This Is Your Brain on Language | Compilation

You have a lot of choices if you’re looking to learn a new language, from Spanish to coding, or even whistling! And there are some broad similarities and patterns in the ways our brains process these different forms of communication.

Hosted by: Brit Garner

Original Episodes:
Is Coding a Math Skill or a Language Skill? Neither? Both?
What Whistled Speech Tells Us About How the Brain Interprets Language
Will Learning Another Language Make You Smarter?
Want to Speak a Foreign Language Better? Have a Drink
What We Often Get Wrong About the Brain's "Language Centers"
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[panqueque]

"Learning another language has benefits that no one can argue with, like for example, you will know another language"
This is the deep, thought provoking content I subscribed for.

[dstinnettmusic]

My intuition was right. When I’m coding, I feel like I’m doing a riddle that might involve language, basic math, and logic.

[WandelLander]

I am Dutch and I’ve heard the language described as ‘drunk German’ or ‘drunk Swedish’ or ‘drunk Norwegian’ before by natives of those languages, so ya know, the boozed up Germans from this experiment might’ve sounded better because Dutch already just sounds drunk :p

[marciabentley]

No mention of sign language? I'm curious about how differently the brain processes sign language vs. spoken English in persons for whom ASL is their first language.

[Psi]

The best way to learn something is to try and explain it to someone else. Currently kids are forced to memories things which is a bad system. The emphasis is currently on teaching a concept then issuing homework to solve 100's of examples. The emphasis should instead be getting each student to come up with their own way to explain the concept to others. This could be through written help guides, verbal explanations, or even a YouTube video (whatever the student wants to to). This kind of system would be extremely effective because any kids in the class who don't yet understand the particular math concept are helped by all the different teaching content being created by all the kids who have already understood it. The best teaching content created can then be shared and used to teach other classes and the next years students. The best teaching content rises to the top because it works the best and the content is created "by students for students" so it remains relevant. The whole education system then starts to feed back on itself to become better and better.

[srtghfnbfg]

Programming languages are all defined by a VERY SPECIFIC set of rules (what we call the language's grammar [but not like normal English grammar]). I know more than 10 programming languages and 3 normal languages, and i struggle more with those 3 natural languages compared to any programming ones.
You need a specific logic for programming languages, and once you learn it, it's easily transferrable to any other programming language you want (most of the time [if we ignore paradigms but these aren't too hard to learn either]).

[blockflute]

The part about programming languages is unsurprising to anyone who does coding for a living :) Programming languages are unlike natural ones, as natural language is more complex and flexible, and can afford to be more vague. In contrast, coding is more of an engineering discipline, and requires precision, attention to detail, and knowing some of the moving cogs underneath the whole thing.

[ericrose]

As a lifelong programmer, I would suggest that reading and writing code would map more directly to the parts of the brain that control behavior. Blocks of code are not about communicating ideas the way language does, but about producing a specific change in the environment.

[JohnTwo]

Yeah a lot of programming is really creative problem solving like a complex puzzle.

[nutzeeer]

i say getting a second set of semantics increases your horizon, widening perspective.

[DisasterxUs]

This is interesting, but I wonder how English-centric a lot of it is. For example, Japanese and Korean are really context-dependent and can't be directly translated to English.

[robinhahnsopran]

True story about drinking and languages: I'm an opera singer, so I have some familiarity with languages besides my mother tongue, including Italian and French. I was doing a concert in Spain, sponsored by a wine company, and after the show we of course were given quite a bit of free wine. I do not speak Spanish AT ALL, but with the wine in hand, and with my limited knowledge of French and Italian, I found myself being perfectly able to communicate with and understand patrons who only spoke Spanish and some limited French and Italian, besides. We all had had wine, and the conversation was easy as heck!

[clareang]

Watching my dog's ear go up during the whistling🐶

[lisemarie]

In Canada, having a second language (especially French) enhances your employability in government offices and a number of corporate operations such as banking.

[CobaltContrast]

Bilingualism should be looked at as those who learn it from childhood vs those that study independently.

I dont think learning Spanish Spanish English would have given any cognitive boost. But going out and learning Japanese, or actually going to school and learning how to write in other languages did I begin to see benefits within my own languages. I was learning obscure words with extrapolation by cross referencing them in other languages.

[seattlegrrlie]

This all ignored the American bias in these research studies. People all over the world speak multiple languages. My friend from Pakistan knows four, grew up speaking them. My friend from Germany learned three growing up. People in China have learned Mandarin and their local dialect for hundreds of years. Oh but American researchers who just know English gotta see if leaning another language makes your smarter. It doesn't, it just makes you more educated

[marna_li]

I suck at mathematical thinking, but I am very good at coding - i.e. to see a logical flow of operations, which programming essentially is. Math might have laid the ground for computer science, but applied programming is so much more than it, when it comes to what is beyond the bits.

[ddpwe]

Why isn't this labeled as a compilation?

[katheymann]

When my family became refugees, from the Russian communist regime that took over Hungary, my parents were told to only speak English in the home instead of Hungarian by the school system. My parents spoke Hungarian with each other, but tried to speak English with me and my sister. My father was slow to learn English and would constantly slip Hungarian into conversations with us. My mother, who spoke German and Russian at the time because she was forced to learn the languages, was able to learn English much quicker. When my Hungarian grandmother moved in with us, my sister and I had to learn Hungarian again through a Hungarian/English dictionary in order to communicate with her. She was never able to learn conversational English, but she was fluent in Hebrew as well as Hungarian. My parents continued to speak English in the home and Iost the Hungarian language after my grandmother moved to a nursing home. In junior high, I elected French instead of Spanish because it was still considered a worldwide language at the time. I would convert English to Hungarian and then French and back again for the longest time. I found learning another language difficult at school because it was taught like written English by my 3rd year. The same way students learn about vowels, etc. in English class. I learned English as a 5 year old by sound. I continued, even in English class, to know how it is spoken and written by how it made sense by sound. Fourth year French was spoken and written almost entirely in French. I could not learn this language by sound and made the lowest passing grade. I never used the language again in my adult life. I can't even count to 10 in the language, but I can in Hungarian and Spanish. This Spanish is only due to my children watching educational TV like Sesame Street. I should have elected Spanish instead French. Oh well, my loss.

[ktvx.]

"I ended up texting my ex, but hey I passed my dutch test!"
- Some test subject