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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. "
So at what age is dementia onsite likely when one doesn't have fluency in even one language like, say, George W. Bush?
Those kinds of people just get frustrated that [sic]immmigrants don't magically know English upon entering the United States. I wish they'd imagine what it would be like if they went to live in another country with a different language.
And do tell me how accommodating the Mexicans would be if I went down there and started demanding everything be written in both Spanish and English . . . not gunna happen right?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I think that's precisely it. It requires motivation, and thats lacking in much of the USA.
Being motivated to learn other languages requires thinking that the rest of the world *matters* that there's something to be had from better understanding it and communicating with it. If you consider yourself on top-of-the-world and everyone else as merely more or less civilized depending on how close to you they are culturally, then there's no point.
Speaking a "small" language natively helps. As a Norwegian, for example, you don't have the luxury of being able to travel everywhere in the west and make do with your native language. So anyone who wants to travel knows that they *have* to learn atleast one world-language.
As an American, it's too easy to think: "English works everywhere, so why bother?"