Slashdot Mirror
Bilingualism Delays Onset of Dementia
Dee writes with word of a Canadian study indicating that lifelong bilingualism delays the onset of dementia by 4 years. The scientists were reportedly "dazzled" by the results. From the article: "The researchers determined that the mean age of onset of dementia symptoms in the monolingual group was 71.4 years, while the bilingual group was 75.5 years. This difference remained even after considering the possible effect of cultural differences, immigration, formal education, employment and even gender as influencers in the results. "
Wow, does that include Fortan and Cobal? (Couldn't be C# because it requires lifelong fluency.)
Does learning another language make you less susceptible to dementia, or does being the sort of person who learns another language mean that you already were less susceptible?
It would be interesting to compare the dementia rates in bilingual people in unilingual(?) cultures and bilingual people in bilingual cultures, but it looks like this study was limited to a couple of hundred people at a single mental health clinic.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
And how long does it take for me to become (and stay) bilingual? Is there a net gain, or would my time be better spent elsewhere?
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
After reading the article, I am deeply concerned about the lack of scrutiny on the way these "studies" are carried out. No controls, no methods to specifically rule out the influence of nationality, GEOGRAPHY (important, because environmental factors factor into neurological symptoms), race, gender.... ?? Who funds these studies anyways?
I can understand English and whatever language New Zealanders speak, do I count as bilingual?
:P
Were all of the languages the same, or was this a general trend? Like, if you spoke both German and, say, Japanese, would you have a slightly longer or shorter shelf life than, say, Spanish and Portuguese?
it's too bad political doublespeak seems to ensure it.
Does knowing a programming language (or two) help? This wasn't addressed in the article, of course, but I'm curious. Also, I wonder if the ability to read musical notation would have the same (or some) effect.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Et un peu de Francais.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
More useful connections in the brain, longer for age-related deterioration to takes its effect. Now if only the scientists can figure out how to prevent the deterioration. I bet having purpose is a big factor. Special purpose.
Some people think bilingualism is something for 3rd world countries. Of course I've only heard this sentiment expressed in the USA.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Does Toki Pona count? It's amazing what one can do with only 120 words.
So at what age is dementia onsite likely when one doesn't have fluency in even one language like, say, George W. Bush?
The real reason why bilinguals live longer is because they don't have to work as hard to make a living. At my work (city hall) bilinguals get $600 extra per month just for knowing another language. I'm in the same paygrade as a bilingual animal waste disposal person (it's an actual job). Talk about a shitty job
Must be why the Canadian government hasn't gone crazy yet.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I'm bilingual and have been demented since I was born.
Are you fluent in Maori? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_language)
Except if you get AIDS
Ya lo sabía! Es una ventaja más de ser bilingüe entre las muchas que ya hay.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
I wonder what the differences would be for bilingualism in closely related languages, such as the Latin derived romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, etc) as opposed to languages further apart eg Japanese vs English.
Would a person fluent in both Japanese and English be less susceptible that someone fluent in in two of the romance languages?
ACK NAK RST
Be confused with multilingual voices in your head for much of your life... or just a concentrated dose for the last four years.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I was curious about the claim (and standard deviations) and pulled up the paper. The mean for monolinguals is 71.4 +/- 9.6 and the mean for bilinguals is 75.5 +/- 8.5. Now those std deviations are 1*sigma (68.3%) leaving a lot of overlap between the two distributions. However, they claim that these two distributions are statistically different by an F-test (if I'm not mistaken, which assumes that both distributions are normal). I'm not a clinical statician and I'm used to working with numbers closer to Avogadro's; how statistically significant are these results? Can you make binary statements like this with such a small pool and such close distributions?
I find this interesting. Since these are apparently, "life long" bilinguals, they must have learned the second language at an early age.
I would seem that having two languages one's whole life would somehow affect a brain. However, I think research shows that life-long bilinguals actually use the same region of their brain when speaking either language.
As shown by this article - google cache - the real site barely worked. just google "bilingual brocas"
Perhaps bilingualism gives the brain some kind of extra strength - or flexibility. Maybe more than just the broca's area gets an extra workout, and that effort pays off in the long marathon of dementia.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
"where did I put mu glasses" in French?
"At my work (city hall) bilinguals get $600 extra per month just for knowing another language."
I fail to see your point. Don't additional skills usually warrant an increase in paygrade?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
The study only had 184 patients from a single treatment center. There is selection bias, since the study only sampled patients who were already suffering from memory loss. How many other bilingual immigrants with memory loss are lurking in the general population, who aren't going to memory loss clinics due to lack of knowledge? Also, what method did they use to adjust for "cultural differences, immigration, formal education, employment and even gender" with only 184 patients?
The study only proves that bilingual patients who arrived at a particular treatment center were, on average, 4 years older than monolingual patients. It does NOT provide a causal link between bilingualism and cognitive reserve.
What if I know more languages? Does it increase even more?
-Palal
In other words, onset of dementia can be avoid if the voices in your head are not able to understand each other....
I guess its safe to learn LISP after all....
Of learning both QWERTY and Dvorak? I just got started learning Dvorak, and I already know QWERTY.
Of course, I'm also already trilingual plus i'm starting to learn chinese and japanese.
I'm thinking (yes, be very afraid) about learning Latin for the hell of it. What's the best way to learn this dead langauge without going crazy?
Most nem fogom megmagyarázni hogy mi a francot jelent amit írtam, legyen elég annyi hogy 4 évvel tovább élek mint ti, haha.
I kind of like the idea of living 4 years longer. Does the effect stack with more than 2 languages? If that's the case then it ist Zeit für ein neu schprache gelearnen.
Sometimes the idea that my english/american is most likely better (barring accent, but could be trained) than half of the people speaking it as a native language scares me.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
If this is true (previous statements point out this far from proves it) then maybe it is because there are more neural connections there to decay (therefore taking longer). Does anyone know of any studies linking things like university education or overall knowledge base with dementia onset?
Oh please tell me that it's exponential! I can always learn more languages...
Then again, I'm bilingual and people are always saying I'm demented.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Whoever posted this needs to take up another language immediately. Maybe then their mind will hold together well enough to stop them posting something so old.
IMO, I think that this has to do with constant learning.
;)).
With regards to language, one constantly has to keep updating the colloquialisms. But, when two (or more) languages are concerned, one much also keep in mind what is the equivalent word/phrase in the other language(s). Then there's the whole translating between languages. That would require somewhat fast thought as to not lose subtleties.
I imagine the same is true for anyone that constantly learns and/or has to do consistently high level critical thinking. Keeping the brain active has its benefits. I mean, how many academic researchers go nutty statistically speaking (at least the ones that didn't start that way
I remember hearing about a master chess player in his old age complaining that he couldn't see as far into the game anymore. Then after he died they found out that this technically had advanced Alzheimer's. They conjectured that having played the game his whole life, the brain had so many "connections" that the Alzheimer's just cut off a lot of them, but not the majority/all of them.
Basically, the phrase, "If you don't use it, you lose it" has more than just a couple applications.
We had a person apply for a programming position, and on his resume, he listed polyglotism as one of his areas of interest. One of the other interviewers said "That's terrific! All of us here speak another language - let's see - Portugese, Spanish, Spanish, and Japanese. Which languages do you speak?"
The poor guy sunk about six inches into his chair as he confessed "Well... none, really."
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
the two languages happen to be C and Java--then, dementia sets in instantly (I should know!). Fortunately, it's partially reversible.
I am the Son of a Diplomat. This means that every 4 to 5 years, we went to a different country as a family. We _ALL_ managed to learn the foreign language in ~12 months (this means that we could function normally in school, understood the local television and had no problems reading newspapers). After 24 months, one can master the language to the point where literature-studies are not harder in any language. Of course, it helps to really live _IN_ the country among locals, not in some kind of gated community where everybody speaks your language. And we never got satelite-TV, so all TV-chanels were in the local language. End effect is that my whole family is multi-lingual. Even my parents, who where significantly older than 5 when they learned these other languages.
In the book 'Everything Bad is Good For You', they mentioned several studies that have come to the same general conclusion - staying mentally active tends to reduce both the incidence and seriousness of mental disease. One nunnery they studied, whose order believes than an idle mind is the devil's playground, the incidence of mental disease was a fraction of the total population, and the overall lifespans were tremendously greater (the two librarians were 97 and 99 years old)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
As long as we're talking about human languages on Slashdot for a change, let me give you my pitch: STUDY A LANGUAGE. I'm a native speaker of English who also speaks passable Japanese and can program. There aren't exactly tens of thousands of people with that skillset. There are more than a few positions that require it (including my current job), and every time I hear of a new one the hiring official practically begs me to introduce him to anyone I know who would fit the bill. I'm not exactly hot stuff as a programmer -- in fact, I bet you could find dozens of people who are my equal or better at any graduating class in India. None of them can do my job. This gives me job security and a variety of employment options in a quite lucrative little niche which has a nice, deep moat around it that keeps out competitors.
If you're planning on a career in IT, get yourself an answer to the question "What can you do that I can't do with two and a half Indians for the same price?" "I speak a foreign language" is an easy and sufficient answer to that question.
I'd rank languages in terms of priority by a quick mental guesstimate of our trade with the appropriate countries divided by the number of Americans who speak the language. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are going to be high on the list. Arabic is an up-and-comer, particularly if you desire to work for the federal government. Spanish is not a great choice because we have plenty of American bilinguals. I wouldn't personally recommend the European languages because the market sizes are smaller but, hey, there is money to be made in facilitating communication and commerce with Italy or Poland and SOMEBODY is making it.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Correlation does not equal causation. All people's brains are not perfectly equal. Perhaps suffering from dementia later means the brain has more processing capacity to spare, thus making learning two languages easier earlier in life.
The girlfriend. She loves bilingualism.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Kuplah!
Table-ized A.I.
Test subjects say "Me gusta!"
Hegh batlh
They are always grasping at any straws they possibly can reach to push their agenda regarding everyone else having to be Swedish-speaking so that they don't feel like they are in the minority. They LOVE the idea already that bilingualism makes a person holier than anything -- as long, of course, as one of the languages happens to be Swedish. Their unyielding faith and low-quality arguments make them seem like a local branch office of Creationism.
Based on the supposed sense of tolerance and civilization their language brings to everyone it touches (particularly, Finnish-speakers), our government already mandates Swedish in the most ludicrous ways, even in things where the language is completely irrelevant (like completing a Master's in CS), just to make you have to live it and love it. If you don't, well, too bad, you aren't supposed to exist here if you don't agree to pass the language-political litmus test. Their greatest idea is "language-bathing" Finnish-speaking kids by denying them an education in their own native language. They would even have Finnish taught to them in Swedish. This, of course, destroys the base of a Finnish-speaking educated class and returns us to the darkest medieval days of Swedish rule. All this in the name of tolerance towards the minority.
I can already see them pushing mandatory Swedish on public health grounds... after all, we're getting older as a nation and dementia is a major concern. Who on Earth would want to get DEMENTIA? If you are only Finnish-speaking [that is, you don't speak Swedish and no matter how many other languages you do speak], you're probably already demented though...
I married an Asian from a "developing" country who bootstrapped herself from merchant's daughter to earning a Ph.D. from a good US university. Having "moved up" as you say, she now is deeply frustrated at the lack of movement in her country as a whole. It seems it is very easy to become westernized in thought, and lose that hope for your countrymen when you realize how much of your culture seems to reinforce the developing (but not developed) status of the economy. I have many (scientist) friends in the US who have similarly come to the US from Western Europe for studies and found they never wanted to go back to their "backwater" country. We're still young gen-X'ers, so I have a hard time seeing the US as sitting back on a crumbling past. We're still busy making our past, some stupid politicians notwithstanding.
And to stay on topic, I have found myself frustratingly monolingual after almost three years living with her in her country while she makes a go of "giving back" some of her western knowledge. But, I can only blame myself for keeping a job where I work with other US citizens via telephone, internet, and frequent business trips to North America. In effect, I am stuck in a cocoon of English here at home, since she speaks it fluently and there is nothing to force me to sink or swim. I can see that one needs to allocate a real fraction of their life to learning a new language, meaning time not spent learning something else.
On the other hand, I found that after studying German for about 6 years as a child, to the point where I could read some decent literature as long as I kept a dictoniary handy, I was able to learn a pretty decent amount of Spanish from just one introductory course in high school. Unfortunately, that has all faded away as I had no practical use for either.
I'm fluent in both English and profanity, does that count?
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
This is why I do crossword puzzles. I have problems remembering words when I'm speaking; the word I want just isn't there to use. I think crossword puzzles, which I've gotten better at over the years I've been doing them, help me keep my vocabulary active and keep those synapses firing. Assuming I'm predisposed to Alhzeimer's (and I might be; one great-grandparent had it), this should help keep those particular synapses from turning to mush.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Just by watching Dora the explorer. Thanks Nick Jr.
Task Mangler
I know C++ and Java and many more! Wait that's multilingual. What do you mean computer languages don't count?! What were we talking about again?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Just keep repeating it to yourself, in however many languages you speak.
KeS
Privet, Kak vas zovut? Menya zovut? Eta ne vazhno
This is why I shake my head at social sciences. While it might be interesting to investigate; there should be some hypothesis that they can prove, either by a more significant statistical or less confounded studies before they publish.
OK, fine, various weird dialects are correct then. But "correct" English (as defined by, say, your average skilled editor) is a very useful language to know. It helps a lot with communication and clarity, for preventing ambiguity and misunderstandings, and for creating the desired tone of voice (as perceived by the audience) in a piece of writing. So whether you want to call that "correct" English or "standard" English or "anal-retentive proscriptivist copy-editor" English, I don't really care -- but it's damn useful to have it and to have a relatively uniform definition of what it is and uniform education in it.
Language isn't just about conversing with those you interact with on a daily basis. If you want to communicate with people outside your immediate cultural group, it's awfully useful to have some standardization. I think this is what most people are driving at when they complain about bad English skills among native speakers. Since standardization implies some proscriptivism, someone has to do the proscribing. Perhaps the linguists should stop complaining about the proscriptivism, do some proscribing, and give the 7th grade English teachers some better rules to teach -- I'm sure any linguist will agree that your average grammar class does a fairly bad job of teaching grammar, even when compared to the language it's trying to teach the grammar of (as opposed to whatever dialect or form the people in the class normally use).
So I am forced to respectfully disagree with you and say that there is something wrong with African American Vernacular English -- not in any abstract, objective sense, and not when communicating with others who are fluent in it, but in using it to attempt to communicate with those who aren't fluent in it, or in using it in situations where it isn't socially expected. And plenty of people do exactly that. I know several people who are effectively bilingual in it and "standard" English, and quite fluidly shift between the two as appropriate to the situation. That seems entirely appropriate. But expecting other people to speak your language in a social situation where the norm is for you to speak theirs is, at best, rude -- be it ignorant American tourists abroad or illegal Mexican immigrants in the US.
Does using automatic translation programs count ?
Seriously dude, put it back in your pants.
...correlation won't mean causation in this case. Or any case, in the case of an article like this showing up on /.
Just a hunch, but hey, what would I know?
Is there an echo in here?
Listen to my music.
Je suis Napoleon!
Ok, you gain four years of lifespan, but learning a language takes about five years of your life, full time. I, for example, speak three languages and graduated from high school at 28.
one week to learn icelandic, the most difficult language in the work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet impressive, insnt it
I guess the Reader's Digest was right all those years: It Pays To Increase Your Word Power!
(I used to read those and quiz myself with those columns all the time when I was in junior high and high school. I still throw some people when I use a word that not many people other than William F. Buckley use...)
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
quote : Native speakers automatically speak perfectly correct English, since correct English is determined by how native speakers speak.
Correct language (english/french/german) is determined not by academic, but by how the average native speaker speaks that language. Note the accent on average: it is important. This means that some below and above average will not speak the "native language". I cannot give example in english but in my native language (translated in english) the correct way to speak is "which is what I mean" whereas a minority says "that is that I mean". Obviously since the majority use the correct form, then the minority native speaker using the second form are in error, on the contrary to the opinion you support.
Language *HAS TO* mold itself for the majority of people in some sort of average understood by said majority. It is after all an instrument of communication, and if everybody speaks its own idiom, then it lost completly its purpose as communication tool. Now what I won't argue against, is that "that average" language evolve with time, sometimes yes toward simplification against "artificial proscriptivist norms".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Title of the article: "Bilingualism Has Protective Effect In Delaying Onset Of Dementia By Four Years, Canadian Study Shows"
That's either stupid, ignorant, or deliberate deception. The study did not prove causality. It showed that two phenomena seemed to be related.
Here's a quote that says what was actually shown: "Our study found that speaking two languages throughout one's life appears to be associated with [my emphasis] a delay in the onset of symptoms of dementia by four years compared to those who speak one language,"...
It's common that editors try to get attention by claiming that scientific investigation is important than it really is. I don't know what happened in this instance, but it's difficult for me to believe that the editors of a medical journal would be so ignorant about science that they would not know they were mis-reporting it.
I'm surprised not to see any comments regarding the ridiculousness of drawing any conclusions based on a sample so small. I'm sure that another sample of less than two hundred could be used to prove the exact opposite.
Sorry, nothing profound to put here! (http://www.abacus4.com/
I know this is only annecdotal, but my good friend works at Asian nursing home. They hire billigual people to help the elderly, because after the onset of dementia, many of the patients only remember their native tongue. Their children who were raised in the US without being trained in their parent's language often find themselves unable to communicate with their elderly parents.
Toki Pona is indeed a very interesting language. On the other side, Mandrin, the language spoken by over a billion people, also as a relatively small set of basic words, where "new" words are created by putting together the basic words. An interesting fact is that some basic words have no longer any meaning in themselves and only occur in combinations with other basic words. I have been living with a Mandrin native speaking lady for over ten years and have become aware of the effects this has had on her way of expressing herself in English.
...that the article is inaccurate, because I'd really like to say (to join in with other Slashdotters in showing off bilingual skills): Nihongo wo manande yokatta. (Ninchishou tte yokunai kara)
;)
Or...um...No me gusta demencia
Muerde mi brilliante metalico trasero!
I wonder if the added years of mental clarity significantly affects the estimates for long people will work. After all, we are working in less physically stressfull ways, and multilingualism is definetly on the rise in Europe (due to immigration, and more population movement - I am Norwegian, my working language is English, my girlfriend is Portuguese, and I will soon study in Hungary).
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Corelation == Causation
/. has had a higher amount of stories like this than normal the last 6 months or so.
Seems like
I think people who speak two languages would on average have more mental activity overall than those who only speak one language. If you work out your brain, it will be stronger and you can resist dementia and degradation from old age. If you work out your body, it will be resist health problems and old age.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
According to some anime I watched the other day, they're "Highly Quarified" :]
:] They usually seem to do quite well in English, for the most part, perhaps because it's a mandatory part of their education. I can hardly blame them when they have to learn to pronounce that many hundreds of sounds not found in Japanese, especially when my Japanese is so terrible and I have to learn the thousands of kanji they use to make up for having so few unique sounds...
Just joking
Plenty of European "white folks" speak at least two languages - often their home country's language and English, but also other regional languages. If you're going to go down the path of stereotyping everyone different from you (following a lot of white folk, btw), at least get it right: you're probably really mainly thinking of Americans and/or British white folk.
I am not an expert, but it just fits into the several pieces of information I have. For a long time it was thought that nerve cells like in the brain does not regenerate. New connections between brain cells might be created, but dead brain cells cannot be replaced, so the absolute number of cells can only decrease. This seems to be wrong. It could be shown that learning a language actually increases the number of cells in certain brain areas. Dementia might at least partly the result of more cells dying than new cells formed. And this might partly be the result of life style. Knowing a second language simply might mean that one starts with more cells to begin with.
h tm
http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/926345803.html
Similar effects should be possible by constant learning new and different stuff. I do suspect that learning one computer language might also qualify, but probably not learning a second or third. The second and third computer language might not require new cells, but only new connections when the secondary languages are 'explained' in terms of the first learned computer language. If someone is a technician, literature might help. If someone is proficient in humanities, dealing with math might be a good way to remain active.
http://biology.about.com/library/weekly/aa102199.
I've heard talking in tongues and clearly they seem to be suffering from dementia!
If you exercise, it's understandable that you'll be fitter longer. Bilingualism is to the brain like living in a hilly terrain to the legs. I'm dazzled that the scientists would be dazzled by a finding like this.
Yesterday was the time to do it right. Are we having a REVOLUTION yet?
"Besa mi brillante trasero metálico!"
It's not "extremely difficult to acquire a language after [14]." It was much easier for me to learn Russian at the age of 28 than, say, French at the age of twelve: I had more practice in learning languages, you see. I'm not saying that neurology has nothing to do with it, though: I have more of an accent in languages I've picked up as an adult than with languages I learned as a small child, and haven't managed to master the subtleties of grammar the same way. In practice these are pretty minor considerations; for most practical purposes my Russian is just fine.
One of the reasons I'm learning Spanish is to have more words for variable names in my programs.
That means that you have two native languages. My native language is English. I learned Irish in school and German in school and University but I'm not bilingual (or multilingual). In my Uni class, there was a girl who was bilingual because she learned Irish and English as native languages, i.e. as she was learning language as a child, she learned both Irish and English.
So, acquiring another language after learning language as an infant does not make you bilingual. As a side note, bilinguals are supposed to find it much easier to pick up extra languages than people who have only been exposed to one language whilst growing up.
I am a lifelong bilingual (English/French), and I have quite distinct personality traits depending on the language I'm using. In English, I am reserved and polite whereas in French, I am more outgoing, brash and tend to swear more.
If I go out for an evening with Francophone friends, we drink wine, live to eat (expensive "fine" food), and talk about each other. If I go out with Anglophones, we drink beer, eat to live (cheap familiar food like pizza), and talk about current affairs. There are more jokes in English, but more sex and ribaldry in French.
It's a nice balance. I suspect if I only spent time with French folk, I'll eventually die of liver failure, whereas if I only spent time with Anglophones, I'll die of heart disease. I can't be bothered to check which is statistically likely to kill me first, but surely I'm hedging my risk between the two?
I think it just takes people around them 4 years to figure out they're talking to themselves in one language and responding in the other rather than translating as it seems.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Not to mention that an awful lot of NON-white non-immigrant Americans also only know English.
From a recent discussion on how to learn Latin by self-study: http://community.livejournal.com/latin/326666.html
Thanks Slashdot I owe you 4 years.
Wow, wait untill I tell Stacy she can get $600 a month just for being Bi.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
If I'm thinking and speaking in French how will I be able to tell?
c, perl, c++, java, c#, python, sh, ruby... does c/perl make make one go mad earlier or later?
Why UNIX?
Latin is useful in IT!
I have a sign on my office door: "Ita erat quando hic adveni."
``This difference remained even after considering the possible effect of cultural differences, immigration, formal education, employment and even gender as influencers in the results.''
What about eating healthy?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Europanto is a language that mixes together the best of the major European languages into a mix that even a non-speaker can understand.
Ici eine sample:
Eine terrible menace incumbe over el Kingdom des Angleterra. Poor Regina Elisabeth habe spent todo seine dinero in charmingantes hats und pumpkinose carrosses und maintenow habe keine penny left por acquire de Champagne dat necessite zum celebrate Prince Charles anniversario op el 14 Novembro. (Diego Marani)
I forgot about pig latin. That means in addition to elvish and klingon, I know pig elvish and pig klingon. That puts me up to 6 human languages and 12 computer languages.
I'm going to live 4*(6+12)=72 years longer than average!
So, would my potential dementia come 6 or 8 years later?
Bilingual? I haven't been bilingual since I was 10. I speak 7 languages and i wonder how long I will live...
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
What do you call a person that speaks three languages (tri-lingual)
What do you call a person that speaks two languages (bi-lingual)
What do you call a person that speaks one language
*drum roll*
American
You always point your finger at the bad guy, but what if the bad guy points his finger at you?
If the voices talk to me in Spanish, does that mean dementia is 4 years further off for me?
The real reason why bilinguals live longer is because they don't have to work as hard to make a living.
Oh, shut the hell up. The vast majority of the population of the world has a tendency to know some English (as a second language). There are many many many of them who have taken the time and been talented enough to learn it fluently. And plenty of those are commonly referred to as wetbacks, are the victims of police brutality, and are abused by the US system.
I live in St Petersburg, FL, and there are tons of Hispanic people in Tampa (just across the bay), with the population growing in St Pete. I know so many bilingual people who can't get a job because they speak English with an accent. I know a 45-year old doctor (a cardiologist specializing in congenital defects) from Venezuela who is attending nursing school because he can't attend the 9 years of training necessary for him to practice in the US, and he can't get a job anywhere that doesn't treat him like a migrant worker, because he fucks up his tenses, and enunciates incorrectly. Oh, and he's been working at USF making fucking 16k a year (a fucking cardiologist!) for 8 months being promised benefits for 4. Oh, and his wife is a cancer survivor and needs to be scanned and he can't afford it. OH YEAH, his fucking daughter has some disease I can't pronounce, and has to go to special school.
Yay for being bilingual.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
How do you say "All your base are belong to us," in Japanese?
Please stop stalking me, bro.
In the one I visit regularly everybody and his Hund speak a passable English.
May it be that after so many years living there you are becoming like them and are full of Schadenfreude?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have my doubts about this. It certainly didn't help the truly demented emcee (Joel Grey) in Cabaret. On the other hand, that was a case of trilingualism.
My first reaction to these things is almost always "Bad Study or Bad Article or Wishful Thinking." The sample size is small and focused. That in itself means that there's nothing to see here, yet. Wait for well-run studies.
But let's take it on face value and look for some explanations.
1. People who speak two languages are tolerated in dementia more than those who aren't, so their mean date of getting handed to mental health folk is higher (They seem to have controlled for this, but what they're really proving with the MMSE tests is not when demntia onsets, but rather how well the people function -- and thus, they may be showing that bilingual people cover their dementia better. But maybe the tests are well designed to factor this out.)
2. People who don't learn a second language don't learn it for a reason. Perhaps they hate outsiders. Perhaps it's anger, hatred and suspicion which is the real measure here.
3. People who speak two languages have contact with a larger germ pool. Perhaps its germ isolation which speeds dementia.
4. People who speak more than one language have more contact with a second group of people and thus have a more varied diet. Perhaps it's variety of food which slows dementia.
5. People who read more than one language see more reporting on medical studies than people who read only one language. Perhaps it's disgust with bad science in medicine or bad reporting in a sensationalist press which causes demintia. Now where did I leave my car keys... oh, maybe the lady who owns this house hates me and hid them. Again. Who is she, anyhow, and how did I get here? What does this submit button do?
The study had about equal numbers for monolingual and bilingual,
132 in total when then focussed on lzheimer's.
It is easy to code a simulation.
Making a guess that Alzheimers comes on between 65 and 85 we write
(defun onset ()
(+ 65 (random 21)))
Then we can simulate computing the average for 66 patients like this
(/ (reduce (function +)
(loop repeat 66 collect (onset)))
66.0)
You quickly see that the average sticks pretty much between 74 and 76.
The article is reporting 71.4 versus 75.5. Even without understanding
statistics I can see that that didn't happen by pure chance, something
is going on.
Code it in your own favourite language and see the kind of variability
at issue with your own eyes/mind
Lots of testimony here that a language can be learned with some months of immersion - within a year anyway. Yet US troops in Iraq reportedly hardly speak the local language at all, even after repeated tours. This undoubtedly lowers their life expectancy in another way. Why does the US military fail to force troops to spend part of each day learning the language? When the Romans occupied Britain, did they go around barking orders only in Latin?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Here and here
Merde!
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The trouble with learning a compounding language comes when some compounds have become fixed and their meaning shifts. How would one guess that doghouse means "a state of punishment"?
An interesting fact is that some basic words have no longer any meaning in themselves and only occur in combinations with other basic words.English has those too: they're called affixes.
I suspect life expectancy is based more on other factors, such as wealth and welfare. US is 29th
You hablo dos o tres languages but, uh, what were we talking about again?
Oh yeah. Old people living 4 years longer. At age 95 my grandmother (born Zelma Leila Lennon in May of 1903) told me "I don't know why people want to live to be a hundred, it ain't no fun bein' old!"
She died in 2003 when she fell and broke her hip in the nursing home, mind still intact. Lucky for her she never learned a second language, I guess.
-mcgrew
>Correlation does not imply causality.
Oh come now, of course it does. If every time you ate oatmeal, your face swelled up, you would infer that perhaps there was a connection. The correlation would imply causation.
So of course it implies it. But it can take careful investigation to prove it within a reasonable certainty.
Whoah. I'm completely wrong: there are lots of people still speaking Frisian. Not so many where he grew up (Sylt) but still tens of thousands of them. Go, wikipedia!
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
"Use it or lose it!"
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
I learnt English in 6 months, taking clases for 6 hours once a week every Saturday.
/. history shows that my English is not stellar, but I can sit through a Shakespeare play and get almost all of it.
My
I also learnt French, in 2 one hour classes for 3 years in secondary school. By no means full time studying.
O yes, I can speak some German: one year of hourly classes twice a week.
And so on with many other people I know.
Perhaps you have some learning difficulties you have not spotted?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In 100 years everybody will speak Spanish in the US :P
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... and that is why i tell my fellow immigrants to teach their children their native language first
.... you may go nowhere, not even downhill.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Ich heiße Grammatiknazi!
Kinder alles Gottes heißt Grammatiknazi!
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
In my grandparent comment, I was only discussing this issue: The title of the article and the quotes from those who do the research do not match.
Again, here is the quote: "Our study found that speaking two languages throughout one's life appears to be associated with [my emphasis] a delay in the onset of symptoms of dementia by four years compared to those who speak one language,"...
No studies of which I am aware show a "protective effect", as you mentioned. All show association only.
But the bigger issue is that the work, while it has some value, is "junk science". Real scientists try to make theories and test the theories. All the studies of brain function in older people are apparently by people who have no interest in theories. "Junk science" is so commonplace it makes it difficult to find and understand the real scientists.
You may be interested in polyglotism but not speak more languages than one for the life of yours...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Interestingly, I didn't see any mention of genetics among the eliminated compounding factors (at least in the slashdot summary).
Lifelong bilingualism would be more prevalent in some population groups than others (if only for reasons of environment - i.e. growing up where multiple languages are in common use), different populations have different frequencies of various versions of genes (due to incomplete interbreeding of humanity), and susceptability to dementia (a biochemical problem) may be greater for some versions of some particular gene(s) than for others. So bilingualism could easily be correlated with an inherited lower susceptability to dimentia through pure historical accident.
Another potential genetic compounding factor: Hybrid vigor. Billingualism could be expected to be more common in children of parents from distinct linguistic groups - who would be more likely to have two different versions of some gene rather than two identical ones. If resistance to dimentia is greater when some gene is present in two different forms you again have a correlation.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Denken... ist nicht mehr und nicht weniger
Organ des Wahrnehmens wie Auge und Ohr.
So wie jenes Farben, dieses Tone,
so nimmt das Denken Ideen wahr.
(GOETHES ERKENNTNISTHEORIE)
Have there been any tests on the onset of dementia on people who speak one language but also read (and play) music since an early age?
Not even, au!
is kinky sex
History tells us the Romans forced the locals to speak Latin. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Is this really news? My french teachers
were telling us about studies like these decades ago.
They may not have been about dementia but about related
topics like the bilingualism and the incidence of insanity.
It is by coff... er, will, alone I set my mind in motion...
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
This is an interesting initial study, but result was no doubt skewed by the large prevalence of Americans in the monolingual set.
I was responding to the suggesting that the sample was so small that another sample could easily be the other way round: onset at 71.4 years for bilingual and onset at 75.5 for monolingual. Putting it abstractly, I was responding to the question of statistical significance.
I posted to encourage readers to take a cavalier attitude to statistical significance. Don't get hung up on difficult mathematics, t-test, F-test, etc. Just code up a simple simulation and get a feel for the kind of variability you should expect to be inevitable due to random chance.
Two big reasons for being cavalier about statistical significance are:
I'm painfully aware that one cannot deduce causality from correlation. The deeper reason for being casual about statistical significance is that one needs to save ones mental energy for thinking about causality. My guess would be that even if bilingualism came easily in childhood, it often requires effort to retain the less used language through adult life. So life long bilingualism is likely to work reasonably well as a proxy for being healthy and vigorous: one is checking if persons have done something that requires effort. Seeing that healthy and vigorous people have a later onset of Alzheimer's disease is unsurprising.
It would be much more interesting to compare life long bilingualism with those who have run a marathon after the age of 50. Then one might get some sense of whether robust health is protective or whether there is something specific to mental exertion.
I can't tell you how many unrequested and unwelcome extemporaneous French lessons I received from snotty Parisians while I was visiting your beautiful country. It got to the point where I had to confide in people that, while I speak 3 languages, French isn't one of them, and that is because I don't find the French language to be important enough to learn.
As the old saying goes, "France would be a great country, were it not for the French."
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock