Languages and Thought

Pdog, was that a question? Or you jus' barkin'?

I love Bill Bryson whether he's being serious or funny (and when he's funny, he's very, very funny...) I'm reading another of his books, A Short History of Nearly Everything. He explains the aluminum/aluminium thing:

So the turn Leicester into Lester and Alumium to Aluminium. Go figure...

(just barkin')

rufio, I gave lots of specifics in terms of language exposure/ acquisition, average age of diagnosis of deafness, etc., etc. If you ask me a more specific question, I'll see what I can do. I'm not sure what you're asking that I haven't already answered. ("Theory of Mind" is not my area, was just part of the first article I happened to find on this subject.)

I only just scanned this thread, so forgive me if this has already been recommended.



May I highly reccomend: Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks.

This explains his usual fascinating way, the importance of sign language in regards to the developement of cognitive skills in deaf children. From what I remember, developing ASL is much more crucial and useful for communicatiing and thinking than learning spoken language. It's an enjoyable read in general.

I like Oliver Sacks. Unfortunately, that book does not have as accurate of info as I would like. (Edited from "that book sucks". )

"Mask of Benevolence" by Harlan Lane is one that is usually mentioned in the same category and that is much, MUCH better.

The thing with ASL vs. spoken is just that while both are true languages -- ASL and spoken English -- one is fully accessible to deaf kids and one is not. So the one that is accessible will of course be better for language acquisition. And once a language -- any language -- has been acquired, other languages can follow.

Ha! Ha! Well at least "Seeing Voices" opened up a whole new world to me!

Sozo, what is the problem with these kids, exactly? Are they not able to do math? Read and comrehend? Make sculptures in art class? Get along with other children? What?

Minds aren't that simple rufio. Most aren't, at least.

Reading and comprehension problems are, to my knowledge, part of it.

Maybe not, Craven, but observing things is a good start.

This is something I'm particularly interested in: polyglotism. Do you have any more info on this sozobe?

Iain

I don't know if this is the information you're looking for on polyglotism, whether HOW the brain copes with multiple languages, if there's a floodgate of sorts that opens, I don't know. . . my family has a polyglot or two in the mix, and the most effective way to acquire multiple languages seems to be to start early learning and then to keep doing so. . . I know for me, I learned latin and german at the same time, highly grammatical languages. . . I already had french training at that point, which was helped by the latin, which makes italian and spanish somewhat comprehensible. . . I don't know if it's the brain wiring or what, but for me, once you learn that first language, it's much easier to learn others, especially if you have some "root" knowledge- i.e., latin. . .

I think just having that knowledge that there are other languages out there makes your mind more receptive to new ones. . . does that make any sense?

Yes, I think that's correct.
Some people are more susceptible of course, just as some people are "smarter", but I'm not sure if these two are the same thing...that is, I'm not sure if a facility in an individual to learn languages is necessarily directly linked to intelligence quotient.

Oh, I'd say definitely not. . . although, for instance, the knowledge of grammar that can help you learn a language CAN make you more intelligent, and similarly other parts of intelligence aid in learning languages, I always remind myself of the children who grow up bilingual or polylingual from birth. . . it's more a grit and practice matter. . .

Oh, missed your question, dduck.

And hello, princessash!

The point I was making is that it looks like there are sort of uber language neural pathways that need to be forged by thoroughly learning a language, any language. Once the "language" pathways have been forged, (not "French" pathways or "English" pathways), other languages are able to follow the course.

There is still a critical language acquisition period when this is all much easier. But people aren't limited to that, strictly. The most important part is that the language pathway is set by at least one language.

For example, I started learning ASL at age 21, and am almost completely fluent. (I learned through immersion rather than classes, and I need a while in a deaf environment before my brain switches over completely.) I was born hearing, and English is my first language.

A deaf child from a deaf family, who has been exposed to ASL from birth, can learn English as a second language and become completely fluent.

On the other hand, a child who was born deaf and did not have exposure to a complete language -- grammar, syntax, etc., etc. -- would have a much, much harder time learning any language later on, even in the critical learning period, whether it is ASL or English.

In terms of polyglotism, I think it is predisposition plus environment -- a child who physically moves around to different language environments is likely to pick up the languages quickly. Within those circumstances, some kids are more likely to do so than others.

Right, the only difference, when you start learning a language early is that you have to 'work' for it much less. i am fluent in 5 languages and really consciously i only learnt one - the one i started in high school. i picked up english when i was 9 and russian when 12, and i don't remember ever struggling with it. french was more difficult, but only because it took much longer to get those new words to stick in the memory.

Jacob Bronowski writes in one of his books that he can hardly understand and speaks no Polish. But that he is fluent in English today because he learned Polish when he was a toddler.

he didn't use it after he was a toddler? but i bet it would be very easy for him to re-learn it. much easier than for a person that had no contact with polish or other slavic languages.

Well, i brought it up, Dag, because i felt it refers to what Soz was saying--that learning a language, any language, early on, prepares one to learn other languages. I rather think that slavic languages are less dissimilar to romance or germanic languages than they all are to eastern asian languages, for example, where inflected pronunciations account for large differences in meaning. As i understand Bronowski's bio, he would have used Polish until as a young boy, his family moved to England.

hi, sozobe :-)

I agree on the slavo/germanic languages v. romance languages issue. . . learning english first is in a way a mixed blessing, because english is so rife with the influences of other languages, both romance and germanic. We just aren't the first to jump off and learn more.

I find it interesting that you seem to find people who are polyglots learning families of languages. . . for instance, only a professional translator will normally have training in, say, english, french, spanish, russian, chinese, and arabic. . . you rarely find a "normal" polyglot with such diversity, or even french and chinese, arabic and german, combinations like that, unless the person happens to have lived in an area where two dissimilar languages are spoken (the german and italian speaking people of the South Tyrol, for instance).

My mother, for instance, speaks french, spanish, and italian, and not a word of german, despite the fact that it's my primary secondary language (in my terminology :-)). I think that working within those families is much easier than trying to branch out and learn a new type of language. I had horrible trouble with ancient Greek, even though I'd taken latin and figured it'd be easy, and I gave up on russian very quickly after I learned it was worlds apart from German.