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Speaking a Second Language May Change How You See the World
sciencehabit writes: Where did the thief go? You might get a more accurate answer if you ask the question in German. How did she get away? Now you might want to switch to English. Speakers of the two languages put different emphasis on actions and their consequences, influencing the way they think about the world, according to a new study (abstract). The work also finds that bilinguals may get the best of both worldviews, as their thinking can be more flexible.
There's an entire branch of research into the subject of language, culture, and perspective. You might want to do some reading before crowing that you discovered something "new".
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I would have to suppose.
I was just about to post that.
So, instead, I guess I will have to say "it is a good day to die".
... weiß nichts von seiner eigenen."
That's a saying in German attributed to Goethe, which means, "he who can't speak another language knows nothing about his own."
And another proverb, either Czech or Tamil in origin (or even from the mouth of Charlemagne): "Mit jeder neu erlernten Sprache erwirbst du eine neue Seele" -- "every time you learn a new language, you get another soul."
Speakers of the two languages put different emphasis on actions and their consequences
The important part here is how it is understood. A native English speaker who is also fluent in German will catch intonation and emphasis differences, and may conclude that the Germans don't express the same way an American does. But how a native German understands the same phrase will remain a complete (unknown) mistery for the native English speaker. Often the problem is the translation - even sometimes in professional translations, in books for instance. The difficulty being to find out how "sticky" must be the translation of a phrase from A to B. Basically - and very few if any people can - an interpreter has to go deep into his/her feelings to transcribe not a text, but a raw feeling.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The old saying goes: the more languages you know the more human you are. Why stop at two languages? I like a set of at least 5 personally, preferably 7. Wonder what that does to perception of the reality.
You can't handle the truth.
"To know another language is to have a second soul."
.: Semper Absurda
Does the study use p values?
The language shapes how you think about a problem.
If only because of the enhanced cultural exchanges, and expanded possibilities for travel!
It's just a pity that the world's de-facto common language (English) is so hard to learn well... still glad I managed to master it, if only as second language (out of four) for me.
My native language (born and raised) is French, I was born and live in Quebec, a (mostly) french speaking province (altough living in Montreal pretty much requires speaking english and soon arabic). My mom plugged me in front of Sesame Street as soon as I could speak, I was involved in a language exchange with an english-only speaking family at 15 in Woodstock, Ontario, Learned english at high school and went to work for an ISP in 1994 (mostly english speaking customers). Dated an english-only supervisor when Videotron went into a lockout, some of my girl friends only spoke english, Tried to learn Spanish while in CEGEP.
My younger sister was a little more fortunate as she went to an english-only immersion school where everything including geography, history and mathematics were done only in english. (and she speaks it way better than I do, she has *no accent whatsoever* )
One of my "she's a girl and my friend but not my girlfriend" is teaching me Ukrainian and Russian, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna get me nowhere unless I move to Russia or Ukraine or want to visit Tchernobyl as she's currently doing...
Even If I'm french speaking, all my OS's and devices are configured for English just because they're aren't any translation mistakes.
(If I made any syntax or any other errors, keep in mind my primary language is french)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
I knew my Klingon would do me good
Table-ized A.I.
A lot of Americans have some sort of awe for people who can speak two languages. My experience? Who cares! Speaking another language means...you can speak another language. It says nothing about your character, worldliness, sophistication, or other characteristics commonly attributed by Americans to bilingual people.
I used to interview people whose sole qualification for the job was that they could speak English. Well, what else have you got? Yeah, exactly. I have also seen the reverse, Americans who show up speaking the local language and expect to be employed immediately. Uh-huh, it doesn't work like that. You should hear the butthurt, too, these people spent years learning, planning on living the rest of their lives abroad, and they neglected to learn any marketable skills.
One of the worst pieces of human trash I ever met was a Swiss who spoke seven languages. You know what? Who cares! Language ability has absolutely nothing to do with what kind of person you are. It just means you can speak another language. Yay, I guess. A skill increasingly irrelevant as Google Translate marches on. In another 5-10 years there will be immediate simultaneous translation, and there will be even less need to learn other languages. This makes me sad because I myself spent an enormous amount of time studying, and GT will likely do a better job expressing my thoughts than I ever could with my old-fashioned biological brain.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence. - Edsger Dijkstra
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. - Edsger Dijkstra
Can we turn this around and say, "ability to think in multiple perspectives is important to successfully learn a new language"? There are many for whom learning a second langauge is very difficult while some others pickup a new one easily. Would this theory explain that problem?
Hasn't this been common knowledge for decades or centuries? It's the primary reason they teach some languages. Ie, no one learns Latin because it helps them communicate with native Latin speakers, and most of the students of Latin will not be perusing the classics as light reading (though the Latin version of Asterix is good), but they teach it because it affects how the students think.
Definitely I was told by more than one person growing up that learning a second language changes how you think about the world. So I can only presume that this new study is not breaking any ground and is just a bit more evidence to pile onto the mountain of evidence.
Breaking news! Slashdot editor discovers the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, adopts it as true and immediately begins passing it off as revelatory!
I have often wondered if the reason that England led the industrial revolution was the use of the English language. There were also cultural issues (a culture of meetings that enabled exchange of ideas), but perhaps there is something about the English language that allows people to think about, discuss and solve problems in a manner that is more effective than some continental languages.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I always found that funny. I learned Apple Basic because it was all that I had access to. I started writing my own functions, a global return array to track back through and some gotos...just like assembly which I hadn't learned then. I also found myself trying to make objects, by camel case iff needed. $ObjectName and ObjectNumber.
Moved to C++ and everything was fine. Functional programming, not so much, but that's from all the professors who drilled "variables are variable" into my head years later.
Would have expected this to be already extensively studied. C'mon humanities there must be already some linguistic research on this?
Being fluent in English and German I know exactly what this refers to, in fact it is so glaringly obvious that it simply must have been studied before now.
The first time I really became aware of this is when doing product management in a role that required me to sometimes position products in English and sometimes German. I was startled how much easier marketing spin works in English.
This isn't about studying different cultures. It's about the connection between the construction of a language and the effects of that construction on the mind.
Different languages with their different constructions appear to alter and guide certain aspects of thought.
I always like to create a kind of pseudo-code that fits the problem at hand, and then work backward to turn that sub-language into the base language, be it C# or Python or whatnot.
In other words, brainstorm about which notation and/or command set (API) best fits the domain or problem area without letting the syntax of the base language get in the way. The rest is mostly implementation detail. Sometimes OOP is the best fit, sometimes optional named parameters, sometimes database tables of commands and attributes, etc. (Certain languages do, however, make certain of these choices easier than others. Often it's a trade-off.)
I prefer to shape the "language" (to fit) rather than the other way around. Of course, like anything else, one can get carried away and over-engineer a sub-language. Keep it a light layer.
Spoken languages can kind of be viewed the same way. Languages that are vowel-centric tend to be better for singing and operas, for example. Latin is a good fit for science because it's a dead language, making it a stable naming platform. German is a great language for cussing in because it has a lot of sharp consonants and guttural sounds. (Somehow, I doubt Hitler would have sounded so ominous in French.)
Table-ized A.I.
I noticed that after about 4 years of learning English in school (30 years ago) and then again when learning French. I though this was a well-known effect and that there was really no need for any research.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Most of the Euro languages are just small variations of each other. Even the Romance/Germanic divide is basically just learning a bunch of new words for the same thing.
Personally, I feel like I am the same exact person if I'm speaking Chinese or if I'm speaking English, and those two languages are actually different.
Different languages with their different constructions appear to alter and guide certain aspects of thought.
That is not a new idea. I first heard "learn a language, gain a new soul" decades ago. I know four languages (English, Mandarin, Spanish, Japanese) with varying degrees of fluency, and it is very clear that different languages don't just have different ways of expressing things, but different world views. When people first learn a second language, they are often surprised that there are certain concepts that just can't be translated, because they don't exist in the other language's world view. Mandarin doesn't even have words for "yes" and "no". Japanese does have a "yes" and "no", but they really don't mean the same thing as the English words. Bill Clinton famously questioned what the meaning of "is" is. But that word really does have many nuances that don't exist in many other languages, and vice versa. Some Native American languages have two versions of "is" depending on whether you know what "is" by first hand knowledge, or whether you heard it from someone else. The lack of such a distinction in English is one of the many things that makes our language famously capable of vagueness and ambiguity. Perfect for politicians, and journalists.
this is just obvious to anyone who is fluent in multiple languages. speech follows thought. oftentimes you find it difficult to quickly switch to a different language just because you need to think in a different way than you did two seconds before.
Some Native American languages have two versions of "is" depending on whether you know what "is" by first hand knowledge, or whether you heard it from someone else. The lack of such a distinction in English is one of the many things that makes our language famously capable of vagueness and ambiguity. Perfect for politicians, and journalists.
Or maybe like the difference between iru and aru. if you say "there is a chicken" you can do that in two ways in Japanese and it makes a big difference if you say "niwatori ga imasu" or "niwatori ga arimasu", at least for the chicken.
I'm Norwegian which meant that I had to learn the two main Norwegian languages (bokmål and nynorsk, used to be about 30% overlap, it is larger now) and English. Those are ones I'm currently fluent in. I also had four years of German and two years of French, plus a single year of Old Norse (i.e. Icelandic).
The interesting part here is that the list above was the absolute minimum I could get away with, since I knew very early that wanted to get a technical degree (MSEE from NTNU in Trondheim).
Fluency in any language requires thinking in that language, this is so obvious that only mono-lingual people could possibly doubt it!
Thinking about stuff you have no way to express in language is extremely hard. :-)
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
mathematics?
These might be viewed as even more strange than those for whom it is a 2nd/3rd/... language.
There are two ways to speak a non native language : translate every sentence in your head and run into the problem you indicate, or master it without constantly translating and your way of thinking will be sooner or later the same as a native. Once you start dreaming, thinking, in the other language, chance is that you are actually using very similar or even identical structure as the locals. Language is no hexenkunst.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Speaking language is the programming language of our brains, that is what complex logic and reasoning is built upon.
I can definitively corroborate all the effort it took to master the grammar of the second language helped me being more conscious of what I say in my native language.
I thought this was common knowledge, or maybe the study is confirming what was long suspected?
Germans have a reputation for being precise, their language is very precise, so it would seem to follow that if one is 'thinking in german' one has to think at a level of precision which far exceeds, say, chinese, which as a spoken language is very simple (tonal complications notwithstanding). Then again written chinese has immense potential for deep poetic meaning due to the recurring use of similar tones and similar partial-characters, which phonetically-written or alphabet-written languages simply cannot have.
Japanese is built with less precision in specification but a minefield when it comes to respect levels. In Japanese you have to *think* in a manner that respects your view of everyone's relationship to each other in terms of seniority, superiority, deference, familiarity etc.
amirite?
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Latin on monuments often uses so many abbreviations it's like a different dialect.
Perhaps stonemasons used to charge by the letter.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The article seems to suggest speaking more than one language is something 'special', as if compulsory education somehow never happened. For more than a century, almost everyone in reasonably developed countries has been to school. Very few people have never learnt a second language.
I speak 3 languages and I think the world is generally shit. Maybe if I unlearn one of the languages I'll have a "best" world view. I'm thinking it has something to do with odd and even numbers. Odd number = oh everything is shit. Even number = flowers and unicorns.
I didn't read the article. I just came here to make pointless satire.
I'm Spanish native and now in my thirties moved to an English country. I can't complete crosswords in any of these. Knowing words by their definition is hard.
True. As an American, I love teaming with German and Japanese engineers. Brilliantly educated, and bringing a different style of pragmatic problem-solving to the project.
I'm a Finn. The wife is Russian. Together we speak English. Our children will be trilingual from the start :)
What a snob. Many people take foreign language in school, but if it is not used constantly, it is quickly forgotten. I played the violin for 9 years, but I am not sure if I picked one up now I'd know what to do. I used to program everything in Lisp, and I can read the code, but I can't write anything in it today without a reference in front of me. As an expat, I can tell you that most people know a few words of another language, but it is quite rare to be fluent (and maintain fluency) in more than one language.
Well, I do speak two languages but I can assure you that I'm the exception in my country. In my experience, 80% of the people in my country do not speak a word in any other language but their own. Among the other 20%, 90% are absolutely incapable of effective communication. Most of people who say they can speak English (and even have an English language degree) can't have an actual conversation (or watch a film or read a novel).
It's true that Mandarin has no "No", but they use a "negative Yes" as a "No"
"Yes" in Mandarin is "Shi" (sorry can display the Mandarin character in /. because of the ancient construct of this site)
The "No" in Mandarin is "Bu Shi" - in which the adjective "Bu" denotes something that is 'negative', and added to "Shi", the whole thing "Bu Shi" means "No"
Right, but I wouldn't say that every language has its own "world view", I would rather name it character, personality or way of thinking. Many stereotypical attributes of a people are reflected in the language. German is precise, sounds harsh (to non Germans) and is not very open to humorous wordplay. Spanish sounds lighthearted and its easy to make jokes and talk funny using the language, English is full of ambiguity but concise and practical...
I'm positive that language determines how we think and therefore also who we are. More than that, to a certain degree it determines what we can even think about.
This is one of the main points in 1984 and the scariest thing in the book; the autocratic government trying to completely eliminate dissent and control the lives of people by destroying words and manipulating language to limit how people are able to think.
In Luxembourg, from the first years in school on, we learn french and german.
And additionally learn the local Luxembourgish.
Later, english is added.
So everybody is trilingual, but often from parents there are 1 or 2 other languages added.
And learning 5 languages as a kid is in fact no problem at all.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
You clearly haven't met the majority of the English speaking world.
I'm quadrilingual, so I must be the thief.
Is there anyone in the world that doesn't know more than one language? Maybe there are a few monolinguals in Washington DC, but the rest of the world seems to be better educated.
I know plenty of multi-lingual people. Some of them are the biggest idiots I've ever met. Ignorant of science, irrational in their manner and communication, befuddled by history and unable to handle the chore of critical thinking. Being able to express muddled thinking and ignorance in multiple languages isn't impressive, it's just an example of how persistence and reason aren't the same things. Worldly and sensible aren't the same thing. I'm sure that several of the fine fellows in ISIS that help in the complex task of doing slick post production work on one of the Burning People Alive videos speak fluently in several languages. I guess they're better educated than, say, a mere simpleton like Richard Feynman who despite only learning one other language well (Portuguese) and learning a bit of a couple others managed to win the Nobel Prize. Obviously a dolt compared to, say, a knee-breaking organized crime debt collector in northern Italy who speaks Italian, French, German and English.
Your idea of "better educated" suggests that you weren't very well educated yourself, as you can't get your head around the whole correlation vs. causation thing.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"On the Way to Language" anyone?
Yes, like "gay" marriage and "pro choice". In the German, roughly translate into "abominators" and "smallish killer". Then again, these people have names like " Schwarzenaegger". Go figure.
English is not my first tongue but is the only language I am fluent in - it is most certainly my mothers tongue. I left my father's land when I was young and him behind too. The brain is good at forgetting things that are no longer useful. I have since begun learning my original native tongue again, and while my fluency is poor, it "grows".
In conversation with my mother, I described how there were still embers of the first tongue within me, and how I was stoking those and it was becoming a weak flame. One evening I found myself suddenly thinking in the language again and able to form sentences, however imperfect, on the fly. I described to her how it was as if I had two inner "mes", that while the same person, were slightly different in perspective. I of course feel dumb in the first language - it is less mastered than the age I was when I began to only speak English. I also feel that to gain the same level of education as I have in English, I will essentially have to redo most of the subjects. Fortunately Kahn academy is translated.
I did some basic geometry in the first language on Kahn academy. It was a formula I don't even remember having encountered. It taught me a few geometric words I picked up by immersion but also successfully taught me something I never remember learning at school in English.
Interestingly, I have always been aware that in the areas of transition between green and yellow as well as yellow, orange and red I tend to come to view these differently to my peers in this country. I have good vision and do not suffer from colour blindness. I consider my perspective more accurate. I will now have to really restudy the colours in both languages to see if this could where this comes from.
Reggie Watts is comedic musician who frequently uses influences from multiple languages and I believe speaks at least four. The things he says are frequently nonsensical yet at the same time profound. He has been on multiple TED talks, is easily findable on Youtube and discusses subject matter to do with the sciences, even if it's kind of as a joke. He may be of interest to anyone wanting to see multilingual foolery.
I wish I could be that silly all the time and get paid for it.
Hopefully in the next year I can begin learning my third language. There are six languages I hope to be familiar with by the time I die.
Maybe in USA (and UK and Australia, etc, etc).
I garantee you that in Europe any educated person will be fluent in both their native language and English, and frequently will be able to handle themselves in a third language, either because it's the language of a neighbouring country or their parents used to live in another EU country (moving around is extremely common due to no borders), etc, etc.
PS: Except if you are talking with older people, for obvious reasons.
Wow, you are both angry and scared. It's not about intelligence, it's about how you perceive something that you see. Maybe when you learn too many languages it does confuse your perception, who knows?
You however give me the impression that you are only experiencing half of life and cling on to your sense of superiority and intelligence to validate your place in the world. I don't know you from a bar of soap, but your post does not give off the impression that you are rational and objective.
But who cares. We're all good at something. I live with my mum so I know how good I am at everything I do.
There are indeed many mysteries to be found about human psychology. It is like an endless domain of research.
I recently went overseas. There was a fair amount of English speakers but most people in the country could no afford an education and so never learned it.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I mean, nice to see a study confirming "stuff we already know", but not only has this discussion been done to death in academic circles, it's been such a hot topic it was used as the basis for the Jack Vance story "The Languages of Pao" and a mainstay of the A.E. van Vogt stories, most notably the Null-A novels.
And that is even without going into other literature where this was a hot topic about 80 years ago...
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
It depends on the country though. French have a sense of global importance as the English or the Spanish. They reason "I can be understood at the largest parts of the world and don't NEED another language." and downvalue "languages which will dissapear anyhow" (literally out of the mouth of a French speaking Belgian.). I suspect this is rooted in the settlers past and colonies.
As a result, foreign media is dubbed and foreign words are translated. (Germans tend to do the same but are in my experience more linguistical open - that's why you have much "French rap music" but not really "German rap music". Come to think of it, there isn't much German music without them dressing up silly and getting drunk together.).
There is a shift in the younger generation, which is open for "English media and influences", but French natives are generally poor with English. In meetings there is often the agreement to "communicate in English" but it soon shifts to French as it's too slow and cumbersome or not everyone understands English well enough. While other nationalities have less problem understanding French. In meetings with Indians, Germans, Dutch, Luxembourg English is no problem. With soutern countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, ...) English is.. "a sort of reinterpretation"
The acceptance of foreign media seems an indicator for English languistic skill as children get "emersion" at a very young age while they get used reading subtitles. And at a later age find information online with a lower barrier to grasp these concepts. Also technical fields often have a closer relationship to English terminology which give a higher comprehension level.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I am one of those that you met ( I have spoke 11, 9 of them fluently at one time or another )
The problem is simple. Our map ( using the reference of 'map' from "stranger in a strange land' ) is much more confusing when communicating and some of us fight to use the correct map to convey a message.
the solution is normally ( at least for me ) is to speak slowly, and tell the other party to ask more questions. It's not that I'm being an ass, I'm trying real hard to communicate correctly.
as a side note, communicating about family and friends is easy, communicating about anger get's confusing ( try cursing someone out, and I have to think in Italian, or Portuguese, or Russian because those languages really have the ability to covey disgust ). Another set of words is 'yes' and 'no'... those words are amazingly hard since my perspective shows degrees of 'yes' and 'no'.... the most annoying word in American English for me is 'like' when used for comparison.
The one advantage I might have over those that speak only 1, is that I can re-frame an idea under another 'map' and see a slightly different perspective, bring it back to my 'map' and add that benefit.
I would hope that my little write up might help you in the future when communicating with someone that speaks multiple languages.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
I would rather name it character, personality or way of thinking.
They do say that someone tends to have another personality in another language. As they find other ways to express themselves; I cannot convey or express myself in the same way in every language I speak. (English, French, Dutch, some German and only understanding of Spanish.)
The language does reflect worldview in my vision though: compare Cuban Spanish with Spanish Spanish. Or Mexican Spanish...
They are different. Not only in "character" or intonation, or colour of words but also in concepts and slang.
So to me a language is a representation of the culture but also of the local way of thinking.
Take UK English and US English for "roundabout". The first you could imagine people going "round around", while in the US you just describe it in appearance: "traffic circle". Which gives another sense of perception. "oh, people are are going around it" compared to "there is a circle."
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
German sounds harsh to Germans too. At least me. I very much prefer English, thank you.
This happened to me. I realize people will think this is goofy, but here it is anyway.
In US English, many people say "No thank you" in a way which sounds like "I don't thank you even though you offered nicely." In Spanish they say "Gracias, pero no." or "Thank you, but no.". That's far more polite than "No thanks".
I try to remember this and thank people who offer me things even if I don't accept.
I recently went overseas. There were a fair amount of English speakers but most people in the country could not afford an education. Since they could not afford an education they never learned it [English].
Fixed that for you.
is "this is America, speak American."
Spanish sounds lighthearted
That depends. Latin American Spanish sounds quite friendly, but Spanish Spanish sounds like a Chicago Typewriter. I would not call that "lighthearted".
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Japanese also explicitly incorporates the sense of social standing of the speaker/listener, as well as the flow of obligation (ageru/kureru/morau) when one person does something for another. Makes sense where a society is such a complicated web of statuses.
> that's why you have much "French rap music" but not really "German rap music"
German rap music is HUGE right now (but inside Germany, of course). Most of it is wannabe Gangsta-Rap (https://www.youtube.com/user/aggroTV) featuring artists with names like "Haftbefehl" but there's also Hipster stuff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjX12Yw5hwc). Rappers from both subgenres like to wear funny masks (Sido, Cro)
I am amused at these comments about Europeans... I live in France; I have spent time in Germany, Spain, and Greece. Some people are fluent in English. Not everyone. I guarantee you. Even many people that studied it in school, that may test as "fluent", cannot string two words together under pressure until forced to speak it for some months (as some friends of mine can attest, before my language skills started to get better).
Jack Vance's "The Languages of Pao", written in 1958, is based on this idea. The planet was transformed by segregating the population, teaching each a different language, with the previous world-language relegated to secondary status, to encourage a different world view and thus enable multiple goals to be obtains. The warriors had their own language (e.g. friend meant "battle companion"). The scientists another and so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Languages_of_Pao
"English is a terrible language to convey ideas in."
Really?
The vast majority of the world's most precise information (scientific, etc.) is conveyed to the world in English. English is certainly up to the job. One thing that makes English different than perhaps the other languages you are thinking of as more precise is that English is an *analytic* language as opposed to a *synthetic* language, meaning that rather than have different word endings to convey all sorts of meaning, English uses prepositions and phrases instead. You might think that English thus doesn't have as much "built-in" functionality to describe meaning, making it not as expressive, relying on tacking on phrases to get the point across. Really, this is no different than a small, core programming language with a large library versus a programming language where all functionality is part of the core syntax. I have found that what truly results in a language being capable of precision is having an educated populace who speaks it, moreso than the base features of the language itself. One can speak really crummy, loose English, or precise English. Education makes the difference.
German rap music is HUGE right now
Holy fucking Christ, just when you thought life couldn't get any worse...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Breathing allows a person to see the world.
Where did the thief go ? to New Orleans
How did he get away ? he walked to the bus stop and boarded a bus
Please tell me you're a race troll.
If you speak three languages, you're trilingual'
If you speak two languages, you're bilingual.
If you speak one language, you're American.
Instead of "You might get a more accurate answer if you ask the question in German" it should have said "Asked you in German the question might you a more accurate answer get..."
The only place where Captain Obvious is a super hero.
Enough said ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Which doesn't mean English speakers can't express the difference between first and second-hand knowledge or (usually) tell from context. What it does mean is it's easier to elide that distinction in English.
I think that the idea that language somehow limits cognition is far too strong an assertion. Even if the urban myth about Eskimos having fifty separate words for snow were true, that doesn't mean someone who speaks a language from Papua New Guinea can't tell the difference between downy, fluffy snow and wet, cement-like snow. But I'm totally onboard that language can limit what can be communicated concisely; that it is possible in English to come away from hearing someone say "I shoveled ten inches of snow from my walk," with very little idea of whether that was a lot of work or not much work at all.
It's even possible to borrow idioms from other languages. Many years ago my wife and I did a crash course in Spanish before a month long visit to her sister who was working in Chile. It totally didn't take in her case; I had to explain to her that the bird perching on the sign at the beach notwithstanding, "zona peligrosa" does not mean "pelican zone." But to this day if she misplaces her keys she'll say, that they have "lost themselves on me." That accurately expresses the feeling that it's the damned keys' fault.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This is actually one of the main benefits of Esperanto, a regular, constructed language that's much easier to learn than a "national" language.
Students who first study Esperanto and then go on to study another language learn the second language better than those who studied only the second language -- even if they had less time to learn it.
The science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto
Tom Geller
Have gnu, will travel.
The fact that spell check can do it nearly as well as you should tell you that is probably not the case.
Eat a dick grammer Nazi. ( Like how I misspelled grammer. Does that make your skin krawl when you see speeling errors?)
White president who is black nigger!
I disagree that language ever determines what we can think about. That was a popular theory among some linguists, but it just doesn't seem to ever really play out.
Take a famous example. English has no one-word equivalent for the German word schadenfreude. Yet Wikipedia requires only seven words to explain what it means. The language may make it awkward to think about certain things, but not impossible. And when the concept became important to a group of English speakers, they just appropriated the German word.
The major linguistics example was a tribe who didn't seem to have any words for colours, time, etc. It turns out they can express these things, but they have to use phrases instead of single words. German is actually interesting to consider in that context: many German "words" are phrases with the spaces between words removed.
$ObjectName and ObjectNumber.
When I was learning BASIC, AppleSoft BASIC only had two letters of significance in variable names... this was Apple ][e...
From there I moved on to C and Assembly from there. After I learned Assembly, everything just kind of made sense, because I could tear apart everything in assembly in my head, and know what it was doing. I stuck with C all the way until my professional career which started me in Perl, and then just recently Go.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
The world is full of clever people who are utter cunts.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Der Wolf and Ferris MC would like a word with you :)
I think there's a positive correlation between intelligence and a lack of kindness/empathy (on an interpersonal level). It's easier to take advantage or abuse someone who you think is 'inferior'. (to say nothing of the increased opportunity to use said advantage)
Wow, you are both angry and scared. It's not about intelligence, it's about how you perceive something that you see.
And you THINK you're being a lot more condescending than you actually are. I didn't say it was about intelligence, I'm responding to the GP's assertion about levels of education having something to do with how many languages one can use. The GP's either completely disconnected from reality, or being deliberately disingenuous. Neither makes the assertion correct.
You however give me the impression that you are only experiencing half of life and cling on to your sense of superiority and intelligence to validate your place in the world.
You are free to construct whatever impression you wish. That doesn't make the GP's premise any more correct. I notice you're talking about me, and not about the substance of the comment. Which says plenty about you.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I would hope that my little write up might help you in the future when communicating with someone that speaks multiple languages.
I have no problem communicating with people for whom English is not their native tongue. I'm responding to the person who claims that multilingualism in and of itself is an indication of a better educated person. From extensive experience I am pointing out that that is not always or even frequently true. I applaud your personal embrace of other languages. Doing so for its own sake is a sign of intellectual curiosity and an agile mind. But that's not the only reason that people end up speaking more than one language, something the GP would like us to ignore.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Just because people in ISIS (or (for some reason) Italian gangsters) are morally warped psychopaths prone to psychotic violence does not necessarily mean they are stupid, or badly educated.
True, and I did not say otherwise. But the GP's implication of multilingualism as an indicator of being better educated and thus by implication a better person is ... specious.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"The planet Pao has a stagnant culture. Scientists of the neighboring world Breakness launch a ruthless experiment, jarring Pao into new vitality by installing three class-languages; one for a warrior class, one for technicians, and one for merchants. But their formula contains weaknesses of their own degenerate culture. Beran Panasper- heir to the throne of Pao- has been spirited away to Breakness to be trained as a tool for later subjugation of Pao. But he still has a mind of his own, and his Paonian characteristics will blend with Breakness science in an unexpected way!"
Perl Programmer for hire
Just a tiny introduction to French really cues one in to the difference in thought processes. An American asks "How are you?" inquiring into the state of being of a person when they meet. The French ask "How are you going?" . The French greeting is more inclusive and in part reflects a historical sense to the greeting. Picture a time in which people walked a lot more than they do now. The greeting may be in response to knee, foot, hip or ankle issues or even to the mode of motion such as by car, by boat, by bicycle or whatever. Obviously no English speaking person can self evaluate their state of being making "How are you?" a question about how you feel about the moment. Further the expected reply is that you are fine. We do not normally expect a reply that "I am lousy. My feet hurt. My wife has cancer and my son has gone gay and my car is broken". In essence the English greeting is foolish and very narrow in meaning whereas the French greeting asks a more fluid and meaningful question. As far as German goes I find it a rather crude and rude language. German has a twisted grammar. "Make you please the window open." is simply not an elegant nor efficient way to ask someone to open the window.
Not likely to have been Charlemagne, though I can imagine people attributing it to him. Charlemagne managed to pick up some spoken Latin and a little Greek, but he wasn't fluent in anything but Frankish and could barely read or write a complete sentence in any language. Nevertheless he was a famous promoter of education who founded monastic schools and one at his court, and took an interest in the practical aspects of scholarship and teaching (and religion, which was more or less the same thing): the collecting and copying of books (in a new, standardized script that was easier to read and write), the standardization of prayers, etc. Charlemagne was responsible for a big revival in the teaching of Latin, which was already distinct from everyday forms, of, say, Italian, and definitely a "new language" if you came from a Germanic background. But that's about where it stopped. Devoted scholars could go on to learn some Greek, but "every time you learn a new language" just didn't apply in those days. (In the secular world, there was always a bit of trade and intermarriage between neighboring ethnic groups, but those involved had to do their best through immersion and maybe some tutoring (or fall back on Latin if they knew it) - there were no codices titled "teach yourself Lombard in 90 days".)
You are focusing way too much on the literal words in each expression. It is an *idiomatic expression*. This means that the meaning of the entire message is different than that of its individual components put together. The meaning assigned to that idiom is agreed upon by the culture that uses it. For example: if someone asks you in English, "What's up?", they certainly are not asking you what is above your head. They are asking what is happening, what is the "news". And even more than that, it's a friendly greeting where you are not expected to actually relate what is going on. It's an *idiom* and makes sense only as a *complete unit*.
You're confusing psychopathy with tribalism.
I formally divorced TRS-80 Level II BASIC by writing something along the lines of the following code snippet:
for i = 1 to 5
gosub basic_sucks
if (i==4) return;
basic_sucks:
next;
I'm not going to wrack my brains to make this into a working example of obfuscated code, but it definitely was possible to mis-nest the loop and call stacks in this way, without the code generating any run-time notifications.
BASIC did me no damage at all, because I consciously filed formal divorced papers, rather than letting my further education accomplish the same by slow attrition.
One can do the same with English without actually learning German or Chinese. One's native state of mind has a lot to do with it.
It sounds like you couldn't afford an education either.
I recently went overseas. There were a fair amount of English speakers but most people in the country could not afford an education. Since they could not afford an education they never learned it [English].
Fixed that for you.
When being pedantic one may also wish to be correct. It would be more correct to use number instead of amount as number is generally used with count nouns while amount is used with mass nouns. The word amount refers here to a single quantity, and the poster's was was in fact correct, while your were was in error.
Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein - Rio Reiser
You're confusing psychopathy with tribalism.
No, I'm correcting the GP's incorrect association between multilinguism and education.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The idea that language forms our whole vision of the world is just nonsense. If the English-only speaker was asked, :What is the goal of the walker?" would he say he had no idea, because his language didn't let him think of such things?
The fact is that every linguistic thought rests on the top of a ten-mile-high pyramid of unspoken understandings. Where these researchers are going wrong is in assuming all understanding comes from language. But when I walk down the street, every face looks different, even though I have a highly-inadequate set of words for describing faces. And I can recognize, say, Ronald Reagan's voice, even though I could not describe it well enough for someone to imagine it accurately in their mind.
Pre-linguistic infants cognize a great deal about the world, and so do animals. And a great deal of this is universal across cultures, and even species. People opposes this well-established fact partly because they are cartesian dualists, believing the mind occupies a non-material realm outside the world, and partly for political motivations, like trying to preserve non-western cultures, and overthrowing democracy and capitalism. But scientifically speaking, it is simply nonsense.
I guess I am not as good at typing with one hand as you are.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Is appropriation of words common in all languages? I was under the impression English played fast and loose in appropriation words but some other languages avoided it at all costs... I'm looking at you Canadian French
English likes to steal other people's old words. Everyone else steal's English's new words. Sometimes there's an "official" language specific word for something, but everyone else just uses the English word anyway; words like "e-mail."
I live in Quebec Canadian French might officially try and avoid stealing words at all costs, but it certainly isn't what's practiced. In fast food places you get the choice of a "petite", "grande" or "extra large." Last year there was a fight about whether restaurants could use the word "pasta" on menus. The government said it was an English word. Everyone else said "la fuck?"
Why when somebody tells me some word does not exists, they do not check for themselves ?
https://www.google.de/search?q...
It is not as if using google was hexenkunst...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org