper instead studies differences between people who actually use multiple languages, against people who don't. There's still corellation here, like professions where the lingua franca isn't the local language (programming, medicine, music (to some degree), sciences, etc). The paper claims the effect appears equally strong in all occupations though.
- lentil_soup 6y ago
  But that's not the case here, Barcelona is a bilingual city. The average population speaks both Catalan and Spanish.
pvaldes 6y ago
Very obvious propaganda to promote an agenda, not more, not less. And don't make me start to talking about how normal is the mental health of the same people that trashed and burned Barcelona last years, because they felt "oppressed" by a man that died 30 years before they born. Or the lobby trying to erase the history claiming than Leonardo Da Vinci, Cervantes and "put your name here" were really from Catalonia. Very sane behavior, for sure. Trust me (or your gut if you prefer). You can find crazy people equally among bilingual, monolingual, translingual and people with just mischieving tongues. Just take a look at how mental asylums are distributed. This is just one of thousands of articles that support a patriotic narrative so are published. Is politics disguised as science. The opposite idea would never reach the journals.

pier25 6y ago

Between Catalan, Basque, and Galician, many people in Spain are bilingual (if not trilingual since English is quite common). Rich, poor, intelligent, idiot, etc.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

Have you got a source for any of that? I imagine a lot of demographic factors could confound such a study, but I don’t see why multilingual people would be richer/healthier/more educated. In a lot of western countries, I’d imagine a huge amount of the multilingual population would be made of less well off immigrants.

princeb 6y ago
in singapore, it is the opposite. the working class tend to be multilingual - nurses, deliverymen, (food) hawkers, construction workers, odd-job labourers. when you think of someone who has to juggle multiple languages - mandarin, cantonese, malay, tamil, a smattering of english - often as a necessity, it's someone who's had to hustle at the lower rungs of society. the educated class tend to be monolingual - researchers, policy makers, lawyers, bankers - they've only ever had to operate in environments where the only language used is english.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  I’m pretty sure the only places where being monolingual is common, are the countries where English is the dominant language. If you look at the whole population of the world, it’s more common to know more than one language than it is to know only one. If you’re born in a place that speaks a language other than English, then learning English is very common, and a lot of places (like Singapore) have multiple common languages, where people often speak more than one. Singaporeans will tend to speak English, and the language of their ethnic heritage. Plenty of Malaysians speak Malaysian and Chinese or English. Most people in Indonesia speak Indonesian and their local regional language. A lot of people in India speak their regional language and English or Hindi... I’m not sure it’s a sign of social status in English speaking countries. The wealthier you are, the more you can just expect everybody around you to speak English. Where I live, the most common language I’d expect somebody to know besides English is Spanish, and the local Spanish speaking population isn’t known for their excessive wealth.
  - b0rsuk 6y ago

not_a_moth 6y ago

While sampling equally from different income groups might clear up these variables, from what I've been able to find some of highest rates of dementia are in relatively small rich European countries. Those countries have longer life expectancies so it's hard to do apples-to-apples for rich countries to poor countries. I do think the "use it or lose it" model for neurodegeneration makes a lot of sense, in the same way you lose muscles if you don't use them, so bilingual is an interesting proxy for greater brain use. Although I also think the lack-of-sleep model makes sense too so I really don't know.