People who are fully bilingual and speak both languages every day for most of their lives can delay the onset of dementia by up to four years compared with those who only know one language, Canadian scientists said on Friday .

I wonder if it gets more delayed the more languages you speak... so 3 languages, 8 years?

*hopeful* 

Note the source.  Canada is officially Bi-lingual, (English and French).  Wonder if the research was paid for by the government?

hahahah But I'm guessing it's not the whole population speaking two languages?

Usually.  Mostly in Quebec, and then mostly in cities nearer the US border are folks really bilingual, like Montreal.  I was in Quebec City once and stopped at a petrol station to ask directions, and the girl at the till only spoke French.

One good thing about Canada being bilingual is that NAFTA (The North American Free Trade Agreement) has made product labeling trilingual, with English, French and Spanish being used on many products that don't print seperate packaging for their goods.  It's great to go to Home Depot (Bunnings on Meth!) and not only buy your power tools but get a free French and Spanish refresher course as well.  My French and Spanish vocabulary has been increased this way, and my wife always wonders why I stop to read the labels of stuff I'm not going to buy, but you can't learn all the specialist terms in your language classses at school. 

Goodness me!!! I do the same with product labels!!

I speak three languages, English, German, and Bad.

I speak a few.... which is why I was hoping the number of languages one knows is proportional to how long the disease might be delayed

then again, I'm already showing some signs of it.... so maybe it's inversely proportional..

I have enough trouble with English unless well caffeinated...

mmmm.... caffeine.... good for English

*thumbs up* 

hahahaha

I have a rule:  coffee for English, Alcohol for German, French and Spanish.   I need the booze to not feel foolish as I make a mess out of another language!

Any specific types for each language?

type of 'alcool' I mean

German Beer, French Wine, and Tequilla for Spanish (although there are some good Argentine wines about..)

heh heh I thought so...

*must remember to stock up on wine* 

Sometimes I fool feelish after alcool without speekin langwishes. 

HAHAHAHAHA

that's very funny andro! 

 And you need Whisky fer speakin Gaelic.

Mix em all together and you instantly learn Gibberish

 wassat thas yer seda bot Gibberjeesh.????

HAHAHAHAHAHA

That's just too funny!! 

It's a damn good thing I'm obsessed with German and Russian then. =)

I speak english (native) german (reasonably well) french (passable) spanish (sort of).  I recon that the beneficial effects of the mental exercise of being tri-lingual will just about offset the loss of brain cells from Alcohol.  Prost!

I speak a little German, I'm finishing my third year (for school). The German culture is great!

If you're interested in High German you should definitely look into learning or rather learning about Old High German. Pretty interesting.

The dialects are interesting.  My father-in-law is Schwabish, from the area around Stuttgart.  He's almost unintelligible to my high-german trained ear.

Hallo!

Guten tag!

Wie geht's?  Wissen Sie dass Tanger hat ein group fuer German?

Hm...that was supposed to be sent to the German forum...dub tee eff mate.

 I'm actually going on a exchange program on June 2 to 22 in Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden. 

Ja, ich weiß. 

I need get proper umlauts

set your keyboard to allow german and english

Well, I gotta go - I'll be on later. If anyone needs any help with German I'd highly reccomend, if you're still in school, to do an exchange program and if you are or aren't in school to buy Ultimate German by Living Languages - amazing book. Es ist sehr fantastich!

I really only speak English.. but I'm super-good at it so that counts for double right 

Also a little French.. but mostly in obscure topics that make for good exam answers but poor conversations 

hahahaha

I know and speak a few....

What I find is that when I'm picking up a new one, all the languages get jumbled in my head. It's almost like when I'm racking my brains for a work in the new language, my brain panicks and throws out the first word in any language it can find.

So I find myself coming up with weird sentences like - Bonjour! Je voudrais thora sa gula.

I do that too.  I'll think of a sentence in French but sprinkle in a bit of German.  Never add English, though, so I wonder if that's because French and German are "mapped" as secondary languages in my head?

Or should I just do a lower-level format and then a clean install?

Killing a few brain cells at present with a nice Chard. (Aussie, of course) 

I wish I was trained in a third language while I was a kid 

Learning Chinese now isn't nearly as easy as when your brain is fresh

True.... but then, chinese (and japanese) is a hard language cos of the characters they use I think.

I can speak and understand it, but can't read or write

I only speak English.

If you were to recommend learning another language what would it be?

I reckon there is room for two categories here. 1. The languages that sound beautiful. 2. The languages that add to career options. Is there one that does both?? 

French

I think

If youve never learnt another language, I'd recommend going for one which doesn't have its own script and is fairly similar to your own.

There is a body of opinon that you only need to learn five languages to make yourself universally employable:  English, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Russian...note: forget French.  If you want to sound beautiful then see me after work.

I think with English, Arab and Mandarin you should be employable everywhere for anything in the next hour.

My sister speaks fluently French, English and Japenese. She also has a good german background. But she was employed (HR for a big international company based in Paris) for her english, that's all.

My older brother speaks fluently French, English, Japenese and German. He also has a good level in old greek, but that's pointless He was employed as a general manager in a big bank in Paris because of his english and japenese skills.

What I try to say here is that in most cases, english will be enought if you wanna work in a country that is not english speaking (like France). 

That's only if you are a native of that country right?

no I would say it works for everybody if you have basic knowledge of the country language. For France for instance, in big companies english will be the working language. French will be a plus to catch the jokes at the coffee break but that's all I think

Before coming back to sydney I spent a week having interviews for a position in Google Paris and most of the time the interviews were in english, even if we were only french in the interview room. And the CEO of Google France is American, I think he speaks a bit of french, but english is definitely the working language there. 

Oh, ok, I get what you mean

I wonder if they make you take English tests

(dek takes a shot at immigration procedure) 

google is perhaps a bad example, since English is very much the language of the net - particularly among the IT community

@Rira:

set your language settings to anything other than english

good luck finding english pages unless you search english

What I mean is: although the net is multilingual - clearly - the technology community on the net generally has English language in common...as an exercise I set my language setting to french and searched for "Google"; most of the results were in English and every result simply gave me an option to "traduire cette page".  The first ten results yielded 1 french, 1 arabic (go figure) and 8 english results.  By comparison "merde" returned 3 french pages and 7 english but "améliorer" gave me 9 french out of 10.  Finally, "Surêté" gave me 6 french and 4 english.

did you know there is a Google language preference called "Elmer Fudd"?

Elmer Fudd it is then... 

I reckon my shortlist is Spanish, Mandarin and French...

If you want to sound beautiful then see me after work.

Huh? I dun get it... 

did you know there is a Google language preference called "Elmer Fudd"?

That is the most awesome thing I've seen all day

I think I'll be leaving it like that  

hahahahaha Maaaaan.....

I'm leaving my pwefewences on Elmer Fudd

How??

I wanna see too!

http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/7337/untitledgw4.jpg

decided not to post as an embedded pic - would have stretched the page sideways which isn't a friendly thing to do

Goodness me! That's great!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAH

Made my day 

I wish they had a Daffy Duck one

I vote for Porky Pig.

Can you imagine the spelling feat that would be??

Tttthat's all folks!

hahahahah

yibbidda! yibbidda!