Speaking a Second Language May Change How You See the World 274
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.
Ever hear of "sociology"? (Score:4, Informative)
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".
Re:Ever hear of "sociology"? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah. This is just a restatement of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Welcome to the early twentieth century.
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Big difference between making a hypothesis, and doing empirical research. And no one claimed this was new ground, but a facet not yet studied this way exactly.
Curious which stuties you can cite that have this particular methodology?
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Of course you are right, but I find interesting that something as obvious as this is posted on /. You know, the obvious is often hidden more and more these days.
As for second languages, I master 2 languages fluently. I learned the second one at 18 using total immersion language learning. It is a shame that I never took the time to learn a third, fourth and fifth one or more this way.
I recommend total immersion for those wanting to seriously learn another language, you will experience what the poster is talk
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A friend told me the same thing. He took a job in Russia after high school, speaking only English. He said that often he had to think of the problem at the plant in Russian, because he'd only had the workings of the plant described to him in Russian. He knew that he could switch back to English, but trying to think of "the machine that strips truck tires" (the example he used, I think, because the machine's name in Russian was some compound of those words) lead him in circles.
I never had the luck to learn o
Language obviously influences thinking! (Score:2)
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
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"Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt... (Score:5, Interesting)
... 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."
Re:"Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt... (Score:5, Interesting)
Regarding your Goethe quote: I'm an American native-English speaker. Studying German taught me how to use the word "whose", as in "the man whose car was hit". I didn't know how to say that properly in English until I learned how to say it in German. (My textbook had examples in English and in German.)
Re:"Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have advanced learning in German as an American native-English speaker.
I now use the subjunctive properly, and a host of other things. My English is perhaps now so proper, that I speak it "better" than my parents...
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I completely agree. I'm fluent in four languages: Spanish, Catalan, English and Japanese, the first two native, plus I can understand (but not speak) Italian, Portuguese and French because they aren't that different from Spanish and Catalan.
I can see how at least in my case, learning how some constructs work in one language has helped me understand things about another.
It's also true that the language used to express yourself in a given situation affects the way you think about it, because of what you can a
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Not sure about that (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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The more that I've studied German, the more that I have found that they express things in a very particular manner as opposed to English. The smallest example being that in formal English the passive-voice is discouraged, because it obfuscates the agent of the sentence, while in formal German, the passive-voice is encouraged, because it emphasizes on the action, which is often the more important part of the sentence.
Also, the "the left-turning truck" form ("den links abbiegenden LKW") is also very common to
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English and German are actually very interesting languages to compare. They are historically much closer than many people realise. If you ever have the chance to study some Middle English or go see a play by Chaucer (or anything else that dates from before "the great vowel shift") performed with the pronunciation of that time the similarities suddenly become glaringly obvious. You'll start noticing them as well in modern versions of both languages.
But these languages have evolved in very different direction
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English and German are actually very interesting languages to compare. They are historically much closer than many people realise. If you ever have the chance to study some Middle English or go see a play by Chaucer (or anything else that dates from before "the great vowel shift") performed with the pronunciation of that time the similarities suddenly become glaringly obvious. You'll start noticing them as well in modern versions of both languages.
But these languages have evolved in very different directions since that time. German has a big emphasis on a very formalized grammar and on compounding, whereas English has evolved with a simpler grammar and greater emphasis on a larger and more complex vocabulary with more subtle differences in meaning. This is also strongly related to (actual or perceived) cultural differences between native speakers of both languages.
I love studying languages and particularly language change and currently speak 5 different languages with varying degrees of fluency (Germanic, Romanic and Slavic languages) and find it a very enriching experience.
NewSpeak was predicated on the idea that your language controls your thoughts. It's true, but only do a degree, which is how NewSpeak-minded people managed to make "special" or "challenged" an insult. Then again, the English word "nice" has flip-flopped several times without artificial assistance.
German is in many ways the hardest language for me because a lot of the old words took on meanings in very different directions. A classic example is let/lassen. "Ich lasse mein Haar schneiden" doesn't literally me
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A classic example is let/lassen. "Ich lasse mein Haar schneiden" doesn't literally mean "l let my hair be cut", although presumably it was a voluntary thing. However, the more precise translation would be "I have my hair cut", meaning, effectively that instead of permitting it to be done, I've ordered it to be done.
I noticed this while learning German as well, but I also noticed that you can see an echo of the German usage in programming/mathematics: LET X = 1, for example.
Re:Not sure about that (Score:5, Interesting)
That's true for the other way round, too. Coming from an area with many Schlösser und Burgen, calling all of them simply "castle" feels wrong.
And for every english student struggling with the 'th', there is a german learner trying to pronounce the 'ch'. :-)
Re:Not sure about that (Score:5, Informative)
Well, you can try this
der Schloss = castle
die Burg = fortress
die Festung = stronghold
English seldom uses this distinction, but it is still there. A stronghold is a fort that is not used as living quarters, while a fortress is also used for living. A castle is a fortress that is also a residence of a noble, not necessarily fortified in later days, being more of a palace really (e.g. Schloss Neuschwanstein). This differentiation is modern language, however. In the older German they just used one word for all of these, but, depending on the century, a different one. Therefore "Veste Coburg", for example, that uses both "Burg" and "Festung".
Only if you trnaslate in your head (Score:5, Insightful)
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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
Actually, there's only one way. In the first option, you don't really speak the language.
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Obligatory Charlemagne (Score:2, Redundant)
I think computer scientists already knew this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The language shapes how you think about a problem.
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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.
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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 attrib
A second language DOES change your world views (Score:3)
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.
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It's just a pity that the world's de-facto common language (English) is so hard to learn well...
I disagree; English is relatively easy to learn, therefore it has become the world's de-facto common language.
Besides, any language (except maybe Esperanto ?) is hard to learn well...
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The parent said "to learn *well*", and (s)he was right. English is for many people easy to get started with, but it's really hard to master well.
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I disagree; English is relatively easy to learn, therefore it has become the world's de-facto common language.
The fact that English has become the word's language has nothing to do with its ease of learning.
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The fact that English has become the word's language has nothing to do with its ease of learning.
Care to explain why ?
You would certainly agree that a language that is hard to learn has fewer chances to be used all around the world ? Hence, being easier to learn surely helps (even if there may be other reasons).
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If the language of colonial-era UK had been Yiddish or Mandarin, it would have still been the world language today. It's all about history, and not about ease of learning. Nobod
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The reason English is the main language is because of the British Empire, followed by American dominance. Ease is a secondary factor.
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It's just a pity that the world's de-facto common language (English) is so hard to learn well...
I can think of some ways that English is easier to learn than German (and I suppose easier to learn than other languages also):
1) You don't have to learn the gender of English nouns. Most English nouns have masculine/feminine gender for male/female people and animals, or neutral gender for all other nouns. The exceptions are calling an item like a ship "she" when you're being poetic, and calling someone "they" when you're trying to be gender-neutral.
2) There's only one way to say the English word "the". Whe
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4) If you put an adjective before a noun ("small dog"), you don't have to put a syllable at the end of the adjective. In German, you do need that adjective ending (the "er" in "kleiner Hund").
And that adjective ending varies. It depends on gender, case, and definite/indefinite article.
English (Score:2)
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 wh
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No offense... but I read your post twice... and I seemed to have missed your point. You gave us quite a detailed description what languages you and people you know have been exposed to... and then just stopped.
I presumed you were somehow going to tie it back to the article or summary; but you never got around to it??
For my part I took french immersion in high school; and that was enough for me to completely agree with the summary; that the gestalt switch one makes to think -in- another language changes how
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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 Bulg
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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 ma
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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 ha
Vice Versa (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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I doubt it. Learning languages requires either immersion at the right ages or study with immersion being very helpful. Both of those also happen to expose a person to multiple perspectives just be their occurrence. If learning a language were just about the ability to shift perspectives, every creative type who look at object A and see use Z for it could pick up a language easily. (see: PIC32 being used as a spectrum analyzer via NTSC, or junk turned into Apollo style Kerbal controllers.)
Besides, most studi
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That's really my problem. As an American, the only languages I'm even exposed to are English and Spanish. And I don't know many people who speak Spanish, and the ones that do also speak English. So, my only incentive to learn Spanish is to overhear what the people in the grocery store are saying to each other.
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I understand the point you're making, and while I agree basically, I think the relationship is a little more subtle.
The human brain is fundamentally a language machine. While this certainly ossifies with age as the system prunes neural circuits that it believes it no longer needs, I think the ability to learn multiple languages is in fact hard wired into h. sapiens from birth.
It's this plasticity that makes languages easily learnt, but the APPLICATION of learning - the actual deformation/reformation of conc
New study? (Score:2)
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
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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.
I learned French in high school and it didn't change how I viewed the world. Traveling, on the other hand, has.
Perhaps if you learn a new language on your own when you are more mature. In that case you are already looking for new perspectives and a direction for growth. In other words, it might be the act of learning itself and not languages specifically.
Of course, it's a completely different story if you move to a new region and are learning both a new language and a new culture.
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Did language acquisition help in your journeys or do you travel only to countries where they speak Canadian? :)
For me I learned Spanish as an adult merely as an intellectual exercise as a podgy IT nerd. I'd never left my home country before but it did inspire me to travel to Europe and South America - but only in hindsight was it a means to an end. I'm currently doing a 3-week MOOC on Dutch, which again is an intellectual exercise but may inspire me to travel to, say, Belgium at some point in the future.
But
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In defence of Latin you can probably read it on monuments, tombs, and in old buildings in every major city in Europe; it provides loan words and base words for most European languages; it's useful for lawyers and historians at least; you can look intelligent by making quotes in Latin. /Ipsa scientia potestas est/. ;0)>
It is surprising to me that this is news (Score:2)
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
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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... [wikipedia.org]
It's easily tested and has been often demonstrated, that speakers of languages with certain obligatory features, like say tense and plural in Englis
That was not well known? (Score:2)
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.
As a bilingual speaker (Score:3)
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Obvious? (Score:2)
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 s
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Germans have a reputation for being precise, their language is very precise
As I experience it, German is inherently imprecise, but that forces you to be very precise when using it. Doing anything out of the certain established structures and what you say will be ambigous and sound wrong to germans.
luxembourg: 3 languages and more (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Mmmm (Score:2)
I'm quadrilingual, so I must be the thief.
Old news: Vance and Van Vogt were earlier (Score:3)
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...
Captain Obvious Here (Score:2)
Shoulda said... (Score:2)
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 same is true for programming languages (Score:2)
Enough said ...
And if you want to know ... (Score:3)
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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 know
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You call a person who can speak two languages bilingual.
You call a person who can speak three languages trilingual.
What do you call a person who speaks only one language?
American.
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You call a person who can speak two languages bilingual.
You call a person who can speak three languages trilingual.
What do you call a person who speaks only one language?
American.
Wow, I'll bet you can say "pretentious douchebag" in a bunch of languages, huh? Though I suspect that in all of your sophistication, you might still miss the irony.
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"Douchebag", by the way, is a very American vulgarity. I am not even sure it works the same way for Brits or Aussies. Translating it literally to any other language would completely lose its meaning.
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None that I can recall.
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A country the size of America where everyone speaks the same language? What a huge advantage. There are hundreds of millions of Chinese people who don't speak the official language. How many wars did Europe have because they couldn't communicate with each other?
Actually, I suspect several wars started BECAUSE the people understood each other.
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Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Mandarin does have a "Yes" and a "Negative Yes" (Score:2, Informative)
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"
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I would disagree with that. I would say there is no "Yes", but there is a "No".
Shi4 could be translated as "is" or "Yes, it is." Dui4 could be translated as "correct" or "Yes, you are correct." "hao3" could be translated as "good", "ok", or "Yes, it is good."
You can put bu4 in front of any of these to change them to a negative answer. Also, in translating a "Nooooo!!!!" from a movie, it would probably be "buuuuu4!!!! Sometimes mei3 is used instead of bu4 in front of words to make them negative-it just depen
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 t
Spanish (Score:2)
Spanish sounds lighthearted
That depends. Latin American Spanish sounds quite friendly, but Spanish Spanish sounds like a Chicago Typewriter [wikipedia.org]. I would not call that "lighthearted".
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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 c
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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, communic
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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.
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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.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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> 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)
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German rap music is HUGE right now
Holy fucking Christ, just when you thought life couldn't get any worse...
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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.
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No. English is a terrible language to convey ideas in. It is more imprecise and ambiguous than any other language I know, save mandarin.
English sort of works for art where these values are at a premium, and prose is where it fits best. I don't think it is a coincidence that the worlds most famous bard was English.
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It is more imprecise and ambiguous than any other language I know, save mandarin.
Which is an interesting claim, since all languages have their fair share of ambiguities. Interestingly, human beings generally don't have problems with those, and technical literature is highly artificial anyway.
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Don't feel too bad. I'm a native English speaker (with Spanish as a 2nd language) and I can't do crosswords (in English) either.
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Didn't you hear that Elon Musk wants to build an Internet of Things on Mars? [shitelonsays.com] He'll be landing stuff there in no time using his 3D-printed engines. [spacex.com]
(OK, OK, I'll show myself out...)