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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.
... 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 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.
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?
If only google translate was actually worthwhile. Using it does not help someone think about the world differently, which was the whole point of this study (even though it's common sense). There are some concepts that don't even translate well across some languages.
Learning a second language also helps you learn about your own language, how it works, how it is related to other languages, how it changes over time, how to speak it in a way that does not confuse non-native speakers, and so on.
Additional knowledge is never useless.
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.
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.
Would have expected this to be already extensively studied. C'mon humanities there must be already some linguistic research on this?
Holy cow batman. I guess I wouldn't expect slashdot to be up on anything to do with the filthy humanities but this is really quite something. There is a vast amount of research on this. The general idea is called linguistic relativism and has been a hotly debated topic since Wharf first started pondering the issues in the 1930s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
It's easily tested and has been often demonstrated, that speakers of languages with certain obligatory features, like say tense and plural in English, will be more observant about those facts that speakers of languages where such features are optional. Then there's a vast array of work that has discussed perception, particularly colours where languages vary in terms of how many names for colours there are, and hence the form of distinctions that need to be made when observing colours. I was always rather more partial to Dan Slobin's description of 'thinking for speaking' where our cognition shapes what we observe and what cognitive paradigm to use based upon the demands of the language we intend to speak in.
The whole Sapir-Wharf hypothesis and linguistic relativity has been flogged to death. The TFA paper is building on that with an interesting experiment designed to discover something rather more nuanced than suggested by the headline here. They used an interesting experimental technique that involved employing interference from another language by making them perform a task using that language. They seem to have demonstrated that this interference does indeed shift the way the participants viewed the task based on the differences between languages. It's certainly not a surprising finding for those linguists like me, that hold to a usage based theory of language (functionalism) based on general cognition. However it's a great example of the fascinating things you can discover with clever experiment design.
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:
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visit randi.org
Learning a language at school and using it on a daily basis are two completely different things. You start to realise more things about the language in question and your own mother tongue(s), making each improve the others simply through comparison and lots of "oh! *that's* why..." moments.
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.
None that I can recall.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Learning both Ukrainian and Russian is a waste of time because they are so close that they used to be just two dialects of the same languages a few centuries ago. It is better to learn two Slavic languages that are as far apart as it gets, this will help you understand all the other Slavic languages in between.
Say, Ukrainian and Slovene, or Russian and Czech.
The best combination is probably Russian, Slovak, Croatian. This way every other Slavic language except Bulgarian is inside the continuum and even Bulgarian will feel mostly understandable, although very strange (mostly because it is indeed strange, Bulgarian has changed a lot, probably due to the Ottoman influence. Old Bulgarian, on the other hand, feels almost like Russian).
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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.
Yes, understanding Bulgarian is easy. Speaking Bulgarian, on the other hand, is something else entirely, because of the strange grammar. All other Slavic languages share a very similar grammar so building sentences using rules from one Slavic language in another one is usually successful, even if it might sound somewhat stilted.
Old Russian is not based on Church Slavonic since it is an East Slavic language, but old Russian had a lot of influence from Church Slavonic, thus even in modern Russian there are many word pairs that mean the same or a closely related thing, one is from old Russian, the other is from Church Slavonic. Modern Bulgarian is really very different from either.
You have a point about Polish being more widespread, but the reason why I've suggested Slovak is that it is right in between Polish and Czech, but sounds better than either and is more Slavic. Polish has far too much German and Latin influence, a very difficult orthography (it is like when they had a choice how to adjust the Latin script to a Slavic language, they chose the most intricate solution every time) and also difficult phonetics. Czech and Slovak are simpler and generally use more common Slavic words, even though German influence is still there. Basically, learning Polish for studying Slavic languages is almost like learning English for studying Germanic languages.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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
That is a different story altogether, of course and it is true, that knowing Russian is very helpful with other languages since there are many things that are common with other Slavic languages. I have a Serbian colleague and we both have learned Russian at school (I am more fluent than her, though). I understand her Serbian quite well, especially after also learning some Czech. We still converse in German because it is easier.
On the other hand, Russian is indeed a special case for many reasons
1) Russian had several language reforms that changed the language quite a bit making it less comprehensive for other Slavic speakers
2) Russian has a really fucked up word stress system. Even native speakers easily get the stress wrong if they read a previously unknown word. Although the Serbo-Croatian one is even worse due to additionally being pitch and length based.
3) Russian mostly lost auxiliary verbs "to be" and "to have", while they are still present in most other Slavic languages
4) The previously mentioned heavy influence of Church Slavonic (basically old Bulgarian) which is a South Slavic language leading to some unpleasant irregularities.
All this makes Russian especially difficult for other Slavs. A Russian speaker, on the other hand, especially one is well-versed in old texts and understands old Russian, can understand other Slavic languages quite well after learning some basic rules about those missing auxiliary verbs (very important for Czech, because it tends to drop personal pronouns instead).
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
> 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)
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
Didn't you hear that Elon Musk wants to build an Internet of Things on Mars? He'll be landing stuff there in no time using his 3D-printed engines.
(OK, OK, I'll show myself out...)
Ezekiel 23:20
Have gnu, will travel.