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The Findings of My Psychologist

  Tags: Brain
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
22 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3  Next >>
languagenerd09
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
youtube.com/user/Lan
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 Message 1 of 22
27 October 2013 at 11:20pm | IP Logged 
I was in hospital for the majority of this week (Monday to Friday) to cause a forced seizure to be recorded on video - a telemetry test.

While this was happening I had a test with a psychologist who had realised I'd been writing Chinese characters down.

He did little tests on my memory and he discovered that it appears that my brain is strongly linguistic, a few memory problems but it takes me a few
attempts
when writing things down to have a constant fixed memory, which is why he advised that I write things more often that I normally do. Plus, (in his words) "
it's
fascinates me that your brain is actively more 'geared' towards easily remembering scripted languages and not Latin script based languages"

He held a card up in German which I had to read and remember and say back. He shown it to me for 5 seconds saying "ich möchte rund der Welt reisen und ich
hoffe
nach Asien zurückkehren" - I got the full sentence on the first attempt saying it back.

He was fascinated because usually people who are better at scripted languages are left handed and seizures occur on the right side of their brain whereas
I'm
right handed and my seizures start and occur on my left side of the brain

He also thinks that I somehow use both sides of my brain for learning and that I'm visual (my right side) and verbal (my left side).

Edited by languagenerd09 on 27 October 2013 at 11:24pm

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Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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 Message 2 of 22
28 October 2013 at 12:02am | IP Logged 
At risk of making an absolute c*** of myself, where did (s)he get the German sentence? I'm no expert, but it
seems wrong to me.

Apologies if I'm wrong but zurückzukehren sounds better to me and I somehow don't like the phrase
"rund der Welt fahren", altthough the fact that I (a mere learner) never heard it before and don't like how it
sounds
doesn't mean it's wrong, obviously.

Interesting thread, anyway. Sorry for going off-topic.

Edited by Random review on 28 October 2013 at 1:50am

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Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5571 days ago

781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 3 of 22
28 October 2013 at 12:09am | IP Logged 
Googled "rund der Welt fahren" apparently it's OK. Still ugly though...ha ha

Edit: er, ,apparently my skill with google is even worse than my German (sheepish grin).

Edited by Random review on 28 October 2013 at 1:51am

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languagenerd09
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
youtube.com/user/Lan
Joined 4888 days ago

174 posts - 267 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai

 
 Message 4 of 22
28 October 2013 at 12:20am | IP Logged 
I don't know where he got it from to be honest, it was printed on a laminated card, so it could have been from anywhere.
1 person has voted this message useful



Cabaire
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5387 days ago

725 posts - 1352 votes 

 
 Message 5 of 22
28 October 2013 at 12:20am | IP Logged 
"Rund der Welt fahren" is wrong. If you google it, you find it only in a garbled text written by a certain Brit Gargen full of strange German.
The correct version is: Ich möchte rund um die Welt reisen und ich hoffe nach Asien zurückzukehren.

8 persons have voted this message useful



Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5571 days ago

781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 6 of 22
28 October 2013 at 1:49am | IP Logged 
Thanks for clearing that up, Cabaire. Once again sorry for taking the thread off-topic- it deserves to
stimulate a good discussion.
1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6491 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
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 Message 7 of 22
28 October 2013 at 10:43am | IP Logged 
I simply don't understand what the psychologist means by the expression "strongly linguistic". With a few exceptions all humans are strongly linguistic.

If by 'scripted languages' you mean languages written with ideograms then it wouldn't be really surprising to find that the right brain half (and left hand) were more active than it is in the average left brain dominated language user. And every time such a logical thought is shot down by a counterexample it should be interesting for any decent specialist in that field.

However the advice about writing things down should not be limited to people with your mental constitution. It would be extremely weird if writing things down didn't help people to remember things better - even though it also has the effect that people don't care to memorize things they know are written down somewhere.
11 persons have voted this message useful



cacue23
Triglot
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4087 days ago

89 posts - 122 votes 
Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English
Studies: Cantonese

 
 Message 8 of 22
28 October 2013 at 4:48pm | IP Logged 
Just wondering, since Chinese uses ideograms, and according to psychology Chinese people should be more right-brain oriented, does it mean that most Chinese people should be left-handed but they just don't know? The last time I checked the vast majority of Chinese people are right-handed, but then again we were taught very early in life that one should write with right hand. It's like a social norm or something.


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