Polyglots?

[DRSB]

With all due respect, Catalan is a dialect, either of Langue d'Oc or of Spanish.

There's pretty little linguistic that is properly Catalan, it all is part of the southern Romance language continuum.

With all due respect, the criteria for what is a separate language and what is a simply a dialect are not purely linguistic but more political and social anyway. As soon as a dialect becomes codified as the standard language of a politically defined society, it becomes a language. On the other hand, as long as a dialect, no matter what a deviation from the norm it is, has no standardized written norm, it does not gain the status "language". Example: the Swiss German dialect(s), would certainly qualify to be a language considering what a deviation from German it is, more akin to Dutch than to High German. Why is it not a language? Because it has no standard form, not written form, except phonetically as a joke in private. Young people write SMS and e-mails in Swiss German to each other, but that is pretty much all. We speak in Swiss German (dialect) but we write in High German (language) with a norm. There have been considerations to codify some Standard Swiss German, but then debates arise as to which dialect to take as the basis. There are big differences along the continuum too.

Not to mention the codification of languages for purely political reasons, such as Moldavian, which is for all practical purposes pure Romanian.

[mistermack]

If I was French, I would learn English.
If I was Chinese, I would learn English.
If I was Dutch, I would learn English.
If I was Indian, I would learn English.
(there's a pattern emerging here).
I'm English. Fuck it, my work is done.

Just to edit that a bit.
My ancestors were Irish. Do I want to learn Irish? Not in the slightest. Unless the rest of the world suddenly starts speaking it.

My ancestors were cattle men. I see no reason to learn how to deliver a calf.
I regard language as a tool. Why collect old tools you never use?
.

[chaggle]

If I was French, I would learn English.
If I was Chinese, I would learn English.
If I was Dutch, I would learn English.
If I was Indian, I would learn English.
(there's a pattern emerging here).
I'm English. Fuck it, my work is done.

Just to edit that a bit.
My ancestors were Irish. Do I want to learn Irish? Not in the slightest. Unless the rest of the world suddenly starts speaking it.

My ancestors were cattle men. I see no reason to learn how to deliver a calf.
I regard language as a tool. Why collect old tools you never use?
.

That is a very sensible post

[Svartalf]

Actually, it's an obsolete post... learning Chinese or Arabic, or possibly Persian (the latter being cultural languages throughout the muslim world, from Syria to Pakistan and Indonesia) might be more sensible choices if you're a young person and intend to be relevant 30 years from now.

[mistermack]

Actually, that post is probably obselete. In 30 years time, your phone will translate foreign languages straight into your ear.
.

[Svartalf]

If so, you'd better be ready for the cybernetic overlords.

But I doubt we'll have that degree of machine understanding of actual language, when I see the sheer horror that babelfish produces.

[mistermack]

If so, you'd better be ready for the cybernetic overlords.

But I doubt we'll have that degree of machine understanding of actual language, when I see the sheer horror that babelfish produces.

I dunno, thirty years is a long time.
I was using talk and type five or six years ago, and it worked very well.
And translations are getting better all the time. It's just a matter of combining it all. Chips and storage are increasing exponentially, so the speed and database in 30 years time will bear no resemblance to what we use today.
.

[DRSB]

Does your language shape how you think?

"The habits of mind that our culture has instilled in us from infancy shape our orientation to the world and our emotional responses to the objects we encounter, and their consequences probably go far beyond what has been experimentally demonstrated so far; they may also have a marked impact on our beliefs, values and ideologies. We may not know as yet how to measure these consequences directly or how to assess their contribution to cultural or political misunderstandings. But as a first step toward understanding one another, we can do better than pretending we all think the same."

Full article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magaz ... ral&src=me

[Svartalf]

Course it does. Thought is tied to language, and similar concepts are envisioned differently in different languages... just check that English words boat and ship are both covered by the same French work, and that Biblic Hebrew had such a conception of boats that the most prominent one in Genesis is designated by a word that normally is used for a kind of chest (ark)... similarly, different languages articulate concepts, time and the happening of events in different ways, which will be reflected in the thought using that language (compare philosophies, or the expression thereof, in various languages, and stream of consciousness authors of different backgrounds)

[DRSB]

So is it just the first language that is so decisive? Or do all subsequent languages add up to enrich your thinking?

[Svartalf]

AFAIK, yes, the first language is decisive... my previous post, for instance, was tainted by my gallic thinking, that impaired my ability to properly convey my meaning in English, in spite of my advanced skill in the latter language, and the fact that I think directly in it half the time.

Of course, acqhiring ne languages, if you internalize its modalities and concept well enough, would theoretically (I'm not sure about practice due to lack of personal experience) allow you to formulate thoughts differently and thus enrich your thinking ability and your views of the world.

[DRSB]

There is this notion of "interlanguages" in language learning, dynamic systems that the learners make out of the languages they have acquired or learned. This is also my experience, it is the interlanguage in my mind that influences my thinking, not just the first language

[Ronja]

What I have observed when teaching scientific writing and literature research to undergrads and "young" graduate students: those who never heard another language when they were kids can have the hardest time understanding viewpoints that are different from their own (or what is assumed in their original culture). Even disregarding the Chinese, many of whom obviously were taught *not* to think, it seems to me that being truly monolingual somewhat limits one's imagination. In research that is not a good thing. Good research is not built from (self)discipline alone.

Again, some minority language speakers can be so used to switching viewpoints that I have had difficulties in getting them to decide on conclusions of their own.

[Eriku]

Going back to the ol' Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, huh? The viewpoint issue I reckon has more to do with your general free-thinking nature (or lack thereof), rather than the constraints of language...

[Ronja]

Going back to the ol' Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, huh? The viewpoint issue I reckon has more to do with your general free-thinking nature (or lack thereof), rather than the constraints of language...

My sample is admittedly small (some 150 students thus far) and badly skewed, as less than 20 of them were women, and most (over 80 %) come from Finland, where e.g. subtitling films is the norm (as opposed to dubbing).

I think I was going to say something else, too, but I really am falling asleep, so it will have to wait.