Are bilingual people usually smarter?

[Crunchyrunchy]

So there has been article posted online about bilingual people having better cognitive abilities than non-bilingual people. NOt sure how credible those articles are though.

I recently been learning Chinese and it is HARD. Learning the stroke orders, reading it, writing it, speaking it.... It DEFINETELY takes a lot of brain power.

[Guest AHRIving]

I disagreee... i know 3 languages and still consider myself as stupid hehehe

[Crunchyrunchy]

andyrearodri_at_gmail.com_stv said: I disagreee... i know 3 languages and still consider myself as stupid hehehe

[aresika]

It's not about how many languages can they speak, but more of their learning process and the methodology applied to learning something. It's safe to say that smart people are also fast learners as well? Everything complex is built upon something simple. Once you have a solid core understanding, and is able to pick up the patterns and understand how/why things work the way they do, learning the rest shouldn't be such a difficult task. I guess the main thing is being able to pick up patterns which enables them to learn a task at an effective and efficient rate. 

As for learning Chinese, I think it's helpful to get a beginner's book, they most likely teach you the alphabets and how to pronounce, read and writing them in correct stroke order. I don't know how many words you know, but with stroke orders I think it is highly recommended to learn all of the "basic" words first. Then a lot of the other more complicated words consist of the combinations of the simple basic words you first learned, and you just use what you know as a guide to learning new words. As for pronunciation, in English we have suffixes and prefixes, and similarly in Chinese, for most words with the same "root" but different "prefix" *most* of the time, they are pronounced the same or similarly except with a different tone.

[Ernie]

I guess they are smarter because you have to learn different languages.

[Ninshark]

This is hard to tell, I think anyone who puts in a LOT of hard work can eventually learn more languages. If they have 4+ languages, then they probably have some sort of language affinity, and I guess that's a form of intelligence.

3 could be done by hardwork.

Bilingual (myself) is not very impressive because it is easy if parents speak a different language than friends do.

[Crunchyrunchy]

Ninshark said: This is hard to tell, I think anyone who puts in a LOT of hard work can eventually learn more languages. If they have 4+ languages, then they probably have some sort of language affinity, and I guess that's a form of intelligence.

3 could be done by hardwork.

Bilingual (myself) is not very impressive because it is easy if parents speak a different language than friends do.

[KrisGumLeong]

@Crunchyrunchy Yes, they do have studies out there that claim bilingual/multilingual people are smarter; however, I never felt this was true. As most of the other posters suggested, it has more to do with your own ability to learn, methods used, and determination. That's great to here that you want to learn Chinese: keep it up and try your best, eventually, you'll learn. Also, please try to have conversations with people who speak Chinese because that will also help you retain what you have learned and are learning.

[ariasaven]

I can only speak two languages fluently. Filipino and English. But I understand some Japanese just because of all those subbed anime that I've seen.
Anyway, I've read a book before where this kid had three nannies all speaking different languages. It seems that it's pretty easier to learn languages when you have already gotten used to it as a child. It is hard to learn additional languages as an adult since you already have a good way of expressing yourself, which is by your native tongue. Whereas a kid is still in that learning stage, flexible and malleable.

[Crunchyrunchy]

Either Chinese or Japanese.

It seems that the character style of writing in the Chinese/Japanese language help train a host of cognitive abilities that are not utilized in other languages.

I am not sure how accurate this is, but what do you guys think?

[zantac_2]

seems to cause short term memory as well.

[lovelymacaron]

No.

I grew up bilingual in Vietnamese and English (although I only have a passive command of the Vietnamese language now and can't really speak or write it anymore. My reading skills is also very, very limited), and I am not smart at all. While my strong points are in the humanities/foreign languages, I can't solve any math problems above Elementary Algebra.

[Latte_Anyday]

Why? Because they pick up different languages in such a short time? I think it depends mostly on the individual. Some people are naturally intellectual or book smart but there are some who pick languages by ear as well. They don't necessarily know how to read or write the language just speaking it phonetically. 

[Guest Jimlidenskog]

I don't think so. Biligual people just show the ability for learing languages not other abilities.