alt Hacker Newsgrowing up bilingual is much easier when your immediate family / community speak the "first language"
now that im surrounded by Americans, its much harder to justify the mental load of teaching a non-scholastic second language when there is no community to reinforce what youve learned beyond rote learning exercises. im not convinced multiple languages made me smarter either...
Replies
markvdb • today at 5:53 PM
Early childhood multilingualism does at least yield some brain flexibility.
Speaking multiple languages also opens doors to very different cultural spaces. I know it has enriched my world view. That has made me if not smarter, then at least wiser.
> im not convinced multiple languages made me smarter either...
I used to work in the language learning space, and I personally think that the idea that speaking multiple languages makes you smarter is mostly a myth. It definitely does expand your mind a bit and gives you the ability to express some ideas more concisely, but I don’t feel like it’s made me smarter in the same way that learning to code, or reading books has.