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Chinese takes more brain power? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 17 of 32 07 March 2012 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Some thoughts: 1: If we exclude the writing system (which is not involved in the listening process) from consideration, amongst the languages I've studied, Mandarin and Cantonese are far less complex than any of the others, with Mandarin being slightly less complex than Cantonese. It's hard to imagine a language being less complex than Mandarin without it losing functionality. (This does not mean Mandarin is easy to learn as a second language, by the way.) 2: If Mandarin speakers use both hemispheres when listening to their native language, this does not necessarily mean it takes more brain power (however we measure that). The quoted bits of the study only discuss where the processing takes place, not the amount or intensity of it. 3: The right-left hemisphere dichotomy is largely exaggerated in public understanding, and I think it's hard to draw conclusions from this unless more specific areas are mentioned. Nevertheless, I'll make an attempt. I'm dubious to the claim that it would have anything to do with the tones, for the reasons cited by Iversen. Rather, I can imagine it having to do with the larger reliance on context in Mandarin. Because of the aforementioned lack of complexity, Mandarin often requires a lot of interpretation and context to understand completely. The lack of things like definite articles, tenses, moods and numbers, not to mention the fluidity of many words in being used as adjectives, nouns or verbs, means that a single sentence can have a lot of different meanings depending on the context. This might explain some of the differences in processing. Maybe. I'm just guessing. Frankly, I'd want to read more in-depth or see a second study back this up before I believe it. It might just be a badly designed experiment. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4672 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 32 07 March 2012 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
What are you saying then? I interpreted you to mean that Mandarin without the writing system would take less time to learn than just about any other language, which I have to disagree with, due to the difficulty of listening. Are you talking only about grammar? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 19 of 32 07 March 2012 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
He's saying precisely what he said—that Mandarin, independent of its writing system, isn't particularly complex.
Saying a language isn't complex isn't the same as saying it's easy to learn as a second language—e.g., Spanish has a relatively complex grammar, but it doesn't pose much of a problem for anyone familiar with Romance languages, because it "works" in a similar manner. There's more of a cognitive gulf between the thought process underlying Mandarin and those of the native languages of most of us here. I can assure you that speakers of other Chinese languages (e.g, Hakka or Hokkien) do not find Mandarin to be particularly difficult, although they might find Spanish to be utterly confusing and complicated.
Mandarin isn't particularly difficult to listen to—each syllable has a straightforward combination of an initial and a final, and conveniently adheres to a systematized and standardized tonal system. There aren't any slurred consonant clusters (e.g., many of the Slavic languages), and there isn't any non-formalized or contextually-derived pitch accent system (ala Japanese and Norwegian, respectively).
I do believe he was. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4672 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 20 of 32 07 March 2012 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I disagree. Many westerners find that understanding Mandarin takes a long time relative to other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 21 of 32 07 March 2012 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Many people find many things to be many things—I wasn't aware Westerners were the final authority on the universal difficulty of languages. Once one learns a multisyllabic word like "yīnggāi" (应该) or "ránhòu" (然后), it becomes quite easy to recognize in a string of dialogue, because both its pronunciation and tonal flow generally correspond to the form in which it was learned. On the other hand, if a language allows tone to be contextually manipulated for the purpose of modifying intended meaning, the pronunciation will be the same but the tonal flow will be different from the neutral form in which it was learned. For example, there's essentially only one way to pronounce "wèishéme" (为什么), but "why" could be modified in any number of ways. That's what I mean when I say Mandarin isn't that difficult to listen to. Edited by nway on 07 March 2012 at 11:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 22 of 32 08 March 2012 at 6:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Yes, I meant that Mandarin is grammatically not very complex. Phonologically, its complexity is not that huge, but neither is it very small. As to listening, Mandarin speakers use fewer syllables per unit of time than the speakers of Japanese, Spanish or English (source).
For a native English speaker, Mandarin is still a very difficult language. It's phonetically, grammatically and lexically very different from English. It's also a language with a very large vocabulary and a lot of idioms. From the point of view of the brain of the native speaker, this is of no importance, except possibly the large vocab and amount of idioms, but that's an area in which English excels as well. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4933 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 23 of 32 08 March 2012 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I read things like this years ago and it surprised me they didn't have much progress until now (tell me if they do instead of some assumption based on a simple research).
They should scan these kinds of people. 1)Japanese, who also use characters but not a tonal system. 2)Thai, or those have a tonal system but characters. 3)Native chinese who do not read. Kids, or those who can not read. There're over 20% chinese population of them, who we call "characters blind". .Though I don't know at what level they cant read, I guess characters wont pop up in their heads when they speak anyway. And compare the difference between those who reads often and those who dont really read even they are capable. It may help. This can at least prove SOMETHING. Personally I tend to believe it's the version nor the tones that activates both sides, just assumption. Talk about brainpower, will measuring the consumption of calories talking about one subject at an near level for the same amount of time work? BTW, I LOVE characters. I am picking up traditional characters these days. The union of usage of characters is one of the cultural reasons why we stick as a nation over 2k years instead of stay apart like europeans. And dont forget that in ancient times, only those who can afford going to school can read, and there aren't much of them. So traditionally, it's more than a language. In modern days, we can totally approve the beauty casually with much better living qualities. My 6 year old nephew seems to have knowm a lot of characters already, and I read the fairy tale of Anderson by myself before I went to primary school. Thats a lot of characters. But hey, you can happily enjoy China as a normal ancient chinese man... Just mention another thing, when I can understand chinese when the speaker closes his mouth and just makes tones, I am totally lost the case of English. What about native English speakers? Edit:2k Edited by lindseylbb on 08 March 2012 at 5:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4679 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 24 of 32 08 March 2012 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It's fun how you say "as a nation for 4k years" when China has been united for only half of that. Don't know what you meant as "as a nation". (and "half of that" is clearly an optimistic view) Edited by vermillon on 08 March 2012 at 4:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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