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Language Can Give You Super Mind Powers

weblog.noahburney.com

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Re: Language Can Give You Super Mind Powers

#2

Post by spodek »

From the post: "Speakin' in a different language changes the way you think—it's a well attested phenomenon."

A great answer for the perennial questions "why should I learn math or science." It changes the way you think -- only instead of learning about culture you learn about patterns and nature.

I got a physics degree before leaving the field. People who didn't take science ask if I still use it. How do I answer so they'll understand that I use it in every thought?

Re: Language Can Give You Super Mind Powers

#4

Post by vitno »

mike_ivanov wrote: post #3

"Speakin' in a different language changes the way you think—it's a well attested phenomenon." This is wrong. I speak two languages, so I can tell. Learning the second one didn't change the way I think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

what were the languages? they may be very similar.

Re: Language Can Give You Super Mind Powers

#5

Post by simonsarris »

spodek wrote: post #2

From the post: "Speakin' in a different language changes the way you think—it's a well attested phenomenon." A great answer for the perennial questions "why should I learn math or science." It changes the way you think -- only instead of learning about culture you learn about patterns and nature. I got a physics degree before leaving the field. People who didn't take science ask if I still use it. How do I answer so…

"A different language is a different version of life" - Fellini

I agree completely. And I would certainly agree that learning to think in Math/Biology/Evolution is just as important as learning to think in French.

Slightly related, one of the reasons I love English so much is that there are so many words and the creation of new words is not discouraged. There are an enormous amount of ways to describe how a thing is or how we feel and I think a certain level of expressiveness is very important for doing good work.

By the same token, knowing the language of say evolution or math - knowing all the terms and how to describe what's going on - can be just as important for say visual or program design as knowing the more 'industrial' words.

Re: Language Can Give You Super Mind Powers

#7

Post by noahburney »

mike_ivanov wrote: post #3

"Speakin' in a different language changes the way you think—it's a well attested phenomenon." This is wrong. I speak two languages, so I can tell. Learning the second one didn't change the way I think.

Which two? I'm near-fluent in Korean and I definitely think differently when in "Korean mode" than when I'm speaking English. But when I've studied e.g. Norwegian, it's so similar to English that there's not much of a change.

Re: Language Can Give You Super Mind Powers

#8

Post by vitno »

seanos wrote: post #6

Lojban is a constructed, syntactically unambiguous language based on predicate logic that was originally conceived to examine the influence of language on the speaker's thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban

I spent a little bit of time learning lojban. Although I am in no way proficient, their small community is an interesting place. the more fluent ones sometimes mention this phenomenon (from their personal experience).

Re: Language Can Give You Super Mind Powers

#9

Post by tdr »

From the post I'd conclude that language is the by-product of innovation (and necessity), not the other way around.

There is already an artificial language out there: Esperanto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto . From what I remember from language students, it's pretty much a failure.

Also, do you have any concrete ideas/point of action to do that? Do they work?

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