Learning Another Language May Be One of the Best Ways to Keep Your Brain Healthy

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• Hacker News
• The only solid thing I’ve seen for brain health is maintaining physical health
  by david38
• Note that languages can alternatively also be conlangs (constructed languages). They are in fact a lot more interesting and systematic than traditional human languages. Granted, you'll find no real-life people who verbally speak the conlang outside of arranged group calls within online communities.
  by OutOfHere
• I find that I am having a different personality in each (3) languages I speak, especially in context in a different country. When I switch back to my original language to speak to someone in said country my habits I do in my original country come back for the part and then I revert back. Feels a bit schizophrenic, but I think it is normal for most people. My child is showing similar patterns.

  To me this is proof that learning a language touches a lot of parts in our brain, not just affect the parts about learning

  by aduwah
• I am trilingual. All of my languages belong to different language groups; I regularly read and write in both directions. I use all of the three languages every day. I can also bulldoze my way through a text in a fourth language given a dictionary and a reference for its grammar. I can read the alphabet of a fifth language (mostly w/o understanding the sounds that I make, but I am told that I get it right).

  I got there 15 years ago. I seem to be unable to learn anything new since.

  by glum64
• The biggest obstacle to learning a foreign language is that it's so much slower and more frustrating than using your native language, right? Compared to your native-language typing speed, even English typing speed is only half...

  So it's really frustrating. how do you all relieve that frustration?

  by jdw64
• Anyone have experience learning a new language in their 30s? I've tried and failed a few times. I can't tell if the time constraints (family, work, life) or mental constraints are the bigger problem.
  by shigawire
• A second language, almost from the start, will also open up a whole second world for you.

  When I go to somewhere that speaks Spanish the whole place “jumps into 3D” for me. I can understand what people at the table next to me are complaining or laughing about, I can make small talk with people, I don’t have to follow the “avocado toast” trail that the non-native speakers sort of get jammed into because they struggle off of it. It is a much more human experience when you understand the language.

  At home, I can watch Spanish movies as well, and listen to music artists I probably might never have heard about like C. Tangana and Rosalia otherwise. It has doubled my cultural landscape for me.

  After reading the article, I wonder if this isn’t a key secondary benefit to learning the language itself. It gives you a larger variety of things to enjoy in your life.

  by outside1234
• Before Covid I got my German B1 certificate. I was diligently going to German-speaking meetup twice a week.

  One of the meetups had a bunch of googlers in it regularly. One of them was a loud gregarious Italian from the north. He was telling me a story about cleaning fish and chopping their heads off with a machete and how he cut the end of his finger off and had it reattached. He seemed nice but a little inept and lacking caution.

  Covid was starting. In the newspapers it was reported that Zurich had its first case of Covid. They were cautious to not say who it was - no clues at all in the paper. But a friend at Google forwarded me an internal email that said no one at Google had it yet other than someone in the Zurich office who had just been in northern Italy.

  I stopped going to the meetups. I really should start again but not sure what's going to happen next.

  by comrade1234