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Bilingual Kids Show More Creativity
An anonymous reader tips news of a study from researchers at the University of Strathclyde which found bilingual children to be significantly more successful at a set of tasks than children who spoke only one language. "The differences were linked to the mental alertness required to switch between languages, which could develop skills useful in other types of thinking." Lead researcher Fraser Lauchlan said, "Bilingualism is now largely seen as being beneficial to children but there remains a view that it can be confusing, and so potentially detrimental to them. Our study has found that it can have demonstrable benefits, not only in language but in arithmetic, problem solving and enabling children to think creatively. We also assessed the children's vocabulary, not so much for their knowledge of words as their understanding of them. Again, there was a marked difference in the level of detail and richness in description from the bilingual pupils."
rocks!
Tomorrow is another day...
Alternatively, bilingual children tend to be raised by people with greater drive and skill in problem solving, notably immigrants.
Meanwhile in the world where captain obvious resides, where people become more creative if they use their brain more often....
Children better at one thing are better at another!
Who the hell thinks this? I grew up in a bilingual household and then took Spanish in high school, so I'm semi-trilingual. Childhood is the best time to learn a new language since children can still hear the differences between phonemes that aren't present in the main society's language.
Perhaps it's just the fact that children that have the opportunity to become bilingual are exposed to a greater variety of situations and therefore can adapt to situations requiring 'creative' thinking.
Obligitory: Think of the children!
You dont even have to live in a multicultural community. Start early enough and the kid will learn the second language just as easy as they'll pick up on English
Knowing other ways to communicate or approach things is very useful. My boss once questioned my interest in Linux was hindering my abilities in Windows. I pointed out that I was often figured out different approaches to solve a problem when my coworkers got stuck because of my knowledge of Linux. He didn't question my interest in Linux again. I'm sure diversity in doing things instead of single mindedness is nearly always valuable.
Who? Ardent mono-linguals... ;)
But also children of certain types of immigrants in certain times and places. There's an association with heavily-accented, low-educated sections of the family/community/culture that held them or their parents back. It's a displaced fallacy, the classic painting with too broad a brush, but it's a root of why some carry the idea that bilingualism "causes confusion", or warts, or is just generally 'bad' in some way.
How does the disparity in performance among Hispanic kids factor into this study?
-- Posted from my parent's basement
Actually, I can speak, read and write in 7 languages
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
And the results of this study are a surprise...why? Of course children who have the discipline, tenacity and motivation to learn and switch between two languages are going to be better at most things...language is a multifaceted mental effort, one of the highest degree...if they can learn and master two languages its should be a no-brainer they can do most other things better as well.
I guess some people need science to validate things before they actually agree / approve.
Je ne sais pas que tipo de confusión ce puede causar.......
(It's a joke -- don't mod me down for using alternate languages...)
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
Those kids who spoke Gaelic may have had something else in common, perhaps a propensity toward alcoholism. Shall we link that to bilingualism as well?
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
I speak English, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish and Italian so I have a lot of friends from very different backgrounds, at least that's why I'd like to think. Here's how I categorize my friends: *Cool, funny, creative, and usually atheist friends with whom I just happen to click, the type of friends that gets the slightest of references from a movie, a TV show, pop-culture or even a sitcom: Most speak 2-3 languages. * Other friends, they are spectacularly average at everything most of the time and I feel like I have superpowers when I'm around them: they all speak one language, Hebrew, and most were terrible English speakers. If I am to come up with a more specific claim I'd say people I know who don't know English well are less intelligent that those who do.
Since it's for their own good, time to shove fourteen languages down the their throats in forced mandatory education. Stop concentrating on math and science, start concentrating on languages. Veuillez considérer le bien-être des enfants.
so a university, probably a 'progressive' organization, manipulates stats to praise some aspect of 'multiculturalism' for an obvious profit motive. what a shock. perhaps it's just that those who can learn languages quickly are simply smarter people.
I think they're just plain jealous.
Just think if Bart didn't know a few words of Spanish how stupid he would be.
A person who speaks three languages is trilingual; a person who speaks two languages is bilingual; a person who speaks one language is — American.
My bio dad is Colombian, he hit the road when I was 2, but I lived in Colombia for 8 years on and off, and my spanish is better than most american latinos, punctuation, grammar, abstract concepts, and technical. I took spanish in high school as well, but it no way prepared me to dumped into the ass end of Latino America. I started speaking spanish when I was 20, and at 42 I will bet dollars to donuts I will outclass people who grew up in latino households in the states.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The curious thing is I read that perfectly, Spanish, French and English being three of the six languages I am fluent in. But I could venture that the latin-based languages like Italian and Portugese hardly count for much because if you know any two of them, you are pretty well equipped to handle yourself in any of the others. I was quite surprised however at how much spoken Romanian I can understand, although I am nowhere near fluent in that language.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Assuming they are talking about English as main language, is the second language Spanish or French? Or harder language like Japanese or German? German and Japanese have different sentence structure, where as Spanish and French your mostly just learning words and not grammar.. Do these kids often use the second language? Maybe BECAUSE they are creative, they want to learn a second language.
Another pointless study.
I'm sure diversity in doing things instead of single mindedness is nearly always valuable.
Lera Boroditsky's research has come up with results that challenge some basic assumptions in linguistics. One such finding is that rather than language simply expressing thought processes, it shapes mental models of the world.
Since much of our thinking is actually affected by language, and language structures vary sometimes greatly (e.g. Chinese vs English), integrating an additional language into a mind seems highly likely to expand general mental capacity. Perspective is perhaps an underrated element. I am no linguist, but as I understand, a language such as English suffers a lot of nouns. Since most 'things' are actually not nouns, but motions in space/time, a language centered more around the verb may offer advantages. I find Alfred Korzybski's E-Prime quite intriguing. I think one interesting example might be the Chinese word for "fist" -- which i think in Cantonese is something like (pinyin) quan? -- , a noun in English, but an action or verb in Chinese. Maybe I am going a bit far with this, but it would seem to me that any form of exercise and added pliability would offer more capacity for mental tasks. But of course, not in all matters, i.e. mathematics.
I remember taking introductory German as a teenager and thinking differently because of it. While it didn't have me asking random strangers for their papers or hording bratwursts, I did feel more capable and confident because of it. Though I suppose this may be true of any substantial exercise, whether linguistic or otherwise.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
I speak three languages and I'm about as creative as a dialtone. This finding is bogus - Canadians are billingual, why don't they have a space program?
Exercising the brain makes it work better.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Could we speculate about whether the same effect could be observed with computer languages ? I think a lot of people would agree that studying another computer language, especially if it has differing base paradigms (functional, OO, procedural, dynamic, static, etc.) would give them new hindsights when they came back to their "main" language.
From the article: "The Gaelic-speaking children were, in turn, more successful than the Sardinian speakers." (these being the tri-lingual ones; everyone in the study knew English and Italian)
Gaelic helps you more than Sardinian. I wonder if Gaelic alone (not studied) also beats the English-Italian combo. Gaelic makes you smart, or Sardinian makes you dumb.
Considering just single languages, might some be better for you mind than others? Might this help some countries get ahead while hurting others? Perhaps Japanese is better for you than Haitian. There could be numerous countries that would benefit from complete language replacement.
I found something similar when I was doing my psychology thesis in 1990. I found that my bilingual participants, when compared to uni-lingual participants, had a statistically significant difference in their high school leaving grades, first year university grades and on a test of general mental ability (g). At the time I thought it made sense as the same abilities you use to learn a second language (memory, language skills, cognition) are also measures that an individual needs to learn academic subjects. I did not look at creativity but problem solving is a related ability and is considered a component of g. I think Schmidt and Hunter were right when they said every measure of success is related to g.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
... I'm semi-trilingual.
You're mono-and-a-half-lingual?
...trying to brainwash us into teaching our kids languages other than American!
The CB App. What's your 20?
Who the hell thinks this?
Monolingual zealots (typically of the borderline racist kind). Seriously, YMMV, but the only type of people I've ever seen making this claim are the type not typically happy with people speaking a foreign language around them. I don't understand what they are talking about, so they must be talking about me!!!". It feels like a long time ago, the early 90's when you could still see the bigotry the hatred. It was regular topic in the news, of employers firing their employees because they were talking Spanish or Vietnamese or Creole, or f* Klingon in the parking lot on the way home or during lunch (not on the clock, mind you, not on the clock.)
Now, the rhetoric has shifted from language to immigration status, and to a somewhat lesser degree to Islamic fundamentalism. The later two are based real issues - illegal immigration and Islamic terrorism. However, a significant number of people who bring these issues up do so to rationalize Anti-Hispanic or Islamophobic sentiments, regardless of their connections (or lack thereof) with illegal immigration or Islamic terrorism.
It is a generalization, I know, to say these claims are only made by people uncomfortable with foreign-language speakers. But it has been a generalization that holds true in my experience. YMMV obviously.
I have two tri-lingual kids, with Chinese and Finnish spoken at home, and 'Mmerican English at school. I think the American school system is negating any advantage they may have had. I kid people! It's the Californinglish that's destroying their chances :)
Does that count as bilingual?
What are they, Aquaman?
This is *very* old news, sorry.
When a kid can express their statement in Extended Backus-Naur Form, then they really understand it.
Well, they didn't really say creative, or at least that wasn't the main point. They said "better at completing a set of tasks." How that translates to creativity was left as a bit of a mystery, it wasn't really well explained in the article.
Same with typing. If you take qwerty typists and teach them Dvorak, their qwerty typing speed decreases a bit.
But yeah, I'm bilingual, semi-trilingual as well, and the confusion is very minor. Most of the time you can "switch gears" between the languages without problem (cross-language homophones and the occasional grammatical equivalent can cause a little confusion). But the benefits (allows you to see things missing in the language which mono-linguists take for granted, forces you to recognize there's more than one way to think about things) far outweigh the drawbacks.
Seeing how the "same" word translate differently in another language helps to fix in your mind the differences between:
- capitol / capital
- principle / principal
- affect / effect
- its et al
- theirs et al
I could go on, but these silly mistakes mostly happen to speakers ignorant of their own native language. Bilingualism kills that ignorance.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
I know C++ and English...does this count as bilingual?! :D
"Looks like we got ourselves a bi-lingual bloodbath here." was the first thing that popped into my mind.
Who the hell thinks this?
The same stupid tea-party type trash who think a multi-racial child will be "confused" about who he/she is. You know. Morons.
I also think that a kid that is taught two languages generally would have more involved parents to begin with which would go a long ways.
Well, the only thing I can say right now is that my bilingual son (Chinese / French) started solving Portal then Portal 2 problems by himself at around 2 years old. ;)
No idea if it's common, but I'm proud anyway
duh...stupid north americans - except quebec
Doesn't work if you start learning your 2nd language now. Has to be done in early childhood because then, and only then regions of your brain are used differently to make room for the 2nd language in a different way than if you learn the 2nd language later. This improves future learning capacities for the 3rd, 4th, ... nth language, and seemingly not only the languages. ... So here, you really have something to blame your parents for! ;-)
Still, learning a new language is always a good thing ... and fun. Best done with an attractive teacher of the opposite (or, if you are so inclined, same) sex. So: have fun!
I like my spaghetti with source.
Je ne sais pas que tipo de confusión ce puede causar.......
(It's a joke -- don't mod me down for using alternate languages...)
I had to reread that before I noticed that the language changed in mid-sentence.
What, you mean not everyone speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese and English? Everyone I knew growing up did!
Who the hell thinks this?
Monolingual zealots (typically of the borderline racist kind). Seriously, YMMV, but the only type of people I've ever seen making this claim are the type not typically happy with people speaking a foreign language around them. I don't understand what they are talking about, so they must be talking about me!!!". It feels like a long time ago, the early 90's when you could still see the bigotry the hatred. It was regular topic in the news, of employers firing their employees because they were talking Spanish or Vietnamese or Creole, or f* Klingon in the parking lot on the way home or during lunch (not on the clock, mind you, not on the clock.)
Now, the rhetoric has shifted from language to immigration status, and to a somewhat lesser degree to Islamic fundamentalism. The later two are based real issues - illegal immigration and Islamic terrorism. However, a significant number of people who bring these issues up do so to rationalize Anti-Hispanic or Islamophobic sentiments, regardless of their connections (or lack thereof) with illegal immigration or Islamic terrorism.
It is a generalization, I know, to say these claims are only made by people uncomfortable with foreign-language speakers. But it has been a generalization that holds true in my experience. YMMV obviously.
I don't think you need to be any kind of zealot to think that multiple languages confuses a child. My wife's first language is not English. Many of her immigrant friends have children who are learning to speak English and another language. They are slower at first. Sometimes they are confused about who speaks what language. Many times one of their children has come up to me and started babbling in a language I don't understand. Since small children are basically psychopaths (don't know right from wrong) they can't tell who understands or not. Over the long term they catch up, but if you were trying bilingual children without *needing* to, or if both parents spoke only one language, it would be pretty easy to just say "it confuses the children" and give up. My own son is only 4 months so he isn't saying much of anything, but based on the experience of our friends, he will be a little slower than his single-language peers at first.
There is a pretty good argument in the US that you don't need more than one language. I can get in my car, drive 12 hours, stop for the night, drive for 12 hours the next day, stop for the night again and drive for 12 hours on a third day. I live in the middle of the country, but a 36 hour drive would only put me in California somewhere. The US is VAST and monolingual. There are English "dialects" but you can generally understand people without any problem. I know of no other country on the planet where this is the case except the US. If I lived as an expat (I'm trying to do this, but my company won't cooperate) I would try to learn the local language, but for now it would be a huge time sink for no reward.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Kids who eat healthier become healthier adults
Or better even
Feed a kid and they will grow
Yeah, it's a myth, but there does tend to be a bit of delay in terms of production of language, but by the time the kids are ready for elementary school they're typically more than ready to produce in at least one of the languages. It's not something that I'll worry about if I ever have kids.
Confusion is something which seems reasonable, but in practice it's not something which is seen very often. At least not in children that are of at least normal intelligence and that don't have learning disorders.
How exactly do you go about scientifically and objectively measuring creativity? If you think you're doing it right, you're doing it wrong.
Quelle est cette confusion dont vous parlez? Je viens d'utiliser Google Translate...
...so I'm semi-trilingual...
You speak one and a half languages? :-)
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Okay, I didn't realize those were multiple languages until *after* I had already understood the whole sentence.
For any school child studying in English medium schools from Western, Southern and Eastern states of India, they will be learning different languages:
English - first language /Kannada /Malayalam /Tamil /Telungu /Oriya /Bengali, etc... - second language
Marathi
Hindi - compulsory third language.
Yes, Hindi is uninterestingly pushed down these children's throats and is a big pain in the mouth for children who deal with it.
My wife's research is in this field (linguistic development in children), mostly doing case studies on non-Japanese children learning in Japan.
These kids are typically from lower income households with busy parents. Rather than gaining full mastery of one language, many only develop partial mastery in two languages. This partial mastery negatively impacts their scores in testing as they have more difficulty expressing certain high level concepts in either language.
Now, obviously does not apply to everyone. I also grew up in a bilingual household and picked up two more languages later on in life. While bilingualism is achievable, it requires more resources and time that may not be available to everyone.
The main argument of my wife's research is that if a child does not have a strong foundation in at least one language, he/she will have difficulty learning more advanced concepts than children who have single language mastery.
For example, if you only have a basic understanding of C and Lisp it may be difficult implementing advanced data structures or algorithms if you don't know about pointers or monads.
Writing as a Belgian and thus intimately familiar with language wars: Over here the people who argue against multilingual education are indeed most often the "monolingual zealot (typically of the borderline racist kind)" type. Since they don't want to be labeled as such, they will typically use the "it confuses the child" argument, ideally using a young child that uses two languages in a single sentence as evidence (as if uni-lingual young children never make grammar mistakes). The "it's confusing" claim has the additional benefit that it can be used to convince non-racists who don't know any better. Never mind that the whole argument has been scientifically disproved a ton of times. Never mind even that every single multilingual child/adult walking the place is a perfect example that no harm was done. (Well, of course from the point of view of the zealots, harm was done. But I refuse make them my to reference point.)
Linux user since early January 1992.
Have you ever heard of Russia or Canada?
Take off every 'sig' !!
Or Australia?
Take off every 'sig' !!
Or Brazil?
Take off every 'sig' !!
Or Chile?
Take off every 'sig' !!
Or Argentina?
Hint: Google Maps can help you determine which countries allow minimum overland journey times of 36 hours or greater.
Take off every 'sig' !!
I'm surprised you didn't get China in there, given that Mandarin has more speakers than any other language.
... mostly doing case studies on non-Japanese children learning in Japan.
Case studies? That implies a small sample - a non-statistically significant sample. Meaning her findings won't be relevant until many more studies in many more cultures with many more languages are done.
Until then, her studies are something to spawn theories but to come to the conclusion that " Rather than gaining full mastery of one language, many only develop partial mastery in two languages." is premature, at least.
I don't think you need to be any kind of zealot to think that multiple languages confuses a child. My wife's first language is not English. Many of her immigrant friends have children who are learning to speak English and another language. They are slower at first.
Slower with respect to what? With what objective measure????? My daughter speaks English and Japanese (from her Mother) and understand Spanish (my language) when I talk to her, and can count in all three languages. She is only 3 and a half years old. I don't see any confusion or delay in her progress (and neither 3rd party observers, including my sister who is a speech therapist and whom I asked her to evaluate her just in case.)
My nephew speaks English and Spanish from a very early age. He simply picked it up, and he's been on and off in learning Arabic (his father's language). My other nephew only spoke English, but once he was taken on a trip to our country of origin for a few weeks, he was speaking Spanish, reading it completely shortly thereafter. I would say that immigrant children of low-income families are as slow as mono-lingual children of equally disposesed (sp?) families. And with immigrant families in general (and Hispanic in particular), the income/education gap is true. But language or the presence of multiple languages, that is a factor. At the most, you might be seeing correlation (which we all know does not imply causation.)
Sometimes they are confused about who speaks what language. Many times one of their children has come up to me and started babbling in a language I don't understand.
But that's not confusion from children. They are simply talking naturally. They are not confused on what they are saying, and they not know that you don't know their language is not a symptom of a learning or cognitive deficiency. My daughter babbles to me in Japanese a lot of times, and I need my wife to translate. But for the most part she speaks to me in English and in Japanese to her mother. At no point in time my daugther is confused or having a cognitive problem in expressing herself when she speaks Japanese to me. You are confusing issues here
Since small children are basically psychopaths (don't know right from wrong) they can't tell who understands or not.
No, they are not psychopaths. They have still underdeveloped cognitive skills. Two different things. Poor choice of terms for building an allegory.
Talking to you in a language that you do not understand is not a wrong, just as it is not a wrong for them to not know, for example, that something still exists even when it is no longer in their view (remember kids crying when they don't see mommy, because they think mommy doesn't exist anymore?)
Over the long term they catch up
Yep, in about a year or two at the most.
but if you were trying bilingual children without *needing* to
Who in his right mind nowadays can say that they children do not need to be bilingual, or at least have a minimum working knowledge of a 2nd language should they ever aspire to something?
or if both parents spoke only one language, it would be pretty easy to just say "it confuses the children" and give up.
Herein lies the gist of it, it is people who (in your own words), just say "it confuses the children", and give up. People who are more prone to give up on that will also give up on other topics they do not understand (math for example.). But it has nothing to do with a 2nd language confusing people (or parents). Some parents are just lazy, and others are simply rightfully overwhelmed (it is not easy being a parent, I KNOW.) But this argument has nothing to do with "children confusion."
My own son is only 4 months so he isn't saying much of anything, but based on the experience of our friends, he will be a little s
I wasn't too sure how well Mandarin is universally understood in China. China has an ass-load of languages.
Take off every 'sig' !!
I'm one of the ignorant monolingual types so typical of the U.S.A. When I studied Francais at school, I noticed that I did some thinking in the language, and felt that it was speeding up my thought processes, much like a multi-threaded CPU. I thought if one could grok the subtle differences between word translations it could increase intuitive understanding of reality.
Is Dr. Lauchlan the first one to actually look into this?
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I speak neither French nor Portuguese and I still understand it. Must be my high-school obsession for Latin. ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20
That would be sesquilingual, I guess.
Ezekiel 23:20
ideally using a young child that uses two languages in a single sentence as evidence
Just refer them to the phenomenon of code switching. That is not an error or grammar mistake by any means. This phenomenon has been observed to have strict grammatical rules, as solid as, say, embedding ESQL in the host language in programming.
Ezekiel 23:20
Think about it.
There, did you notice how words defined and directed your thoughts?
That is all.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Who the hell thinks this?
Some teachers I have met claim that some children handle this better than others. If a child is a slow starter when it comes to talking, it is best to focus one language, and then introduce the second when the child forms full sentences in the first. The danger is that the child does not develop necessary basic language functions when their brain is "supposed to" learning these, thus limiting their overall language development.
IMHO, if the child can cope, start with the second language early. The benefits of knowing multiple languages are enormous, both when it comes to becoming better at learning, and as a door opener almost everywhere.
Creative kids find it easier to be bilingual, therefore more bilingual kids would be found to be more creative than non-bilingual kids. The trap you fall into is believing that making kids bilingual will suddenly make them more creative.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
And it interpreted 'just' as 'just now' rather than 'merely'.
Who the hell thinks this? I grew up in a bilingual household and then took Spanish in high school, so I'm semi-trilingual. Childhood is the best time to learn a new language since children can still hear the differences between phonemes that aren't present in the main society's language.
semi-trilingual = one-and-a-half-lingual
Duh.
What about children that are well traveled and lived all over the world, but didn't learn any local languages? I know a few people with this background. They've lived in 15 different countries before college due to a parent's job. They always attended "international schools" - which translates into English-speaking schools when outside the USA.
Military families might have this, assuming the family member isn't assigned to a base, but has a different, more integrated assignment when overseas. Overseas military don't get the same feeling of being alone that the kids of a hotel manager get. Trust me.
Dutch are taught Dutch, French, German and English before graduating school. Norwegians learn Bokmaal, NyNorsk, English and an elective language, then they generally also understand Swedish and Danish nearly fluently. Swedes learn Swedish, English and usually a third as Danish learn Danish, English and a third. Both Swedes and Danes normally understand Bokmaal Norwegian. Fins learn Suomi, Swedish, English and often a fourth. I only mentioned a small percentage of the world, they're only about 50 million people altogether, but that's about 1% of the world's population.
That sounds pretty common. I'm am American and I can speak 2 languages fluently, a third not-so-fluently, can communicate in 5 other languages (order food, ask directions, etc...) and can read a total of 14 languages without much effort. I suck at language too... my hearing problems make it impossible for me to learn new sounds, but once you learn a few, the others aren't so hard (within the same families).
My kids... they learn new languages like it's just natural. That's because on a daily basis, they can be watching cartoons or playing video games in 4 different languages and then we watch educational videos on learning new languages together. I am really hoping I can get one of them to learn Mandarin at some point.
Françoise Dolto worked with migrant children and found that the problem was more about the fact that the children were confused about the reason behind the different languages; one even said "it's the language for making babies" -IIRC- so they did'nt know which language they were allowed to speak without trespassing their parents' intimacy.
The US, monolingual, ah ah ! Thank you for the good laugh.
Time to wake up. mate. Spanish is soon going to be spoken by more people than english here.
Don't worry, the "delay" they pick up speaking is at maximum 2-3 months. When they hit the age of three everything is peachy. I brought up my daughter in Germany and I speak with her only in English and my wife in German. The only oddity is that we have some terms that stick to one language, for example she will always ask us for "cookie", not a "Kecks". She knows it's Kecks in German and any other Person she will ask that...
for sure monolingual / mono cultural people are handicaped , i speak english french spanish and mandarin , my 6 and 8 yo daughters both speak french and mandarin + english as second language and my 8 yo is working her spanish . as other say it's not that smater people can , it's that you get smarter by , i dont know in what language i think , seriously. so imagine the synapse creation when you mix spanish and madarin for exemple , now bring it to the cultural level and you start to understand why monoculturals can be so blend and predictable.
Monads are in Haskell and are side-effect encapsulating types not typically used in most data structures.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
My guess is that finding people speaking more than 2 languages are not common... and you sir are a real exception.
It's learning a second language which is the most difficult.
Further language comes much more easily.
If you speak at least 2 languages, your brain is used to the fact that different words map differently to different concepts depending on the language. /. and opensource geek knows: 2 of concepts that English maps under the word "free" (as in "beer" and "speech") are very often mapped to separate words in lots of other languages, "gratis" and "libre" being popular roots in languages of latin ancestry)
(To cite an example that every
Also, if you speak at least 2 language you are used that languages might use completely different grammar rules and structures.
(Take Mark Twain's rant about German. About 1/3 of his rant is about real peculiarities of the German language (some peculiarities in the word ordering).
The remaining 2/3 of his rant could be shortened as "Sorry for you, Mark, if you are only used to a weirdly broken language as your only point of comparison. 99% of the rest of the world are completely used to this" (2 or 3 noun genders, cases and flections, etc.) )
From that point of view learning an extra language boils down to learning new vocabulary and learning the particular set of rules that said language work. (Almost like learning a new programming language, except that human languages are much more complex and require a lot of extra knowledge)
Whereas someone who speaks only 1 language has to learn to "think differently" when speaking other than his native language.
So yeah, okay. Maybe a kid in a bilingual environment will get slightly confused and be a little bit slower in the beginning. But don't panic about a few months or even a year delay in speech emergence, it's a small inconvenience but brings much advantages in the future.
Then as mentioned in other answers there's also geographical proximity of different languages:
In Europe it's common to speak at least a couple of them, just to be able to communicate with people from neighbouring countries.
And then there are the ultra-language-rich regions (Africa, India, etc.)
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