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Is Japanese ridiculously hard? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 49 of 60 01 December 2010 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | ||
‘Thai script is easier to learn than Chinese or Japanese because there aren't 2,000 to 3,000 ideographs that you have to learn’ is exactly what is written about the difficulty of the Thai ideograms in this web site. Sorry, maybe this argument has to be made in another web site but I can shortly say that the East Asians evolved in a colder climate with a much higher population which in the end helped genetic mutations (http://www.harbornet.com/folks/theedrich/JP_Rushton/Race.ht m). The ideograms should be much easier for the East Asians (though they are surely difficult) than the others. As I read too much about this subject I can easily understand any forgery. The Jews don’t have 115 IQ but they have 91.3 visuospatial, 109.7 math and 107.8 verbal IQ (Beckman study, 1972). I am sure they will find the East Asian script more difficult than the others but German much easier with their perfect math minds.[/QUOTE] See, that's just bad science. Your position is that a group creates a script. There is not one East Asian person living today that has created the script used by those languages; they were invented a long time ago and modern people just copy them. I doesn't matter what their IQ is, or what type it is. Even stupid Asian people write Chinese characters, as well as extremely non-visual ones. At the same time, a number of non-East Asians have also learned how to read and write Chinese characters. The reason they are not used for non-Asian languages is historical, just as Vietnamese had used characters but dropped them because of French colonization. You can cite any number of works, but they won't help if you're asking the wrong questions. All a civilization needed was one string of individuals with their own unique talents and characteristics to create and proliferate a script. It doesn't matter what their "average IQ" or "IQ type" (meaningless terms) are. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5153 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes | Message 50 of 60 01 December 2010 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is not one East Asian person living today that has created the script used by those languages; they were invented a long time ago and modern people just copy them.
I didn’t say that only one East Asian sat down and decided on the ideograms to be used. A group in a very long term decided on them using their BEST talents (that is what evolution is). Surely non-asians can learn it by practice. It is not impossible to be learned but on average (surely not on a personal basis) the creator of those scripts will have an advantage to learn faster 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5419 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 51 of 60 01 December 2010 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I would hardly call it a talent when it takes about ten years of study for a native speaker to be able to read a newspaper without problems in their language if they use characters. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 01 December 2010 at 3:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 52 of 60 01 December 2010 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | ||
Sorry, what I meant by the term ‘East Asians’ was a racist one including only the Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese and some of the Chinese (the pacific rim ones, not all of them) because they have similar minds (extremely high visuo-spatial IQ about 110 and much lower verbal IQ about 97). I used to spend very long time reading about racial differences in the past ( http://neoeugenics.home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/). These characters of writing are the best for the East Asian mind. The Vietnamese or the other Southeast Asians would never create a writing system like that even if they tried to. [/QUOTE] Actually, it was the Vietnamese that created the Chữ Nôm, and that system, from what I hear, is pretty complex. It was the Japanese and the Koreans who just took the characters from China. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 53 of 60 01 December 2010 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | ||
So your claim is, in essence, that a Mandarin speaker is genetically better at learning Mandarin and its ideogrammes, right? I don't what books you read that lead you to think that, but that is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while. Humans as a whole are genetically predisposed for language, but that's as far as genetics will go in terms of language. The kind of modifications that could lead to a genetic predisposition within an ethnic group evolve on such a large time scale that it makes language look like Lady Gaga's wardrobe. No, language X is not meant to be written with script X. Sure, that script evolved with the language and is particularly well adapted to it, but that's anecdotal. It's like a chair being the same colour as a table. And no, people who speak language Y are not predisposed to learning either language Y or script Y. Any human can learn any language and any script, and any language can be written with any script -- apart from humans' general predisposition for linguistic communication, languages and scripts are entirely arbitrary and have absolutely nothing to do with genetics. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5153 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes | Message 54 of 60 01 December 2010 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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It doesn't matter what their "average IQ" or "IQ type" (meaningless terms) are. [/QUOTE]
It is like saying that average SAT score is meaningless. Surely it has a meaning. Caltech having the best average SAT score has much better students than say Hawaii-Pacific. This doesn’t mean that every student in Caltech has a higher SAT score but just on average. The best student of Caltech too will possibly (though not necessarily) have a higher score than the best of the other. It doesn't matter for me what you believe. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5419 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 55 of 60 01 December 2010 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | ||
It is like saying that average SAT score is meaningless. Surely it has a meaning. Caltech having the best average SAT score has much better students than say Hawaii- Pacific. This doesn’t mean that every student in Caltech has a higher SAT score but just on average. The best student of Caltech too will possibly (though not necessarily) have a higher score than the best of the other. It doesn't matter for me what you believe.[/QUOTE] IQ tests are highly debated about as to their efficacy at actually reflecting the intelligences of those who complete them. About 6 or 7 years ago I took some different IQ tests for fun and my results varied considerably each time. In one I got 101, in another I got 124 and in another I got 136. Many factors can affect what scores one can get in an IQ test and by doing certain exercises people are able to boost their IQ scores by 10 points or more. IQ scores are also affected by mood, time of day, level of concentration at the time of the test etc and causes the scores to vary far more than SATS which are tested in a very different way. IQ tests have a lot of controversy around them and are supposed to study raw intelligence and are not meant to link much to learned knowledge, SATS are based on learned skills and knowledge, the two types of tests just don't equate. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 01 December 2010 at 5:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 56 of 60 01 December 2010 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is not a thread about IQ. Let's get back on track, please.
3 persons have voted this message useful |
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