HN Reader

I use my third language, Spanish, every day, and my second, English, for work. On top of that, my partner is a native Portuguese speaker, so I'm passively soaking up a fourth. (I usually reply to her in Spanish, but we watch everything in Portuguese—though this month it's been all Italian, just for fun).

To this day, I still find Spanish a bit more challenging than my native language or even English. I think it's because even though I moved to Spain over seven years ago, I never fully immersed myself in the culture. I'm pretty sure I haven't read a single book in Spanish.

I still do that classic thing non-fluent speakers do: I'll get halfway through a sentence, realize I don't know a specific word, and have to rephrase my thought more simply. To be clear, I'm far from a beginner, just not yet fluent.

Anyway, I can attest that grappling with a language you haven't quite mastered is a daily mini-puzzle that definitely keeps the brain working a bit harder than it otherwise would.

On a side note, I love that LLMs can handle so many languages now. After 17 years of living abroad, I still feel most at ease speaking my native language, Russian, even though my vocabulary is a bit lacking these days for more complex topics. It makes me completely understand why people prefer to receive medical care in their native tongue.

What is "good for one's brain" (apart from proper nutrition and absence of concussions) is a strong education and healthy lifelong social interactions. Human language is essential for these interactions. Having multiple human languages opens more books, interactions, and cultures.

The opposite is to remain closed. This is a dangerous state of mind and culture.

From TFA:

     all these studies take for granted the uncontroversial mental superpower that you get from language study: being able to talk to people you could not have otherwise.

Not just to talk to people, but to unlock an understanding of their culture and perspectives.

Talking to more people in more contexts is a practical affordance: having more tools in the shop means being able to handle new and different types of problems effectively. People solve problems working together with people.

Having the cognitive adaptability to use new and different tools is certainly a valuable quality. We can nurture it as a learning objective, but it may may not be as universalisable as we have hoped. That said, the cost of not trying to educate people is to fail even worse.

These studies always miss the obvious cultural point to me, [1] which is that knowing more than one language usually means you deeply understand more than one culture. This by default makes one a bit more capable of nuance, seeing other perspectives, etc. Languages are not just interchangeable collections of words, but are whole worldviews. Language in this sense is a kind of knowledge and not a different brain state, akin to reading books about history to understand a conflict better.

1. Maybe that’s not their fault, as they are ostensibly interested only in the biology. But it still seems like a major hole when discussing the benefits of being bilingual.

n=1 data point here, but most of my free time these days is spent learning Finnish, a notoriously difficult language for English monolinguals. (I haven't always been in the monolingual camp, but a decade away from Latin has 99% put me back there.)

For the most part, I don't feel like it has made me any sharper. Had I taken the ~2000 hours I'm in the hole for so far and spent them on going to the gym and sleeping more I'm nearly certain that would have had a much larger effect on my day to day mental acuity. Had I spent it on my career I'd probably be substantially richer. I probably have another ~2000 to go before I reach a level where I'm happy plateauing.

In general I think it's very hard to justify learning a foreign language when subjected to a normal adult person's cost-benefit analysis. I persist mostly because I just really, really, really want to reach true proficiency, not the fake proficiency that gets you an A in Spanish or Latin class, as I outlined in [1]. If you don't have a similar drive your time and energy is probably better spent elsewhere.

[1]: https://andrew-quinn.me/thoughts-on-language-learning-at-the...

The most interesting part:

> Age plays a role too. Studies suggest that the effects of languages on the brain are stronger for young children and the old than they are for young adults. Bilingual tots seem to outperform in cognitive development in the early years, but their monolingual classmates may catch up with them later. One meta-analysis on the topic found that 25 studies of 45 found a bilingual advantage in children younger than six, while only 17 found them in children aged 6-12.

That's gonna be a let down to most people who read the title and make assumptions.

Mandatory mention of Language Transfer project[1].

[1] https://www.languagetransfer.org/

With time being limited, I wonder if using a second language, playing an instrument, solving puzzles, physical activity, or some other activity is "better" brain stimulus.

I have a different take. I am an immigrant. I speak 3 regional languages fluently and can partly speak German. While I always had English exposure since the age of 5 or 6, my parents spoke different language.

Everyone in my neighborhood who was not economically okay spoke different language than English.

I think it hurts more than helps when you are polylingual if you decide to spend majority of time in country like United States.

I have collected a lot of data around this. Time and time again, I can prove with data, that native english langauge speakers outperform anyone else. Whether it is college admissions, admissions to incubators like Y Combinator, job opportunities, sports opportunities, housing opportunities and more. If language is the sole factor to be considered, then polylinguals do not win.

When you speak a foreign language than English, you accent is bound to be messed up. Look at Indian Americans or Pakistani Americans or other people who speak dual langauge. There is always something off about their accent. This leads to acceptance and at time getting asked "are you american" or "were you born here?"

I am not saying dont learn foreign language. But, language is one aspect of being polylingual. You just dont speak words. Words have meaning and they are deeply ingrained in cultures.

If you know long term where you want to be, learn and speak and immerse yourself in the culture. Otherwise you are just creating more noise for social media points and making it harder for yourself to be a master of one language.

I think that most people working in tech that don't have English as their native language are bilingual. What that means, I am not sure, the article suggests some benefits and the next logical step is to assume these people should be slightly better on average than native English speakers, but this is just speculation.

Here in Finland, we have a good trial population: Finnish-Swedes.

They are genetically very similar to Finns, but despite being bi-lingual, and wealthier than native population, they are very slightly duller. (1-3 iq points).

> A study from 2019 showed that a moderate amount of language learning in adults does not boost things like executive function.

I guess these days a few paragraphs qualifies for an "in depth" article. No links to any of the sources referenced, except to one of their own pages. Not very useful.

That said, sure, as someone who speaks several languages and can mostly understand a few more, I think there are interesting insights gained by having this ability. For me, a lot of it has to do with, perhaps, less-than-verbal communication. Each culture has a certain way to communicate in person during conversations. Spanish spoken in Spain, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and Argentina, while different, also drag along non-verbal cues that are distinct in each culture. Same with English in various parts of the UK, US and other anglo-speaking countries. As much as some Canadians think themselves to be French, there are differences there as well with France. Non-verbal cues in the Arab world (and Middle East in general) are different as well. How you sit, move, pace, use your hands and gesticulate during in-person conversations are linked to both language and culture. Etc.

Who remembers the bar scene in Inglorious Basterds? Yup, very true. Instant communication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Ckh80mLlQ

Sometimes I really pity the monolinguals who can’t witness the beauty of the varied linguistic cultures of the world.

It’s not a brag but here’s a sample of how my polylingustic life looks like: In the past week I had discussions about Clausewitz’s “Vom Krige” and “Rét Samadhi” by Gitanjali Shree, discussed Marathi poetry with my daughter, listened to mellifluous Tamil songs like “Nenjukkul Peidhidum”, appreciated my wife’s Uttara Kannada accent, all the while consuming English media in copious amounts.

Languages and accents are a unique part of being human and I firmly believe that we’re meant to be multilingual.

My theory is that being bilingual isn't good so much because you know two languages, but because you get to know two cultures. I'd probably go crazy if american was the only culture I was exposed to on a deep level and didn't have a second language to help filter out the bad ideas from the good.

I have heard that hyperpolyglots, such as translators at EU headquarters who work with many languages, are more susceptible to mental illness.

If you want to slow cognitive decline or improve mental flexibility, then learning a second language, even if it's started later in life, does make sense, but expecting it to improve intelligence or memory overall is probably a beautiful but unrealistic fantasy.

I have a theory that being bilingual in early ages and having constant exposure to both languages, the latter being key, create two cognitive centers in your brain. It also matters when you picked up your languages. Exposure later in life may mean that you basically and merely “installed” a translation layer.

Personally, being half lifed and busted mentally, I found surprising how refreshing it was to learn bits of latin. It rewires concepts all across the brain in a smooth way and connect news ideas that you don't in you native language.

>We value your privacy

>... Together with our 173 trusted partners...

In a full screen, multi-stage permissions pop-up.

Yeah how about no. No need to lie, tell me how you really feel, maybe "we will sell anything we can to anyone we can because we need the money".

(It is a very detailed pop-up tho, in a good way - breaks down each toggle with individual companies, and there's a search across all of them)

I'm pretty sure that learning Polish made me dumber. After years of effort I still don't speak it fluently and lost countless days of my focus for having a marginal convenience of knowing Polish superficially.

The way looking up words in your vocabulary works kind of like a vector db search. Then sometimes I think of something and the query result returns only the thing in language 3.

I think English monolingual people have a harder time learning and distinguishing homophones (words with same pronunciation but different spelling) - such as to/too/two, there/their/they're, its/it's, etc. If you know another language and correspond the aforementioned English words with those in the other language, you can see that they become quite distinct. For example, to/too/two in French is à/aussi/deux.

Need to learn the second language and use it over years switching thinking between the two languages. Learning it in university then not using it does not count.

It's not just about delaying dementia, either. I've heard it improves cognitive flexibility and multitasking abilities. Makes sense, you're constantly switching between mental frameworks.

I suspect the benefit is greater when the second language is from a completely different family, and has a different writing system.

I don't think it's bad for your brain.

These kinda articles are 2nd language imposition propaganda we've seen lot.

I wonder why pro-diversity folks didn't pick it up yet. What could be more monocultural if not the language? We need more language diversity.

Unless you love the culture, there's no reason to learn a language besides English. I would ditch the knowledge and thousands of hours spent on my native language to improve my English, or really any other skill. Always funny watching Americans try to larp as cultured cosmopolitans by learning a language they'll never actually need. Especially in 2025, when you can just point an AI at something and ask it to read it for you.