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Since race is not a scientifically meaningful concept, I assume you mean ethnicity?
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How the brain processes German and Arabic
51–60 of 115 posts
Re: How the brain processes German and Arabic
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
My native language is Portuguese and I'm currently learning German. The separable verbs are quite a challenge for me, especially in longer sentences. I'm used to simply read a verb and start picturing the sentence meaning in my mind, immediately. Whereas in German there's this need to keep the content in the working memory for possible supplementary info, and only at the end you can figure the meaning. Until the sent…
The thing is, when you become accustomed to the language there is no such thing as keeping stuff in the working memory. I think that’s just a convoluted way of explaining the processes that are behind speaking/understanding a language. As a native speaker of German I pretty much know at the first few words of the sentence which verb/words will have to follow and how the sentence will have to end. The meaning or infor…
Yesterday I was reading some Frege[1] text, "Der Gedanke. Eine logische Untersuchung", or more accurately a French translation by Claude Imbert.
In this essay, he makes some interesting remarks on how propositions uttered are only the tip of the iceberg of the meaning intended.
What you say is of course true, in the same extent that you already have an idea about what someone is most likely going to say even before they open their mouth. It doesn’t invalidate that in German you might put a twist in the very end of your sentence, something that will be harder in a language structured differently, to the point that most attempt to do so will feel convoluted enough that you will probably spot it far before the end of the sentence.
Re: How the brain processes German and Arabic
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
My native language is Portuguese and I'm currently learning German. The separable verbs are quite a challenge for me, especially in longer sentences. I'm used to simply read a verb and start picturing the sentence meaning in my mind, immediately. Whereas in German there's this need to keep the content in the working memory for possible supplementary info, and only at the end you can figure the meaning. Until the sent…
The thing is, when you become accustomed to the language there is no such thing as keeping stuff in the working memory. I think that’s just a convoluted way of explaining the processes that are behind speaking/understanding a language. As a native speaker of German I pretty much know at the first few words of the sentence which verb/words will have to follow and how the sentence will have to end. The meaning or infor…
Language usually has some sort of forward error correction so that if you mishear parts of a sentence, you can still reconstruct the content from the surrounding words.
Re: How the brain processes German and Arabic
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Written German of the times of Mark Twain is also quite different from today's. The German language mutated less over the centuries than the English language. An educated native German speaker should be able to mostly understand the "Nibelungenlied" ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied ), a text written down in the mid 13th century, which is thus nearly 800 years old.
-Ish I guess :) Uns ist in alten mæren wunders vil geseit von helden lobebæren, von grôzer arebeit, von freuden, hôchgezîten, von weinen und von klagen, von küener recken strîten muget ír nu wunder hœren sagen A "mær" (as Maer - imagine an a umlaut) does exist still but the word is so antiquated that I don't expect kids these days to know it. "wunders"? No idea. Something about "wonder"? "vil" sure, viel (a lot). "ge…
> A "mær" (as Maer - imagine an a umlaut) does exist still but the word is so antiquated that I don't expect kids these days to know it.
The word [die] Mär/die Märe [the lore, myth] (in modern German one would rather use "die Kunde" (not to be confused with "der Kunde" [the customer])) is used regularly in modern German in the diminutive form: "das Märchen" (the fairly tale). So, a Märchen [fairy tale] is a small lore.
> "wunders"
die Wunder [the wonders].
> "geseit"
In modern German, you would say "gesagt", which is actually rather similar, but you might indeed have some difficulties finding this relationship on your own.
> lobebæren
You can immediately see the relationship to the noun "[das] Lob". So you can guess that in modern German you would use "gelobt" (I agree that using "gelobt" sounds a little bit stilted in modern German, but this shall not matter here).
> sure that's "grosser Arbeit" but when I look at the "translation to German" (from the middle high German the original apparently is written in) it says it's "groesse Muehsahl".
Your guess is perfectly correct: the meaning of "Arbeit" has shifted over time, so in modern German, you would rather use the word "Mühsal".
> "hôchgezîten": Hochzeiten? Like weddings?
A wedding is actually a "high time" (Hoch-Zeit). This relationship is slightly obscured in modern German in that if you mean "wedding" the initial "o" in Hochzeit is pronounced differently when meaning "wedding". If you pronounce "Hochzeit" as "Hoch-Zeit", the meaning becomes very clear ("Hochzeit" as in "Hochphase" ["high phase" -> heyday]).
> "recken" very old word.
The word "der Recke" [valiant] is a (slightly old-fashioned) word that does exist in modern German.
> "strîten" means streiten
In this case: [die] Streite (plural of [der] Streit) in the today less commonly used (but perfectly understandable) meaning "die Kämpfe" [the combats]. If you are used to the lyrics of the Lohengrin opera
> http://www.wagneroperas.com/indexlohengrinlibretto.html
"streiten"/[der] Streit/[der] Streiter is used all the time in this older meaning, for example:
Friedrich:
[...]
Hier steh' ich, hier mein Schwert! Wer wagt von euch,
zu streiten wider meiner Ehre Preis!
Die Brabanter:
Keiner von uns! Wir streiten nur für dich!
Der König
[...]
Heil deinem Kommen, teurer Held!
Die du so treulich riefst ins Feld,
die harren dein in Streites Lust,
von dir geführt, des Siegs bewußt.
Die Männer
Wir harren dein in Streites Lust,
von dir geführt, des Siegs bewußt.
Lohengrin
Mein Herr und König, laß dir melden:
Die ich berief, die kühnen Helden,
zum Streit sie führen darf ich nicht!Re: How the brain processes German and Arabic
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
My native language is Portuguese and I'm currently learning German. The separable verbs are quite a challenge for me, especially in longer sentences. I'm used to simply read a verb and start picturing the sentence meaning in my mind, immediately. Whereas in German there's this need to keep the content in the working memory for possible supplementary info, and only at the end you can figure the meaning. Until the sent…
You are saying. For me as a native German speaker I feel very much the same when trying to speak Portuguese. I'm used to simply read a verb and start picturing the sentence meaning in my mind, immediately. Whereas in Portuguese there's this need to keep the whole conjugation table in working memory so you can figure out the meaning. Also in Portuguese verb forms are really important to understand and communicate mean…
Conjugations are just compound words with improved efficiency. If anything, maybe they're too German.
Re: How the brain processes German and Arabic
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, this is such an incredible take-down, thank you for sharing! German is one of those languages where the spoken and written languages are incredibly distinct. I've felt that the written language requires massive intellect to pull apart as a non-native speaker, in comparison to the spoken language (once you adjust for pronunciation, etc.). The formalities of proper written German are inscrutable, this does a great…
Honestly, in my experience as a native German speaker spoken and written German are more similar to each other than spoken and written English. Just speak German as you would write it might sound a little bit more formal than is usual, but it won't cause you any trouble to err a little bit on the "too formal" side. > I've felt that the written language requires massive intellect to pull apart as a non-native speaker,…
That’s horrendous and seems like bad form in any language. I was taught to write English as I speak it. If you need to pause, use a comma. If you need to breathe, use a period. But don’t run on sentences if you wouldn’t speak it out loud the same way.
Re: How the brain processes German and Arabic
#57They don't link to the study, but the image accompanying the article doesn't inspire much confidence. What are the lines? All the dots are almost identical with only one or two being slightly bigger or smaller. More fundamentally, what makes them think the results have anything to do with language other than culture and life experience? If they did this in Germany, native Arabic speakers will have (mostly) moved duri…
Of course they can't distinguish language from culture, nor nature (heridatary influences). It's a farce to make that claim. And the claim really is "The current study suggests that the structural language connectome develops and is modulated by environmental factors such as the characteristic processing demands of the native language."
And I don't know how much diffusion MRI has improved, but around 2010 (when I left this field) it wasn't considered reliable.
Re: How the brain processes German and Arabic
#58These studies seem to confirm intuitions that many people have expressed in many ways, especially regarding German philosophers who cannot easily be translated in other languages because of the "analytical" properties of that language.
As someone who speaks several languages it is also very apparent that somehow the infrastructure in the brain must be slightly different for different languages. For instance, to pick German again, when "caching" certain parts of sentences for later processing, which does not exist in other languages.
The brain being a muscle, it is only natural that this would translate in more developed cognitive abilities for those language speakers.
I've heard several takes on Asian students being better than others in maths: one of those argued that both the languages themselves, plus the way they are taught to young kids, could, on the long term, make brains better suited to maths. Would be curious to see such studies on that.
Re: How the brain processes German and Arabic
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obligatory Mark Twain on this, in case you or others haven't read his essay on learning German: "observe how far that verb is from the reader's base of operations; well, in a German newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting to…
Q: Why does past participle in German begin with "ge-"? A: To give the speaker some time to remember what verb they had in mind 90 seconds ago when they started the sentence.
Why would the "normal" way of thinking/saying things, involve putting the verb, then the object, and not the other way around ? Pretty much like arguing that the normal way of writing is from left to right. Good demonstration of how brains are wired differently.
Re: How the brain processes German and Arabic
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a relatively simple compound word. Just two words actually. I hope this doesn't get auto corrected but how about Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaen (sorry no umlauts here and no fff from me :)). For the uninitiated: Schiff has 2 f. Fahrt has an f. But there a rule that if you combine words to make a new one you can't have a letter repeat more than twice. Papplakate? Pappe and Plakate. Schlaemmkreide? (ag…
well, technically it's a compound word of two words, one of which is also a compound word, so 3 words, really.
German is a bit like lisp without the parentheses. Complexity is built into the language and culture.
I live in Germany as a foreigner, so I'm a bit biased of course. But my observation is that the German culture and language are a bit of a reflection of each other. Formal German use long, complicated sentences with long compound words and complex grammatical sentence. This somehow translates into a love/appreciation of neat, complex processes. There's more than a bit of cultural bias towards that. Kind of funny if you are aware and see somebody going a bit OCD on that.