So according to this bilinguals are
"Smarter" than people who aren't. Do you have personal evidence or experience indicating that bilingualism, or multilingualism for that matter, actually backs the postulates of the article, becasue, in my opinion, people who care about the way they speak and write their own language, not a foreign one, are more concerned with knowing what they know and all things around them, although by no means is that an indicator of intelligence.
What are your takes?
12 Answers
Here's my expert opinion: No.
Thank you for reading.
This is a very complex idea.
- In my opinion, I think the article is partially correct. I think the brain is like a "muscle" The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. If you work physically hard in a farm, go to the gym or at your job place, your muscles will become harder and stronger.
- If you learn a second, third language, your brain will be able to run more processes and become more alert and able to resolve problems more efficiently. However, the same principle will apply if you go to school to learn, astrophysics, mathematics, engineering, biology, physics, etc.
- So, in one hand, yes, I think being able to switch from one language to another will give you some advantage over (average) non bilinguals, but what if this non bilingual person is is Garry Kasparov, Philip Emeagwali, Bill Gates, the best brain surgeon in the world, etc? Then that principle will not apply. What do you guys think?
There is scientific evidence that people who do not have intellectual activity are more exposed to dementia. On the contrary, intellectual activity is protective against this disorder. learning a new activity would be practically an intellectual activity. from my personal point of view learning a new language:
makes you more flexible because you have to adapt to a new way of thinking
would expose you to a new culture and to new values that indirectly would make you have a broader perspective about life
would make you develop good strategies to remember complex grammatical constructs that whether you want it or not would force your brain to function in a different way than before.
by practising a new language would improve your communication skills with people who are not falling into you cultural range. you would need to come out of your cultural boundaries.
would improve your self discipline, resilience, determination, concentration, creativity and so on because you need a great deal of work until you achieve fluency. later, all these qualitites would be extremely useful in any other daily activities. there is no doubt that those who have more self discipline have more chances to become more successful in reaching their personal goals.
my point is that learning a new language improves overall the brain functioning, therefore it has a good impact on the level of intelligence.
PS whether you wanted or not Spanish will make you think faster because the speed which the words are pronounced is much higher than in English. Those who try to learn Spanish know exactly what I mean. from my point point of view thinking faster is a sign of higher intelligence. ¡Adios amigos!
Now if it will just help me remember where I put the car keys and my cellular phone.
People who can speak different languages aren't smarter than other people, just more talented with languages, just like some of us play instruments while others can't hold a tune, or can play sports well. We all have different gifts from God. Use 'em!
Hay lugares habitados por tribus que hablan un idioma diferente cada una y en la que los aborígenes pueden hablar hasta 4 idiomas sin haber sido expuestos jamás a lo que consideramos un sistema educativo formal, hubiera sido mucho más interesante y objetivo el estudio si hubiesen utilizado un sujeto de una extracción así y lo hubiesen confrontado con lo que se diría es un estudiante promedio de una sociedad (¿)más avanzada(?), la relativa vaguedad del asunto le resta contundencia a los resultados que se muestran como hechos, no muy dificilmente refutables.
I offer myself to science, preferably after my death.
My father died with Alzheimers' disease ( you don't die from Alzheimers' , you die with it..) My mother is now getting some peculiar type of dementia..
My chances are not good, ni siquiera how many languages I speak..
My father studied Spanish, in his late middle age. It didn't help.. Well, maybe he would have died at 50 without it?
I consider myself bilingual in Swedish and English. This has never helped my mathematics, nor do I feel particularily intelligent. Probably I can't help all the typos, they are genetic....
This article says, that being bilingual, makes you smarter. Perhaps it gives an edge to children at an early age, but if these so called “smarter” children are not motivated, or do not take advantage of their abilities, won’t they just become average as the grow up?
The following may be a true statement based on my experience with my mother. “Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study . . . . . found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and . . . . . the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.” My mother was born in Puerto Rico where she learned the Spanish language. When she moved to New York City, she taught herself to read and write in English. My mother spoke English well although she had a slight accent. She could write letters in both Spanish and English, without spelling errors. My mother will be 98 this year. She suffers from dementia which began to set in about 7 year ago.
“The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).”
Just like many of you, I am learning a second language later in life. How does this experience influence your brain? Am I getting smarter? Do I feel smarter? Some days, I do and others, I don't, but I’ll settle for more “common sense” than “smarts”.
I agree with rac1. I had previously already read this article and I think that while they do make some good points, I wouldn't say that those who are by birth bilingual are necessarily "smarter" than those who are monolingual, but I do think that it is probably very good for your brain to speak different languages, whether they are learnt or native. In fact, I think it is as good in terms of cognitive health to actually learn a language than to be naturally bilingual because then, besides enjoying most of the same great things about bilingualism, you have to exercise your brain to attain competence and eventually fluency and that's probably one of the wonderful benefits of multilingualism.
The article is well written and makes many good points. Scientifically, I am not knowledgeable enough about the subjest to make an assesment, but in my opinion, I would have to agree that in certain areas you would have indeed increased your intelligence.
PC edit: This is just silly. done
If many people had definitive personal experience of bilinguals being notably more intelligent than monolinguals then it's 'discovery' would not warrant an article in the New York Times. In general, people do not measure the intelligence of the people with whom they interact, one may note a person being particularly interesting, clever in a certain way or knowledgeable in a certain field but we don't tend to measure innate intelligence nor do we have the means to do so. Even if the individual's judgement of how 'intelligent' someone is were to coincides precisely with how their intelligence may be measured scientifically, the average person does not interact with sufficient people that would fall into either camp to be able to draw any meaningful statistical conclusion.
My experience, or rather what I'd postulate, is that people who care about the way they write and speak their own language would care about the way they write and speak any other language that they might learn and that people that do not reflect nor enquire as to how their native language works would naturally take the same approach to a 2nd or 3rd language. If you widen this approach to language to being 'concerned with knowing what they know' (with which I would agree), you are merely saying that people who are interested in one aspect of knowledge are interesting in other aspects of the same. I can't see why this interest would have anything to do with the number of languages spoken by an individual.
