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Learning new languages (and actually using them) is a great way to do this for all ages!
by kfarr 1mo ago
Learning new languages (and actually using them) is a great way to do this for all ages!
- lelanthran 1mo agoI'm bilingual. Learning new languages is pointless if you have no one to talk to in the new language. Language skills atrophy surprisingly fast.
- kfarr 1mo agoI agree, one must actually use a language for it to contribute to brain plasticity in later ages.
- bluGill 1mo agoThe claim was learning is important. Not the ability to communicate with it. There are more than 7000 known languages in the world, study a different one every week... I have no idea what the truth is here...
- nz 1mo agoBack in college (around 15 years ago), I read a few books on eminence by Dean Kieth Simonton. One thing that I remember, and that has always been in the back of my mind, is that certain studies found that (in the USA), children who grow up in bilingual and bicultural households tend to have a much greater chance of achieving some measure of eminence in their adult lives. I am not sure if this is true globally (nor if it is still true in the USA). But I suspect that there is a reason[0] why so many eminent people came from Austria-Hungary for _generations_ (even the generations after the collapse of that particular empire). [0]: There were 10 distinct languages, making up 98% of all languages in the empire. My understanding is that most citizens had to learn German, even though only 20% of the population spoke German as a mother tongue. Also a few different language branches (Germanic, Ugric, Slavic, Romance), with one of those branches (Ugric) not being Indo-European at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_and_religious_composition_of_Austria-Hungary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_and_religious_compositi...