Thought I'd post some recent thoughts I wrote up regarding a study by the Australian Bureau of Statistics claiming to show a correlation between speaking an indigenous language and overall well-being. Thoughts anyone?
http://danielhieber.com/2011/04/30/a-noteworthy-correlation/
I've actually noticed that the more multilingual an individual becomes, the more mediocre they become in all languages. Kind of like they become a jack of all trades, but master of none. My best friend speaks a multitude of languages and by his own admission, the more he learns of other languages, the more his English regresses.
The mandatory multilingual programs they push in academia is absurd. For me, personally, I never had any intention of learning Spanish, but it was a requirement. And because of my struggling to keep up with it, I began to lag behind in my other classes. And I'm a person that never studies for any class, but I was spending every morning with that damn Panorama textbook only to just barely pass my tests. It's reasons like mandatory art, music and foreign language classes which exemplify the need for abolition of the Department of Education.
Good article though. Studies like that hardly receive a passing glance from me because statistics are so easily skewed that it's hardly even an empirical argument to be all "look at the numbers!"