aaleks wrote:Cavesa wrote:2.Why bother learning another language and NOT getting a proper certificate proving your level?
Because getting a certificate is a waste of your time and money if you don't have any practical use for it. IMO
Cavesa wrote:4.Do you trust all those information filters around you, giving you just some news, some authors, etc?
You can learn how to deal with any information having learn only your native tongue. It's a separated skill and it has little to do with how much languages one knows.
When you finally have a use for the certificate, it is often too late to wait for an exam date and then for the results. Many opportunities simply don't stay and wait half a year.
And yes, thinking is a separate skill but having sources in various languages definitely helps.
Actually, that is another point to the dependence on the translations problem: lots of "journalists" just take foreign news and translate them, sometimes with mistakes. And yes, those differences matter.
Really, and I was partially joking as I find this thread rather absurd.
We know already what most people think, we know already we are considered fools that waste time that should be put into either earning money and doing sports (this is partially sarcasm, partially sum up of all the rubbish I've heard in my life concerning my language learning hobbies)
Morgana wrote:rdearman wrote:While there is some evidence language learning helps hold off dementia,
This point always bugs me. I don't fault anyone for repeating it without more detail because it is rarely reported with more detail. The only study (well, articles) I can find that bother to mention if it is lifelong bilingualism vs. bilingualism acquired in adulthood all say that it is
lifelong bilingualism, ie. it doesn't apply to people who spoke one language through their childhood and adolescence, ie. most of us. For example, this article from
Alzheimers.org. Also this in
New Scientist. If anyone knows of a study (or several) that bothered to distinguish these two categories of bilinguals and showed that the protective effect against dementia applies to people who acquired second languages as adults, I would love to know so I can stop being so skeptical
The main benefit is learning something new and therefore the overall increase in the amount of synapses. The more synapses there are (which correlates with education), the larger buffer and later onset of the symptoms. Both at the young age and the old, even though the mechanisms are different. Language learning is just an extremely good example. But learning physics, history, or gardening can work similarly. It is not the only protective mechanism, just one of the things you can do, including various healthy life style habits.
It doesn't have to be a language. I was told a nice case example of a botanics professor, whose main symptom was not remembering both the Latin and Czech terminology anymore, always just one or the other. And it bothered her a lot. Well, her objective results could have made a person with lower education barely functional, she fortunately had tons of "extra" synapses. But we might agree that learning a language is often less complicated than becoming a botanist in one's free time.
rdearman wrote:The main reason I asked the question is to see if someone could find a reason not trotted out periodically on the Internet. None of the reasons given would have ever convinced me to start. Now I'm learning 4 languages but I didn't start learning any of them to get a job, or reduce dementia, or read "Harry Potter in the original" or whatever. I started because some poor guy in a ticket booth, in a train station in Italy, couldn't make me understand he didn't have change for the large bill I was attempting to pay with.
I suppose "making social interactions in another country" would be a valid statement for what got me started. But, I tripped up and fell down the slippery slope of language learning.
...
It is easier to sell someone a "sport" as a hobby than to sell an intellectual pursuit. A lot of people have hobbies like painting, music, sport, etc. but only a few of us learn languages. I was really just trying to see if anyone had a new insight into reasons for learning a language.
to the bolded part: impossible. Everything gets trotted out on the internet.
Reading Harry Potter in original was a thing mostly back when the books were new. When either you switched to the original or you had to wait half a year longer. And I doubt any such widely spread craze will ever happen again
Easier to sell a sport? Well, depends on the person. I hate most sports and I am definitely not the only one. But for some reason, that seems to make me a worse person while hating intellectual hobbies makes one normal. We live in a weird world.
The more I think about it, the less sense I see in using these huge generic reasons anywhere. I'd say language learning is yet another field, where targeted advertising is the logical next step. If you want to convince someone, get to know them and tell them what they need to hear. And we need to accept we will never be the social norm.
