Learning a second language is good childhood mind medicine, studies find

Quote:
Teaching young children how to speak a second language is good for their minds, report two Cornell linguistic researchers.
...
In other words, "Cognitive advantages follow from becoming bilingual," Lust says. "These cognitive advantages can contribute to a child's future academic success."

The most effective way to learn a second language, they say, is to put the young child in situations where the second language surrounds them. "We find that children learning a second language in an immersion setting show an overall success rate of grammatical knowledge similar to English monolinguals," says Yang, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto at Scarborough and at York University in Toronto.
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Quote: Original post by geo2004
I doubt they learn German in Italy because of the tourists. I'm sure it has more to do with the fact that they are so close geographically. Same with most European countries who are close or share a border.

The northern most bit of Italy, Alto Adige, has only been part of Italy since 1919 - before that it was part of Austria. The movement of borders over the previous centuries will probably have accounted for further blurring the people's identities.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Learning a second language is good childhood mind medicine, studies find

This was a point I was going to bring up; studies have shown that learning a second language does indeed improve your brain.

I think that it might also improve your interactions with others, certainly others who speak that language, because in order to learn a language you have to learn to think in the language. Sure, you could try to learn by just doing a word for word translation however that often misses out on the correct meaning and subtly behind what is being said.

It also makes communication with people who don't speak english as well easier; for example we used to have a french lass working in our company and while she could speak english she still had problems with phrasing and words. I worked with her a bit and I think that having previously learnt french at high school (and enjoyed it at the time) I had a better grasp of what she was trying to get at from time to time. Granted, if I had kept up the french then it probably would have been easier, something which occured to me when I often overheard her and another artist who is dutch talking in french.

Oh, and i was looking up some information once and the only source was a french pdf file, fortunately between technical knowledge and my ability to "decode" french I was able to extract the information I required from it.

So, personally, I feel that everyone should learn another language, if only for a few years with the option to extend. I find it useful, enjoyed it at the time (heck, I opt'd for 2 more years and have a C grade in GCSE french) and often find myself wishing I had the time to learn another/improve on my french.. although I find myself wishing I had that with a few programming languages as well and programming langauges are like written/spoken ones in that if you don't have the reason to use them you tend not to get any good at them.

Quote: Original post by geo2004
Why is it useful for other countries to learn English but not vica versa?

Because English is the de facto international language. If Spanish were the international language, I'd be all for studying Spanish in schools.

I don't see this ever happening. The USA not having an official language is similar to it not having an official religion. It was designed that way to prevent discrimination. Once you empower a group by saying that what they do/say is "official", you empower them to denigrate other groups who are now "unofficial".

Also, movements like "Official English" obviously have a specific motivation, but their ideas are flawed. They obviously feel that there is a "spread" of Spanish in the US. However, at least along the US/Mexico border, these areas have always been very-Spanish speaking areas (edit: Well, not always, but for hundreds of years before it was English speaking). In fact, the argument could be made that these areas have just started seeing the spread of English in the last 200 years.

The idea that this will elevate immigrants is ridiculous. The people who pull for legislation like this are typically native English speakers who have no idea how difficult it is to learn English. To those unfamiliar, it is one of the hardest languages in the world to speak completely correctly and fluently. So instead of having immigrants who at least have some ability to speak to their government in their native languages, we will have immigrants who will "fall off the radar" of their government due to the complete lack of ability to communicate with them. How are they supposed to learn it? I assume that if this was to become law, we would have government-paid English classes for all foreign-speaking immigrants, right?

I've never seen these types of movements as anything more than people who are sore about having to push "1" for English when they call their phone company.

Quote: Original post by jackolantern1
I assume that if this was to become law, we would have government-paid English classes for all foreign-speaking immigrants, right?

That would be awesome. However, if they immigrated what would stop them from just paying for a class?

It's kind of annoying that languages are linked to culture. I'd have to imagine that the transition would be easier if that wasn't the case. I was looking at the list of languages on wikipedia, and I couldn't help but wonder what it would take to move everyone to the world languages. I mean starting from the bottom of the list and transitioning over to one of the world languages. This is probably a very unfavorable stance toward languages. I'm rather ignorant of linguistic things, but I get the feeling that people are holding onto some languages for cultural reasons. This seems true since it would seem a lot of these languages are endangered and the concept of "destroying" a language would be cultural genocide. It would seem there's no law against that though.

To be clear I would support the cleansing/culling of languages from the world if only to make things simpler.

Quote: Original post by jackolantern1
The USA not having an official language is similar to it not having an official religion.

See this is the link that I have a problem with. Since languages are intertwined within cultures it makes the idea of making someone learn another language a form of persecution. It's not some form of cultural conversion in the sense that a forced religious conversion would be. The intention is to broaden communication, not change someone's thinking or moral beliefs.

Quote: Original post by Sirisian

Quote: Original post by jackolantern1
The USA not having an official language is similar to it not having an official religion.

See this is the link that I have a problem with. Since languages are intertwined within cultures it makes the idea of making someone learn another language a form of persecution. It's not some form of cultural conversion in the sense that a forced religious conversion would be. The intention is to broaden communication, not change someone's thinking or moral beliefs.

The idea of changing someone's beliefs wasn't really what I meant by that. The bolded portion is actually what I meant by the connection.

Quote: Original post by phantom

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Learning a second language is good childhood mind medicine, studies find

This was a point I was going to bring up; studies have shown that learning a second language does indeed improve your brain.

I think that it might also improve your interactions with others, certainly others who speak that language, because in order to learn a language you have to learn to think in the language. Sure, you could try to learn by just doing a word for word translation however that often misses out on the correct meaning and subtly behind what is being said.

It also makes communication with people who don't speak english as well easier; for example we used to have a french lass working in our company and while she could speak english she still had problems with phrasing and words. I worked with her a bit and I think that having previously learnt french at high school (and enjoyed it at the time) I had a better grasp of what she was trying to get at from time to time. Granted, if I had kept up the french then it probably would have been easier, something which occured to me when I often overheard her and another artist who is dutch talking in french.

Oh, and i was looking up some information once and the only source was a french pdf file, fortunately between technical knowledge and my ability to "decode" french I was able to extract the information I required from it.

So, personally, I feel that everyone should learn another language, if only for a few years with the option to extend. I find it useful, enjoyed it at the time (heck, I opt'd for 2 more years and have a C grade in GCSE french) and often find myself wishing I had the time to learn another/improve on my french.. although I find myself wishing I had that with a few programming languages as well and programming langauges are like written/spoken ones in that if you don't have the reason to use them you tend not to get any good at them.

Exactly. I could tell similar tales with Russian and Spanish. It seems really obvious to me that learning a second language would improve brain function.

@jackolantern1 - Those are really good points.

Quote: Original post by jackolantern1

Quote: Original post by Sirisian

Quote: Original post by jackolantern1
The USA not having an official language is similar to it not having an official religion.

See this is the link that I have a problem with. Since languages are intertwined within cultures it makes the idea of making someone learn another language a form of persecution. It's not some form of cultural conversion in the sense that a forced religious conversion would be. The intention is to broaden communication, not change someone's thinking or moral beliefs.

The idea of changing someone's beliefs wasn't really what I meant by that. The bolded portion is actually what I meant by the connection.

Yeah I can get that point of view.

Quote: Original post by jackolantern1
The idea that this will elevate immigrants is ridiculous. The people who pull for legislation like this are typically native English speakers who have no idea how difficult it is to learn English. To those unfamiliar, it is one of the hardest languages in the world to speak completely correctly and fluently. So instead of having immigrants who at least have some ability to speak to their government in their native languages, we will have immigrants who will "fall off the radar" of their government due to the complete lack of ability to communicate with them. [...]

I've never seen these types of movements as anything more than people who are sore about having to push "1" for English when they call their phone company.

The guy who founded the movement, S. I. Hayakawa, was a "Canadian-born Japanese American". "He was an English professor [...]". I have to imagine his ideas were for the best of immigrants. Even broader than just government interaction, imagine you had a business and you had to hire between an immigrant that spoke simple English and another that spoke only in their native language (even if they were to apply). There's a serious disadvantage caused by not knowing English and I think that's clearly explained on the site:

Quote: Quote from the Site
Declaring English the official language is essential and beneficial for the U.S. government and its citizens. Official English unites Americans, who speak more than 322 languages (2000, U.S. Census), by providing a common means of communication; it encourages immigrants to learn English in order to use government services and participate in the democratic process; and it defines a much-needed common sense language policy.

This might be an odd way of phrasing it, but by enabling other languages in the government it just adds another reason why someone might not learn English. The democratic side of it can also be raised in that if someone doesn't understand English they'll miss out on information that isn't translated to their native language making it harder for them to make informed decisions when voting or taking part in the government.

Quote: Original post by jackolantern1

Quote: Original post by Sirisian

Quote: Original post by jackolantern1
The USA not having an official language is similar to it not having an official religion.

See this is the link that I have a problem with. Since languages are intertwined within cultures it makes the idea of making someone learn another language a form of persecution. It's not some form of cultural conversion in the sense that a forced religious conversion would be. The intention is to broaden communication, not change someone's thinking or moral beliefs.

The idea of changing someone's beliefs wasn't really what I meant by that. The bolded portion is actually what I meant by the connection.

Culture is also tied to a geographical place where people share (among other things) a common language. If I didn't want to lose (and I don't) my customs I shouldn't leave the place that sustains them. If, after all, I realize that I actually care more about money than about my own culture and I chose to leave my country to have a better life inside a different culture, it would be better for me to become part of this other culture, and a good start would be simply to learn the language and customs of this society that is going to give me what I really want.

The alternative is to form a getto and marginalize myself from it. But it's always my own personal choice first what trigger this.

[Edited by - owl on November 25, 2009 11:46:22 PM]