I'm not starting this thread to shit on bi/multilingual speakers. I'm trying to find out the disadvantages of speaking multilingual, because it's incredibly difficult to find anything but positive remarks on the subject, and that doesn't seem right at all. There obliviously has to be some drawbacks or tradeoffs being made to accomplish multilingual speaking.
If any anons here (and I know a lot of you are multilingual) would honestly chime in, and give real insight on the matter we might all just learn something.
One article I did dig up mentions a possible disadvantage in meta-cognition, but I would need a lot more to feel conclusive on its findings:
The only drawback i can think of is that you somtimes forget words in your main language because you associate it's meaning with the second languange
Brandon Cruz
I'm learning French because France is my country's greatest ally.
Bentley Wilson
I cannot think of a single real disadvantage to learning another language. Your article only lists muh time and money. Perhaps some people might suffer from realising how politically incorrect daily speech in non-western European languages can be but sensibilities are not a strong appeal.
Cooper Watson
There's not that many disadvantages, unless as Swissbro said you start forgetting the nuances of your own language.
Connor Diaz
There's no disadvantages.
Andrew Long
This. Happens to me all the time. Since I even think in English half the time, I often use English words even when speaking Czech. Nobody seems to mind though, as most people here speak English. Depends on who I'm dealing with. When I'm talking to Slovaks I automatically start using their words as well. When I'm talking to Russians, I start speaking in Russian. Etc. It's actually so much fun when talking to multilingual people in a club or whatever, since some words have more directly tied meanings to what you want to express only in that one language. Other than forgetting your native language a bit, I don't see any disadvantages.
Jaxson Reed
Your brain is like a hard drive. The memory space is not unlimited. This is a physical impossibility.
Therefore, knowing multiple languages takes an enormous toll on your memory capacity and deteriorates your ability to learn new things.
Brandon Ward
So it sounds like a dilution of the other language, which we would expect. I should have clarified, a lot of what I read only talks about the cognitive advantages. I'm trying to seek out the cognitive disadvantages. We're supposed to believe that learning a new language just makes us overall more intelligent. Which in ways, it does, but in everyway, and I'm trying to find out exactly if there is cognitive disadvantages from this tradeoff that we should focus on.
Matthew Fisher
>I often use English words even when speaking Czech oh god like those teenage girls user i am so sorry for you
James Hughes
It's not really a dilution The reason those Euro anons forget their native language is because they spend 90% of their time speaking English online. For an American, you won't have this issue.
Gavin Morris
I’ve noticed my first language(Russian) getting a little worse, because now I sometimes use word order a bit on the English side and also I’m more inclined to use borrowed words instead of grassroots ones(like ceлeктивный(“selective” literally) instead of избиpaтeльный).
But there really are no major drawbacks.
Adam Ward
I'm tri-lingual and can't really come up with any negative thing about it.
Jack Mitchell
I find the computer analogy to be useful. And I wonder if it is useful to subscribe to the finite materialist view on our capacity to learn (this makes sense from a physical point of view), or is it somehow that our learning capacity increases from learning multiple languages. Because the latter is what everyone is spreading around, and I don't buy it because it's all gain and no drawbacks, which is too suspicious to me.
Jack Nelson
I don't think the disadvantages would be as much cognitive as sort of environmental. When someone learns a global lingua franca like English as a second language they become exposed to far more subversion and propaganda as a consequence. Then again, I have never heard of an intelligent person regretting learning English.
Alexander Reed
I disagree. Your mind is a fucking reciever bro. No idea what you're talking about. I don't insert English words in Czech sentences, more like switching between languages when I want to express something more succinctly and there's a good phrase that fits. Most people here do it to some extent, if they're from middle class or higher. Of course a Polak shoveling shit in construction will be confused.
Nolan King
Monkeys can't talk, but they memorize patterns much faster than we do. So maybe this could happen to us when we learn a second/third etc. language. I personally think that's not the case but it could be one cognitive tradeoff. Look at this monkey: youtu.be/ravykEih1rE
Julian Scott
In the study I posted, it mentioned that the bi-lingual (I imagine it would apply to multi as well) speakers had a disadvantage:
>"monolinguals were better able than bilinguals to discriminate between when they were right and when they were wrong."
Oliver Thompson
There is no such thing as "all gain no drawbacks" much like there is no such thing as a free lunch. Your suspicion is justified. There is always a price. In this case the price is memory capacity.
Disagree all you want. You cannot have unlimited memory. Physically impossible.
Jacob Long
I am sorry I think it is cringe. Like those ridiculous people in the last era that insert French words to try and appear more refined. It's ridiculous for me.
Ryder Green
I've read somewhere that people change their personalities when they speak a different language. Personally when i talk with bilingual people , and we both speak the same two languages , one moment they would speak one language and halfway thru the conversation they would start speaking in the other. I do understand them, but it kinda feels like i am not speaking to the same person. It is no nation we inhabit but a language. Languages have different personalities. Some words for some things exist in some languages and not in others. People changing their personalities when speaking another language makes sense , and it pisses me off when people speaking my mother tongue start speaking english halfway thru, their body language and attitude changes and it's like a different person.
Cooper Green
>Monkeys can't talk, but they memorize patterns much faster than we do.
