Tag Archives: Language

Pay Attention to Expanding Neural Networks

I was chatting with a friend of mine from overseas last night on Skype. It’s been a while and we were catching up on old stuff, like you do when you haven’t done that in a while, because it’s a natural thing, right? And she was telling me about this new guy that she’s dating. I think she mentioned in passing that he was English, although I can’t be sure. I say in passing, but I’m I don’t know if that’s the correct grammatical description of what happened. She mentioned something that sort of led me to believe that he was English, although she didn’t say what specifically. Like his uncle who lives next door owns a fish and chips shop that has been in the family for several generations, or something else random like that. 

It’s weird when that happens. You’ll be talking with somebody, and you’ll make all kinds of inferences about what was said, but you don’t really don’t pay attention to the underlying intention of the conversation. Like somebody will mention their boyfriend, and then they’ll switch topics completely, and you think they are still talking about their boyfriend, but they’ve switched referential indexes completely so you don’t know exactly who they are talking about.

Like once my other friend was explaining to me the grammatical structure of the Laotian language. They generally don’t use grammatical modifiers, like past tense or familial references. Everything is modified by context. If they start talking about something that happened last Tuesday, everything in that conversation from then out is referenced from Tuesday unless otherwise indicated. I suppose in different languages you develop the ability to pay attention to different levels of intention.

Which I guess it’s a good reason to learn several things, like languages, because they can really help you to develop a rich outlook on life. It’s been proven that an easy way to really have the ability to see things from a different perspective is to learn another language. And not only just words, but to actually think that way. They’ve shown it actually creates new neural pathways that are used differently from other ones. Some of the smartest people in the world can speak several languages. And one tends to wonder, do they speak several languages because they are smart? Or do you become smarter than you already are because you can speak several languages?

Well, at any rate, I hope my friend can get along well with her new boyfriend, regardless of how the fish and chip restaurant pans out.

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Three Undisputable Powers of Humanity

Have you ever sat down and thought about what is really important in life? Really important to you? What kinds of things do you usually come up with? Love, Respect, Communication? Being recognized for a job well done? Freedom to create and express your life to others?

How about in your family? Have you ever sat down as a family and discussed what was important to you as a group? Or maybe your Mom or Dad ‘laid down the law’ so to speak. What was important then? Kids doing their homework? Coming home before curfew? A good education?

What about at work? I’m sure you’ve heard or read about or have been involved with creating a ‘mission statement’ for a company at one time or another.

“Our company shall strive to provide real time solutions to emerging problems in a timely manner with respect for the environment and the community.”

“Company XYZ envisions a future where everybody uses XYZ products for the enlightenment of man and the realization of life’s purpose.”

How about this one: “McDonald’s vision is to be the world’s best quick service restaurant experience. Being the best means providing outstanding quality, service, cleanliness and value, so that we make every customer in every restaurant smile.” No kidding.

What about the mission statement for the leaders of your country?

What do you think the three most important values of the entire human race are? Well, let’s have a look, shall we?

One way to look at what’s important is what are the most widely spoken languages in the world today. Perhaps they can give us a clue.

The most spoken language today is Mandarin Chinese, with about a billion speakers. That’s a lot of people. How’d they get so numerous? Well, most of them live in China, so they didn’t invade surrounding countries to spread their language. So one conclusion is that they got to be number one in terms of language spoken by sheer reproductive success and effectiveness. So the most spoken language in the world is spoken by the people that made the most people.

How about the second most spoken language in the world? English. And how did English get to be so popular? Maybe it might have something to do with the fact that up until a couple hundred years ago, “the sun never set on the English empire.” So English, then, was spread around the world because the English themselves spread it around the world. For what purpose? Namely trade. Business. So the second most spoken language in the world was spread because of worldwide interest in commerce.

How about the third most spoken language in the world? Spanish. And who spread the Spanish language? Spain of course. And what was the underlying motivation for Spanish people in the old days roaming the planet and spreading their language? Religion. Generally speaking, first the priests would come, and then the conquistadors.

So there you have it. A quick study in how different languages were spread around the world yields a quick and dirty look into the three most important things that have generally been important to the human race over the last thousand years or so.

Sex.

Money.

God. 

 

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Quickly and Easily Learn a New Language

Klaatu Barada Nikto! The meaning of this phrase, repeated in the recent rendition of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” has been widely discussed and the generally agreed upon meaning is that it is a kind of “safe word” used to keep the giant Gort from destroying the Earth.  While no translation has ever been given by the writers of the original screenplay, you can understand the meaning by the context in which it was used.

When we are babies, that is exactly how we learn English, or whatever other language you happened learn when you grew up. We pay attention to the sounds, and expressions, and figure out what they mean by the context in which they are used. When we practice copying the sounds and phrases of the adults around us, we learn what words get us what things. Over the course of three or four years, we unconsciously soak up all the grammar, sentence structure, and vocabulary that will form the basis for our entire communication that we use for our entire lives. We do all this without thought, worry, or stress. It just happens.

So what makes it seemingly so hard to learn a foreign language when we get older? Do our brains change somehow, as many believe, making it harder for us to learn as we get older? I don’t think so. I suspect that wherever you are in your stage of life, if you put yourself in an environment exactly the same as when you learned your native language, you’d learn a new one just as quickly. The rub is making sure the environment is EXACTLY the same. Surrounded by loving adults who give you all kinds of happy feelings when you speak, correctly or incorrectly. An environment where the ONLY thing you were expected to do was learn things. And environment where you didn’t have to worry about food, TV, or anything else that you take for granted today.

Unfortunately, unless you have a lot of money to throw around, re-creating the environment where you learned your first language is not likely. So if you want to learn another language, you need another strategy. Luckily, if you’ve read my other articles on memory, you already have a fantastic strategy for learning new words in a foreign language. It’s called pegging. If you haven’t read the other articles on memory, I suggest yo do that.

Imagine you want to learn the Japanese word for apple. Ready? I’ll teach it to you. Imagine you are in Tokyo at a Beatles concert. You can see John and Paul in the front, and George off to the side. But you can’t see the drummer, what’s his name. You walk over to the side, to get a better look. And to your shock, instead of the Beatles drummer, you see a giant apple, with arms and legs, banging away on the drums. How do you say “apple” in Japanese? You guessed it: Ringo.

Now if you need to, you can add more stuff to that picture to make it more memorable, but keep the elements the same. An apple playing drums for the Beatles at a concert in Tokyo. Try this with other words. Take the target word (in this case, “Ringo”) and say it until it reminds you of anything in English. Then just connect them up using a crazy, emotional, nonsensical picture/story. The more you do this, the easier it will get.

Now how long did it take to learn that? One minute? Two minutes? Do you know how many words are the base for everyday fluency in any given language? About 3000. And that’s really stretching it. Most linguists figure there’s really only about 500 that people use in basic non-technical conversation every day.

If you only spend 5 to 10 minutes a day, you could easily become conversationally fluent in a new language every year. And simply because you can imagine this, you can make it happen. How much would that impress your friends?

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