| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Is Bilingualism Really an Advantage? Thread poster: Tom in London
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Kay Denney 
France
Local time: 01:54
French to English
| Absolutely spot on, Tom | Jan 25, 2015 |
Tom in London wrote:
I dislike the tone of the original article, which seems to assume that we're all in some kind of rat race, looking for advantages, and that being bilingual, or multilingual, gives you a better position in the competitive nightmare that seems to be the author's view of the world.
Gaining a competitive edge is absolutely **not** the purpose of being bilingual, or multilingual. It may be a secondary effect, but if you set out in life with the sole aim of becoming bilingual as a way of getting one over on your competitors, making more money, or having a successful career, you will fail. Nor should this be the reason for wishing your children to grow up bilingual.
Being bilingual is about much, much more than just making money or getting ahead in the rat race. The author doesn't seem to understand that.
[Edited at 2015-01-24 20:34 GMT]
I was going to say much the same. It's pitiful how "advantage" seems to be understood purely in financial terms by the journalist. But I won't go into the many advantages of knowing more than one language here because you guys already know!
| | | | | I don't agree! | Jan 25, 2015 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
I don't think bilingualism is a natural state for human beings and most, if not all, biliguals are the result of accidents of their life. Forcing bilingualism on children for the supposed benefits it produces, can condemn innocent and help-less children to a life of confusion, mental strain, and lack of confidence in themselves.
As far as I am aware bilingualism is the norm in many countries and societies, not the exception! Even in largely monolingual countries it is becoming increasingly frequent - in my experience it is enriching, not limiting.
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 05:24
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | I was talking about forced bilingualism | Jan 27, 2015 |
Gabriele Demuth wrote: Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
I don't think bilingualism is a natural state for human beings and most, if not all, biliguals are the result of accidents of their life. Forcing bilingualism on children for the supposed benefits it produces, can condemn innocent and help-less children to a life of confusion, mental strain, and lack of confidence in themselves.
As far as I am aware bilingualism is the norm in many countries and societies, not the exception! Even in largely monolingual countries it is becoming increasingly frequent - in my experience it is enriching, not limiting.
As the world integrates due to globalization, more and more people would be put in a position where they by the accident of their circumstances become bilingual. This cannot be avoided.
What I was talking about is forcing bilingualism on someone, particularly one's own children, to reap the supposed benefits of bilingualism. This can prove to be disastrous and inachievable for the child and can well produce a no-lingual child which is deficient in both languages and is thoroughly confused about its cultural moorings.
I don't agree that bilingualism is a natural state for human beings. Human beings are genetically programmed to master one language in our short life span (when compared to the life span of languages) and the vast majority of humans are monolingual, even in heavily multilingual countries like India.
[Edited at 2015-01-27 12:21 GMT]
| | | | | The more the merrier | Jan 27, 2015 |
I was bilingual as a child (English and German) and both of my children (11 and 14) have been raised to be bilingual (English and Italian). They seem to be thriving. A month doesn't pass that they don't thank us for raising them this way, which they only see as an advantage. My daughter is now finishing middle school in Italy, and far from being confused, she's an assertive, level-headed but fun-loving girl who's top of her class in most subjects, including both of her languages. My son has an ... See more I was bilingual as a child (English and German) and both of my children (11 and 14) have been raised to be bilingual (English and Italian). They seem to be thriving. A month doesn't pass that they don't thank us for raising them this way, which they only see as an advantage. My daughter is now finishing middle school in Italy, and far from being confused, she's an assertive, level-headed but fun-loving girl who's top of her class in most subjects, including both of her languages. My son has an astonishing memory and ability to imitate accents and recall dialogue. They socialise in Italian but insist on watching films and TV, and reading at home, only in English. ▲ Collapse
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Kay Denney
France
Local time: 01:54
French to English
| pray tell me | Jan 27, 2015 |
Where and how and why does the comparison between the life span of a language and the life span of a human come into play??
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:54
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER | Is there a doctor in the house? | Jan 27, 2015 |
I seem to be suffering from a very serious, and possibly terminal, case of bilingualism.
Help !
| | | | Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:54
French to English
+ ...
So what the researcher appears to have realised is:
(a) people present all sorts of bollocks at conferences;
(b) people such as New Yorker journalists latch on to the bollocks presented at conferences;
(c) journals have publication bias.
Give the universe a medal!
[Edited at 2015-01-27 19:42 GMT]
| | | | Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:54
French to English
+ ...
| Now in all seriousness... | Jan 27, 2015 |
...one of the problems with this kind of research into the "advantages/disadvantages of bilingualism" is that your identification of "bilingualism" (and the difficulty of doing this in any precise way) opens you up to a whole host of problems in terms of where you put the controls on your research subjects. Different people have different degrees of bilingualism for different reasons (e.g. those with parents with specific types of jobs that meant they were more likely to encounter people from di... See more ...one of the problems with this kind of research into the "advantages/disadvantages of bilingualism" is that your identification of "bilingualism" (and the difficulty of doing this in any precise way) opens you up to a whole host of problems in terms of where you put the controls on your research subjects. Different people have different degrees of bilingualism for different reasons (e.g. those with parents with specific types of jobs that meant they were more likely to encounter people from different countries, those with one or more parents from specific countries where bilingualism was the norm, and also with particular education systems....). So you need to be really really careful about what phenomenon you're actually studying.
But I do wonder why people worry about this quite so much... ▲ Collapse
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Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 05:24
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Please read my first post | Jan 28, 2015 |
Texte Style wrote:
Where and how and why does the comparison between the life span of a language and the life span of a human come into play??
I had explained this in my first post.
The thing is, all languages would have accumulated over the hundreds of years of their existence a vast body of knowlege - literature, folklore, traditions, usages, idioms, proverbs and other linguistic material. In contrast, human life span is only about a hundred years or so. So it is nearly impossible for any human being to explore the full extent of the linguistic and cultural knowledge available in his own language, leaving him with little time to seriously explore what is available in other languages, which again is equally vast.
So in most cases, bilinguals end up acquiring a shallow feel and knowledge of both their languages, which is usually inferior to the in-depth knowledge any monolingual of any of the two languages would have of his single language. There would always be exceptions, but generally this would be so.
Therefore, to make bilingualism a success one would need to put in much more effort than it requires to make monolingualism a success, and it generally is a pointless effort unless you are into professions where bilingualism is clearly advantageous such as translation, interpretation, diplomacy, etc. In all other situations, an individual can have a far more satisfying life by delving deeper and deeper into his own language and culture and getting to know it more and more thoroughly and completely. That is to say, there is so much to learn about your own language that any serious student of language would feel the pinch of shortage of time, given our limited life span. Or, putting it in another way, one hundred years is too little a span of time to fully understand or master a language.
That does not of course mean we should become frogs in the wells of our own language. We should also learn other languages, but not with the aim of becoming bilingual in them, but as a useful window into other cultures.
However, this is less of a need these days as the best literature in most languages is rapidly becoming available in other languages through translation. So if you are well-grounded in your own language, you can still be aware of other literatures without having to learn other languages.
[Edited at 2015-01-28 02:00 GMT]
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I read all the posts and I am just a bit confused about the definition of bilingualism and multilingualism. Can 'bilingual' refer to an individual who is able to speak two different languages at a native speaker level (maybe with some accent), even though he may learn the other language when he was a teenager? I reckon that it may have different results if the participant in the research is an individual who is able to speak two languages since early years, but not an individual who learn anothe... See more I read all the posts and I am just a bit confused about the definition of bilingualism and multilingualism. Can 'bilingual' refer to an individual who is able to speak two different languages at a native speaker level (maybe with some accent), even though he may learn the other language when he was a teenager? I reckon that it may have different results if the participant in the research is an individual who is able to speak two languages since early years, but not an individual who learn another language in adolescence. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Bilingualism | Jan 14, 2022 |
Xiaoqing Cui wrote:
I am just a bit confused about the definition of bilingualism and multilingualism. Can 'bilingual' refer to an individual who is able to speak two different languages at a native speaker level (maybe with some accent), even though he may learn the other language when he was a teenager?
What you are describing is quite rare. If the child hasn't started learning the second language by approximately 6 years of age, achieving the native level in two languages becomes very difficult. Apparently, it's not even about knowing the given language itself but rather about developing the ability to think in two languages independently. Thus, when you are already bilingual since childhood, it's easier to become trilingual later on. On the other hand, those who grew up monolingual, may be able acquire a native level of another language, but will usually lose the first language, or will contaminate one language with the other.
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