Thinking in a foreign language improves decision-making

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/sep/17/how-learning-thinking-in-a-foreign-language-improves-decision-making

by ranit • 3 years ago

153 72 3 years ago

Thinking in words of any language is entirely too slow for anything except plotting out a sentence. I'll stick to thinking in abstract concepts.

fidotron• 3 years ago

Exactly. The hysteria about LLMs has betrayed how many people never make the leap and are constrained to thinking in the words and structures already familiar to them.

It is also incredible the extent to which abstract visualization is looked down on by our current academic fashions.

dazc2• 3 years ago

My Spanish teacher used to tell me not to try and translate everything in my head but to just think in Spanish. This seemed ridiculous to me at first but, over time, I understood what she meant. Put simply, you can't have a conversation in Spanish if you are mentally translating every word as you go. No Spanish speaker is going to hang around that long.

I never did get to that stage but can appreciate the concept.

mandmandam2• 3 years ago

People thinking in other languages also work stuff out abstractly sometimes.

I'd say it's likely that learning new languages can improve your ability to work in abstract concepts. Something about the different forms of grammar, and deep paradigm shift in outlook implicit in the language (aka Sapir-Whorf). For example, the Mayan languages were fantastic for closely describing nature, compared to English, and (probably as a result) their astronomy was incredible.

sitkack• 3 years ago

Being forced to translate from a language you are proficient in, one you possibly think sublingually in, forces one to move from system 2, to system one.

Esp if the destination language has a much higher precision for the arguments you are making.

toss1• 3 years ago

Basically, it seems that thinking in a second language involves or engages more thinking and less "reflexive" responses.

So, if one were to choose to learn/renew a language that encourages better thinking, which ones are best? Anyone have any examples with multiple languages and feeling that one or another helped them think better?

(I'm currently choosing a language to learn/relearn among the EU languages, so interested in suggestions - thx)

bibanez• 3 years ago

German for sure, as a romanic language speaker. I don't know for sure what I would recommend if your mother tongue is English. Maybe German as well!

svilen_dobrev• 3 years ago

try

a) something very different

b) something close (but not too much)

note, words/notions themselves, is different beast from constructs, both may give or take abilities

mandmandam2• 3 years ago

if one were to choose to learn/renew a language that encourages better thinking, which ones are best?

Honestly it probably doesn't matter all that much. European languages are all pretty connected, in the scheme of things, and have much more in common with each other than you'd expect at first or second glance.

That said, Spanish seems a safe bet, as per tfa. Coupled with the fact that so many people speak it, you could certainly do worse.

I'm currently learning it, with the help of some lion's mane, and it does feel like a worthy pursuit.

If I had to guess at a real answer to your interesting question though, I'd have to guess Russian. They've had a ridiculous amount of high-quality thought and literature, relative to their resources and population size.

e12e• 3 years ago

among the EU languages

I suspect learning a language that is actually substantially different has a more profound effect - so assuming your native language is English - maybe Finnish, Basque or Gaelic?

permalac• 3 years ago

Try catalan. Is somehow nice, sounds nice. Is not easy but does not have as many rules as others, and can be used as bridge between French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Also, Andorra has now made it mandatory to be able to keep tour residency so that's a plus.

bavarianbob2• 3 years ago

I'd also posit that thinking improves decision-making.

dazc2• 3 years ago

I'm not sure about that, the more I think about things the less likely I am to come to a firm decision.

I have gotten to the stage now where I just accept the decision may turn out to be wrong but it won't be the end of the world if it is, I'm not in charge of anything that dangerous.

Swizec2• 3 years ago

All decisions are bets, [the right kind of] thinking just improves the odds.

pixl97• 3 years ago

More than likely it's because you understand the world works on probability and very little certainty.

Things that are potentially deadly, like flying an aircraft, attempt to remove as much probability as possibly. You make checklists of behaviors before the emergency happens so you think as little as possible.

Or a more inflammatory statement I've been known to say to others "Certainty is for the religious and conmen alike".

kashyapc• 3 years ago

Meanwhile, as I started to learn my 5th language (French), I just came across this article[1], where it claims studying a new language can "interfere" with other languages you know. To selectively quote:

"[...] we can conclude that learning words from a new language does come at the cost of at least retrieval ease for words in previously learnt foreign languages.’ In one of the experiments, learning the Spanish versions of words also seemed to make participants slightly less accurate when recalling those words in English. [...]"

Although I can confirm the small effect from my own experience, it doesn't faze me. For me, the upsides far outweigh a slight delay in retrieval ease.

[1] https://psyche.co/ideas/will-studying-a-new-language-interfe...

saiya-jin• 3 years ago

I dont believe it neither (on my 4th/5th, french too). There is often new mental model required, ie with French you need to catch first parts of words since ends are not pronounced, and other quirks. German has these uber long words. Grammar is always a bit different. Ordering in sentences. And so on.

Overall it increases neuroplasticity, best starting as kids when brain is more adaptive. Big gains, regardless if there are some miniscule disadvantages overall.

Aerroon• 3 years ago

I definitely have this problem sometimes. I know what I want to say but the only word that pops into my head is in the wrong language.

hutzlibu• 3 years ago

In traveller communities it is quite common to just say them in a different language - then you have a beautiful language mix where people stilm mostly understand each other. It just gets akward, when you interact with ordinary people again ..

throw1234651234• 3 years ago

I think this aspect of it is common, but overall the "negative" effects are very minor and shouldn't stop anyone from trying to learn a language.

stephen_g• 3 years ago

I have experienced this too, and I hope it’s just temporary. Part of it may be that I only have a rudimentary grasp of both languages, but I had learnt a bit of Spanish, and now learning French I find I’m mixing up especially words like tres and muy and things like that when I go back and try to speak Spanish, as well as nouns, numbers etc.. Verbs probably not so much since the conjugation is so different.

It’s tricky because some words are exactly the same (just different pronunciation), some are similar (like from the same root). So I hope this is just teething difficulty.

gsuuon2• 3 years ago

I experienced this too but the other way, French -> Spanish, and I think it may be particular to these languages as there's so much confusing overlap (for non-natives). I've since dropped French entirely and haven't had any issues with mixed recall with Spanish recently. I imagine learning both can be done if you were to get to a solid foundation with one before attempting the other.

adhesive_wombat• 3 years ago

Definitely a thing for me. When translating between two non-primary languages, I'll often either start talking the wrong one to the wrong party, or just completely blank out on basic words. I assume it's what an 8051 feels like when switching register banks!

I also recall teachers doing our spoken assessments reminding us the moment before the tape started recording that "remember, French, not German" because both tests took place in the same week and pupils would often launch into the wrong language.

jongjong• 3 years ago

My native language is French but I learned English at a young age so my English is better. I haven't spoken French regularly for the past 10 years and so, nowadays, it takes me some effort to recall certain French words.

10 years ago, my level of French and English were almost on par to the extent that I didn't even realize what language I was speaking with my parents or siblings (who could also speak both) and would often mix words from different languages based on which one came to mind first.

I took a French class in school (as an easy way to boost my grades) and sometimes the teacher would ask me a question in English and I would accidentally respond back in English instead of French (not realizing it); this amused some of my peers as the questions were usually very basic and therefore awkward to answer in English as anyone could have done so.

I would just respond in whatever language the other person spoke and it took effort for me to consciously answer in a different language than what the other person used.

htss20132• 3 years ago

I wish people who write and study this would differentiate between close languages (eg Italian and Spanish) vs totally different ones (Spanish vs Russian). I am guessing these are cognitively two very different undertakings, in kind, not just difficulty.

walmart• 3 years ago

Yeah, you probably want to go the farthest distance from where you are currently. A speaker of an analytic language (say, Mandarin) would probably have their mind stretched maximally if they went for something agglutinative(say, Turkish) and vice versa. Geographic and cultural distance makes this even more of a mind expander.

robomartin• 3 years ago

Can't say I've had that problem (5 languages). My problem has been that what I call "language confidence" erodes quickly when you don't use them for a long time. For example, I use English and Spanish on a daily basis. No issues there. However, I haven't used French for probably 30 years and German for 20. I can listen to both and understand most of it, yet launching into speaking anything other than short phrases feels really uncomfortable.

Tangent: I learned some Japanese years ago. The language made sense to my brain. No writing, just conversation. The same thing did not happen when I attempted to learn Chinese. The way I put it is that my brain simply could not synchronize with the speech pattern and sentence structures. To be fair, I don't think I made a solid effort.

Swizec2• 3 years ago

I am native level fluent in 2 languages – Slovenian and English – and this feels true to my experience. There’s a lot of stuff I can critically think about in English because the words don’t carry much/any emotional weight. They’re just abstract concepts, very easy to be coldly objective.

Meanwhile talking about work stuff in Slovenian is near impossible because most of my career has been in English. It’s like the concepts just don’t exist in the Slovenian part of my brain.

This gets really trippy when the same word in each language feels like it carries different connotations and baggage. The translation is same but the meaning is different because the correct where you’d use each word is different.

htss20132• 3 years ago

Yes this is the most disorienting thing about using a non native language. You're aware that you aren't able to convey intended connotation or comprehend it. So even if you are perfectly capable of all the right denotation, you're still missing an entire layer of communication.

It's even more difficult when a language is spoken in different cultures. Eg, British, American and Australians probably have different connotations associated with the same words. Distinguishing between using a synonym out of custom vs intentionally for a different connotation is very difficult. It's not like there's a connotation dictionary you can refer to.

morjom• 3 years ago

As a Finnish person who almost fluked Swedish class I wish I would've taken it more seriously. Knowing a language or three at that seems like a big up in life.

webnrrd2k• 3 years ago

If you're willing to accept math as a language in the same sense as the article uses, then this effect applies to the sciences, where people regularly translate problems into the non-native language of math to gain clarity.

zen_1• 3 years ago

The Arabic in the header image is about as fucked up as possible.

The letter ordering is wrong (ltr instead of rtl). The word ordering is wrong (ltr instead of rtl). Somehow they also managed to get the letters not to connect to each other.

Great job Guardian! 10/10

LordShredda• 3 years ago

The image was probably made in photoshop. It's 2023 and some programs still can't render decent RTL unicode.

BasedAnon• 3 years ago

but GIMP can, score one for open source!

gus_massa• 3 years ago

There is a site to explain the differences "Help! Is This Arabic?" https://isthisarabic.com/ HN discussions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34949146 (635 points | 6 months ago | 299 comments) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29544990 (80 points | December 2021 | 20 comments)

ComplexSystems• 3 years ago

This isn't exactly the same, but someone needs to make a similar site for English text for products being exported from Asian countries. It is totally baffling to me just how bad the Engrish is on some of these products I get on Amazon: product specs, manuals, and etc vary from "slightly off" to "almost unreadable." It's actually something I have been curious about for a long time: why is it like this?

The people who make these products have to spend millions and millions of dollars setting up factories, hiring people, putting things into production, etc. But somehow they don't have a budget for a bilingual college student intern to translate a bunch of copy to English better than "using this product will bring a great joy." Why? I would be super interested in some journalist figuring out why this happens.

Of course, there's always the viewpoint of "why would they need to translate better? It's just money that they don't need to spend, and this works for their business." So I will make a super strong claim: ChatGPT can now do nearly perfect mass translations of this stuff for free, in theory simultaneously increasing translation quality and reducing costs. Despite this, for whatever reason, I predict that the average translation quality on Amazon won't improve within the next few years.

Anyone want to take the other side of that bet?

aaomidi2• 3 years ago

It’s so fucking disappointing to keep seeing this happen.

It shows a lack of care, empathy, and diversity from every organization that makes this mistake.

It completely nullifies every point they were making.

I remember Google made this same fuck up on a segment in IO when they were talking about how many languages they’re supporting.

It’s disgraceful and just outright disrespectful.

racked• 3 years ago

Sheesh. The person who did it could not read Arabic. When does it stop being disrespectful and start becoming plain human error; if they make a mistake writing Thai? Hieroglyphs?

syndicatedjelly• 3 years ago

This is the definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater

dotnet00• 3 years ago

Eh, I disagree. It's no different from the way all sorts of Asian clothing brands just put random English words in places or how many of their songs just have English bits which have glaring errors or outright don't make sense. They don't actually know English but they think it's cool and thus do that (or similarly in the West with Japanese/Chinese characters).

Yet for most English speakers, it is at worst amusing and mostly is just appreciated as indicating interest.

Adverblessly• 3 years ago

Some time ago I encountered an imported vending machine here in Israel. It had a touch screen with a prompt in Hebrew to interact with it that:

  1. Had reverse letter ordering (ltr instead of rtl)
  2. Had reverse word ordering (ltr instead of rtl)
  3. Had no spaces between words
  4. Broke words across line boundaries
  5. Made sense semantically (sort of), but didn't make sense in context

So imagine seeing the following interaction prompt on a vending machine:

   kildlouwi
  eviecerote

Took quite a while to decipher!

loa_in_• 3 years ago

Spoiler: it's one of these

Obfuscated intentionally

Dog park and the more Receive your product Stolen from the following To receive I would like Tire on the other hand Dagger I am not parent Duck to the same role

cafard2• 3 years ago

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-bbcs-hebrew-boo-boo/

switch007• 3 years ago

The Grauniad struggles with English all the time, what did you expect lol

karmakaze• 3 years ago

Not only spoken languages but math and music could also be included though the specific areas of improvement or resilience could very. I have learned several languages early on but find my thinking/imagination to be less word-language but rather shapes, connections, motions, and other not easily mapped to word things.

abeppu• 3 years ago

I'm reminded of anecdotes from Murakami, who tactically wrote pieces of his work in English, and then translated back to Japanese, and preferred the style of the result. He also mentioned later learning of Hungarian writer Agota Kristof, who learned and wrote in French, and had a direct style with short sentences. This is only to point out that in addition to the objective, empirical conclusions described in this guardian article, there are also sometimes aesthetic and subjective benefits.

https://lithub.com/haruki-murakami-the-moment-i-became-a-nov...

valyagolev• 3 years ago

Agota Kristof wrote one of the most intense, alienating, haunting works I've ever read (the notebook trilogy). but all the time i was reading a thought was nagging that her name is a play around agatha kristie

NalNezumi2• 3 years ago

The article comes of as a bit... Fluffy. But it's psychology after all, so maybe that would be expected.

But I wonder. From the article:

The foreign language effect does not depend on the particular features of the language that someone speaks; instead, it is concerned with the general experience of moving from a first to a second language.

It feels so weird to me. It feels so weird that according to this, (own example) a Swedish person that learned Norwegian would have similar effect as someone that learned say, Japanese. The latter just so happens to be me. (native in both)

But Norwegian(bokmål) and Swedish(rikssvenska) is so similar that I can hardly believe any "learning a second language" effect occur. If it does, I think claiming that a deep-Texan learning British cockney/posh accent, or Scottish accent, also have the effect mentioned.

Certain languages are just so similar that there's just major overlap. While with others, there's just expressions that is impossible to convey. But here somehow national border based categorization of languages seems to be enough to show the effect?

I can't help but question if this is just one of the psychology bogus like the "decision fatigue" that had ample evidence until it was almost completely disproven.

_Microft• 3 years ago

It feels so weird that according to this, a Swedish person that learned Norwegian would have similar effect as someone that learned say, Japanese.

Is that from the study itself or is it an own example? For what it's worth I'd not consider the pair of Norwegian and Swedish as languages foreign to another. They are basically dialects. The same goes for the pair of German and Austrian imo.

NalNezumi2• 3 years ago

An own example. The quoted part is from the article.

And yes I would consider the same. But if the quoted part is to be believed, the implications are that the same effect occur between Austrian and German, as would Afrikaans to Mongolian

mlindner• 3 years ago

This seems really wrong given the tremendous number of aircraft accidents and near-accidents that have been caused by speakers of one language not understanding the language spoken by controllers very well. Using a different language adds cognitive load, not the other way around.

monadgonad• 3 years ago

You're talking about a completely different phenomenon.

agumonkey• 3 years ago

Funny, as trying different programming languages rewire your brain deeply, so does trying different human languages. Different vocabulary and grammars will shed lights on different patterns in interesting ways.

gsuuon2• 3 years ago

I wonder how much of this has to do with learning the second language when you're older and more mature? You end up without the childhood emotional baggage or subtle misunderstandings that come with learning at a young age.

nik282000• 3 years ago

I maintain a number of machines which came with non-english wiring diagrams. Trying to learn a language while diagnosing issues with a machine does not improve either activity.

rongenre• 3 years ago

This makes me think of my experiences in Europe.

In my native language (English), I can twist and weasel with the language to keep from committing to... anything. It has -- too many degrees of freedom available to me.

With German, though [where I'm intermediate], I don't have that flexibility. My conversations are really straightforward and what comes out is simple enough that I can express it. I'd say that this does come at the cost of understanding and expressing nuance and condition, but maybe that's actually helpful.

Thinking in a foreign language improves decision-making

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