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Music, Math, and Language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| jpmtl Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 3796 days ago 44 posts - 115 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 9 of 16 25 March 2014 at 6:01am | IP Logged | ||
Any mathematical system or programming language must have a "grammar". A grammar is just a set of structural rules. You could easily create a math system or programming language "mimicking" the features of a language. As far as I can see, there is no grammar rule that can't be expressed in a programming language, and theoretical computer science is a branch of math so... Edited by jpmtl on 25 March 2014 at 6:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6497 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 16 25 March 2014 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I have been very active both with mathematics and with music earlier in my life, but I have never felt that those two topics had more to do do with my languages than for instance travelling or painting. I still spend a lot of time on music - but now only passively - my instruments are gathering dust, I stopped composing eons ago and I have finished the theme catalogue for my cassette collection so I hardly ever have to write notes now. And concerning mathematics: I still make computer programmes and solve sudokus, but that's about as close I get to mathematics these days.
Let's take mathematics first: it is clear that a systematic and logical mind has an advantage when it comes to finding patterns in a complicated field, and very theoretical types of linguistics like transformational grammar or computational linguistics may appeal to people with a mathematical mindset. But when it comes to language learning other faculties are as important, and some aspects of mathematic thinking are even harmful - like being nitpicking about arcane details, which are quite important for mathematical proofs, but basically irrelevant for a language learner. However I still enjoy beautiful grammatical statements, which in one fell swoop can impose some kind of order on a whole range of unwieldy facts. And music? I prefer instrumental music with a wide margin, and then song texts suddenly aren't as important any more. But music has one important characteristic, namely being so utterly un-linguistic that I can listen to good music even while I work intensively with weak languages. I generally hate background music on TV and in shops, but that's because 87,35% of the background music on TV is constructed by evil tonedeaf dwarfs who hate the viewers but love their pay check, and 99,9999% of the music in buses is chosen by tonedeaf drivers who just need some background noise to keep them from thinking about the world in general. OK, maybe there are people who like the electronic noise pollution on TV, but there are also people who watch the commercials with glee. What then about the relations between music and mathematics? Well, once again I don't feel that the relationship is particularly clear. Of course baroque composers like Johann Sebastian Bach needed a quasi-mathematical brain to compose their contrapunctual masterpieces, but I have not the impression that any of the great composers also was a master mathematician. And the whole emotional impact of music is as fsr away from mathematics as you can imagine. Summa summarum, I do think that one person can be gifted in and enjoy music, mathematics AND languages, and if it happens then there may be some kind of red thread through the way such a person works with and enjoy all three things, but there is no guarantee that a gifted musician or mathematician also is a good language learner. Edited by Iversen on 30 March 2014 at 1:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4238 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 11 of 16 25 March 2014 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you assume Math, Music & Languages as academic discipline compliment each other. On the other
hand, there are groups of people who are highly academic in Math and can play a music instrument like a piano or violin at a high level but not necessarily be able to speak a foreign language well or even the language they use for daily communications. Normally don't like to stereotype. There are Asian people who are brought up to do a lot of Math drills & exercises and practice a music instrument by repeating pieces of Classical music many times. Many get into Science, Computer Science, Math. They can program a computer very well but their language skills tend to be weak. People can learn a language "by the book" with a lot of exercises. Many achieved a high level translating from 1 language to the next. But in order to speak very well and discuss various topics in a social setting require social skills. Drills and exercises can only get you so far but people who tend to be introvert or those who associate with people they know and speak a familiar language tend to have a disadvantage. The other day I was editing a complaint letter for someone to be sent to a community agency. The man lived in an English-speaking country for over 10 years. He works in a call centre talking to customers every day. But his level of written English is weak with run-on sentences and sentences that doesn't give the correct context as written. Spelling is usually not a problem since all the wrong words are highlighted in red. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4163 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 12 of 16 26 March 2014 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've gone back and forth about this, because I'm not sure I ever noticed any advantage in having been a musician as far as language learning is concerned. I can see how certain types of music are more similar to languages. Those years where I primarily sang Gregorian chant and polyphony really emphasized that---and it's probably some of the most difficult music I've ever had to sing, even more than the arias I've had to prepare. There's still a certain amount to be analyzed, and yet at the same time everyone has a different way to interpret it. I imagine that not all areas of music are equal in terms of relation to languages; a composer would probably see it in a different way than I would.
As for mathematics, the only exam I ever failed was one in math. I am NOT a math person at all, but I can see where there would be advantages in having a good understanding how it works. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5945 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 13 of 16 28 March 2014 at 9:38am | IP Logged | ||
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And now for a side question:
If you wrote the IPA symbols on a musical scale, would that capture cadence and prosody in a spoken language ? I’m assuming you’ll also use breves, quavers and semi-quavers to capture syllable length. Edited by DaraghM on 28 March 2014 at 9:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4894 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 14 of 16 30 March 2014 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||
That's not so different from many native English speakers. I don't really see math and languages as being terribly similar. Personally, math is much more of a foreign language than any foreign language I've studied. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4628 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 15 of 16 31 March 2014 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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There seems to be some confusion between Maths and mathematical notation here.
Mathematical notation is indeed a language in the sense that it is a set of symbols that you can combine more or less freely (albeit respecting rules, i.e., a grammar) to convey meaning in a given context. Maths is, however, not the same as mathematical notation. It is the knowledge base about numbers and other abstract concepts and the relationships between them. It is independent of how you write it just like stories can be told in different languages. If we ever get visited by an advanced alien civilization they will most definitely know maths and yet certainly communicate their knowledge differently. So I think the proper analogy is: Maths is to mathematical notation what anything that is said or written in a given language is to that language. Mathematical notation/Natural language -> form. Maths/Corpus of a language -> content. The reasoning for music is similar. Musical notation is a language but actual music (as in musical pieces) is content and therefore not a language. Of course one could ask: But what if I listen to a song and think it's sad? Isn't the idea of sadness being conveyed to me in a way other than by English/French/etc. words? In other words, isn't that a different language? I would say no, it isn't because there's no standardized way of encoding this idea in music. Ideas are conveyed in a metaphorical, subjective way if you will, and just like most of us recognize that the "green-eyed monster" is a Shakespearean reference to jealousy, we still don't consider it part of the English language: it won't be given as a synonym for jealousy in a dictionary and it can be translated literally into other languages without losing its symbolism, suggesting that it is really all about the idea. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6497 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 16 07 April 2014 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
If I want to write prosody down I can do so with a simple wawering line above the text (useful for singsong languages like Norwegian and Swedish!). And I can indicate stress with a line below the stressed syllables, if the need arises. But these things have nothing to do with my choice of phonetic signs - the lines function equally well with homemade signs and ordinary letters as they do with IPA. Besides I am wary about introducing fake accent signs because diacritics in most languages are used in quite specific ways - lines above and below aren't. The only drawback is that I can't write wawering lines on an ordinary keyboard. Edited by Iversen on 07 April 2014 at 10:02am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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