Language Log

Back in February, I posted about a terrific symposium on bilingualism at the AAAS meeting ("What bilinguals tell us about Mind and Brain", 2/19/2011). Along with the symposium's abstract and a list of the participants, and some complaints about the AAAS's failure to make it symposiums accessible to a broader public by putting them on  line, I promised that "If I have time, I'll summarize some of this work in a later post" — which never happened.

One of the most striking topics covered in that symposium was the fact that bilingualism offers, on average, about five years of protection against the symptoms of Alzheimer's, apparently by creating a "cognitive reserve" in executive function that allows people to continue performing at a higher mental level for a given degree of brain degeneration. This research was the focus of a recent New York Times article: Claudia Dreifus, "The Bilingual advantage", 5/30/2011.

The article is in the form of a Q&A between the reporter, Claudia Dreifus, and the researcher, Ellen Bialystok. The content is excellent — clear, to the point, not hyped or spun for effect — and there are links to the research papers!

Yesterday afternoon, here at AAAS-2011, I attended a superb symposium: "Crossing Borders in Language Science: What Bilinguals Tell Us About Mind and Brain". Here's the abstract:

More people in the world are bilingual than monolingual. Historically, the component disciplines that comprise the language sciences have focused almost exclusively on monolingual speakers of a single language and largely on English as the universal language. In the past decade, there has been a shift in these disciplines to acknowledge the consequences of bilingualism for characterizing language, understanding the way languages are learned and used, and identifying the consequences of negotiating life in two languages for cognitive and brain processes. Recent studies show that bilingualism confers advantages to cognitive control at all stages of life, from infancy to old age; that contrary to popular belief, being exposed to two languages from early childhood does not create confusion but instead modulates the trajectory of language development; that signed and spoken languages produce a form of bilingualism that is similar to bilingualism in two spoken languages; and that the continual activity of both languages affects brain function and structure. Despite the excitement surrounding these discoveries, we do not understand how exposure to and use of two languages creates the observed consequences for bilingual minds and brains. Addressing these questions requires a language science that is both cross-disciplinary and international. The aim of this symposium is to illustrate the most exciting of these new discoveries and to begin to consider their causal basis.

At the end of his abbreviated trip to Indonesia (cut short because of the volcanic eruptions of Mt. Merapi), President Obama gave a half-hour address at the University of Indonesia that finally showed off his skills in the Indonesian language, a subject we've been examining. Granted, it was a prepared speech, but Obama went out of his way to include Indonesian phrases and sentences that would resonate with the crowd (mostly composed of students and staff at UI), and he even worked in at least one ad-lib.

From the official transcript, here are the relevant Indonesian passages from the speech, accompanied by my quick analysis. (Video of the speech is available on C-SPAN here and on the White House site here.)

In January 2009, soon after President Obama was sworn in, we had our first video evidence of his conversational skills in Indonesian, based on an exchange he had with a State Department staffer. (See "Obama's Indonesian pleasantries: the video.") As I said at the time, his experience of living in Indonesia from age six to ten had left him "if not bilingual, at least bi-courteous." Now Obama is on his long-delayed state visit to Indonesia, and he's been breaking out some more Indonesian pleasantries and showing off basic food-related etiquette.

Here at Language Log, we have several times discussed Li Yang's Crazy
English: Crazy English, Crazy English again, and A Sane Survey of Crazy English. Now there is an excellent movie from Singapore entitled "Mad about English." Here I provide a trailer for the movie and a clip of a phenomenal policeman featured in the film who not only can say "Welcome to Beijing" in more languages than I can count, but who also can talk like a New York gangster. First the multilingual cop:

Just last week I reported on a couple of accounts describing Barack Obama's conversational skills in Indonesian, a language he learned living in Indonesia from age six to ten. In both of the accounts, Obama was said to handle conventional Indonesian greeting routines with aplomb. Now thanks to ABC News we have the video evidence, from an exchange that President Obama had with State Department staffer Charles Silver on Thursday as the president worked the State Department rope-line. Silver has been stationed in Jakarta at various times since 1969 and now works in the State Department's Office of Inspector General.

Back in July, Bill Poser noted that "Barack Obama is reported to speak Indonesian as result of the four years, from age six to age ten, that he spent in Indonesia." Bill asked for any evidence about Obama's competence in Indonesian. Since then, we've gotten some anecdotal reports about Obama's Indonesian (including from the President of Indonesia!), but we still don't know if his language skills rise above the basic conversational level.

You might think that it does, from the headlines "Bilingual children stutter more – study", "Stutter risk for bilingual kids", "Study: bilingual kids more likely to stutter", etc. These stories report on a recently-published study: Peter Howell, Stephen Roger Davis, and Roberta Williams, "The effects of bilingualism on stuttering during late childhood", ADC Published Online 9 September 2008.

Howell et al. studied 317 children who stuttered, all of whom started school in the UK at age four or five, first came to a speech clinic between 8 and 10, and lived in the greater London area. For 69 of the 317, "at least one language other than English was spoken in the home". Thus 21.8% of the stutterers were raised in a home where a language other than English is spoken. In comparison, among schoolchildren of comparable age in the greater London area, the London Education Authority reports that 28.4% come from such homes.

But wait a minute: the percentage of stutterers who come from non-English-speaking homes is smaller than the percentage of kids in general who come from such homes? How does this translate into "Bilingual children stutter more", or "Stutter risk for bilingual kids"?

This is a follow-up on my Language devaluation and Pushing buttons posts from last Monday, and coincidentally also a follow-up on (the first comment on) Bill Poser's Obama's Indonesian post from Friday.

I had promised in the Language devaluation post that I would (when I found the time) collect arguments for why English should not be the official language of the United States. I haven't really found the time yet, but several LL readers were kind enough to take the time to offer their help in the comments section of that post. See the first comment in particular (from Ryan Rosso), chock-full of useful links.

As several commenters point out, a lot depends on what it means to designate an official language — that is, what the practical effects of that designation are. Some think that it would be no more than a symbolic gesture here in the U.S., a formal recognition of an obvious reality: English is by far the dominant language of the nation. Others think (and I agree) that a piece of legislation is a piece of legislation: the original intent may be symbolic, but once it's there it can be used as a tool for less-than-symbolic (shall we say) purposes.

[ Incidentally: recall the calculated shifting around among "official", "national", and "common and unifying" in the House and Senate two years ago, as Ben Zimmer discusses in an LL Classic Post ("English: official, national, common, unifying, or other?"); see also Bill Poser's two posts flanking Ben's ("Senate votes for official English", "What does 'official' mean?"). ]

Barack Obama is reported to speak Indonesian as result of the four years, from age six to age ten, that he spent in Indonesia. From what I know of his life since, he has not had much opportunity to improve or even keep up his Indonesian. He doesn't seem to have returned to Indonesia for any significant amount of time or to have had other Indonesian speakers in his life. I would therefore expect him not only to be quite rusty but never to have attained full adult competence. He would not be likely to have the vocabulary expected of an adult, and he might not have acquired some of the syntactic structures. He would also not control some socio-pragmatic aspects of the language, such as the more formal stylistic registers and when to use them. This isn't to dispute his claim to speak Indonesian, but to point out that unless there are factors unknown to me, he may well be able to carry on simple conversation in Indonesian, but he is probably not able to carry out political negotiations with Indonesian leaders in Indonesian, or even to understand discussions of topics like politics and technology in an Indonesian newspaper, for which he likely lacks the necessary vocabulary.

Does anyone know of evidence as to the level of his ability in Indonesian, and if it is higher than I suggest, how he acquired it?