GoKawiil
Tech News
A linguist's new book, 'Beyond Words: How We Learn, Use, and Lose Language,' reviews research showing that learning a new language engages multiple brain functions simultaneously, including memory, sound recognition and grammar processing. This sustained mental effort appears to strengthen neural connections and may help preserve cognitive function as people age.
A linguistics researcher's new book, 'Beyond Words: How We Learn, Use, and Lose Language,' reports that learning a second language engages multiple cognitive processes simultaneously—memory, pattern recognition, and grammar processing—which can strengthen neural connections in older adults. The research points to bilingualism and language study as effective tools for maintaining cognitive function later in life, alongside activities like puzzles or music.
A new tool called SubSmith lets users transform their own video files into language-learning content by generating and working with subtitles for immersion-based study. It's aimed at learners who prefer building study material from local files like downloaded shows, podcasts, or MKV files rather than relying solely on streaming platforms. The launch is accompanied by guides, including timeline estimators for Japanese and Spanish learners and instructions for sentence mining from local media.
MIT Technology Review spoke with cognitive scientists comparing how babies and large language models acquire language, finding that infants learn to speak proficiently after hearing only 10 to 30 million words, while LLMs require vastly more data to approach similar fluency. Stanford's Michael C. Frank noted that training a model like GPT-2 on the same word count a toddler hears produces a 'nonsense generator,' not coherent speech.