|
 |
John McWhorter - The Language Hoax | ||
Tags: Linguistics | Book | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6951 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 69 10 June 2014 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's a rather presumptuous way of going about things, wouldn't you say? (to say nothing about the tangents and idiosyncratic analogies). I'm not sure who is the audience given how scrambly some of the posts are.
I rest my case. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| t1234 Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 3933 days ago 38 posts - 83 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans Studies: Turkish, Polish | Message 10 of 69 10 June 2014 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Dunning-Kruger effect
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias which can manifest in one of two ways: * Unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. * Those persons to whom a skill or set of skills come easily may find themselves with weak self-confidence, as they may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5719 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 11 of 69 10 June 2014 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Edited by mick33 on 10 June 2014 at 11:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4103 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 12 of 69 10 June 2014 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
For what it's worth, I think Stolan's posts are often highly informative, colourful, and at the best of times they inject some energy into the
generally non-judgmental atmosphere here. I like a bit of judgement when its provocative without being rude, which is fair to say of Stolan. But it's also what Iguanamon writes:
Stolan posts often seem to flit wildly from topic to linguistic topic in order to bring in yet more linguistic titbits from a (clearly very thorough) program of self study. The intent sometimes seems to intimidate:
I don't know who is being caricatured by the quotation marks but it doesn't seem like it's a type which inhabits these boards, and if it's not intended to be then it's intended to make us join in with the mockery, which is a misjudgment of the tone here. I'm not personally bugged by people's misconceptions about linguistics, though I have a undergraduate degree in linguistics and I encounter a lot of ignorance about what the field constitutes. Speaking of which, this quote, already picked out by Chung, makes me distrustful of some of this authoritative tone:
This seems annoyingly pithy. Why shouldn't any form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis be "allowed to exist"? Why am I stupid for giving it any credence? Why is the entire field in a "horrific state" without any hint of details? Why the suggestive but strange coda about antibiotics and antivirals? Whatever you think of the original presentation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (I personally think that its worth reading definitely), it asks very difficult, "philosophical" questions, that are in turn very difficult to decisively dismiss or champion. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3827 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 13 of 69 10 June 2014 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
To Doitsujin: Here are a few of his claims: -Languages that are left to their own devices should be naturally fighting against breakdowns with new innovations. No, a conservative language may lose features and not gain innovation as compensation, and vice versa. -Language contact is the ONLY reason for wide scale simplification in a language. (Yes, he said this.) Simplification can happen in a language without creolization, contact is only one of many possible reasons. Rapid complexification has happened in languages as well and can be just as sudden, yet no one bats an eye. -Creole languages are always simpler than natural languages. No, natural languages can be found that are phonologically and grammatically equivalent or simpler. Creoles usually scrape off what cannot be learned by those who pidginize the languages but if any complexities can be learned they remain and may be more than that found in some natural languages which underwent natural breakdowns among native speakers. -Languages don't normally undergo rapid changes in structure unless "damaged", changes are the exception. ex: Proto-Algonquin is nearly identical to modern Algonquin so a strain of vulgar Latin turning to Spanish is what shouldn't happen normally. Most of us already know this is absolute crud. -Tonality constitutes a separate complexity in phonology unlike other features. No, it is one of many possible features words can carry. It is only just as much a variable as vowel length, vocal fry, and/or consonant voicing. I may have been wrong in saying half of what he said is untrue. I cannot possibly know every single recorded word concerning linguistics he has said in his life. But my points stand.
I went too far there. I do believe we should observe what the sapir-whorf hypothesis is and understand why it came to be. I understand people then wanted to find an explanation that gave further order to how languages are formed. We can liken this to the Roman religion, we can observe it and use it to understand how people thought back then. We can understand the important significance it had to people of all classes from the earlier eras up till it was displaced. But if you honestly think it is worth investigating if Jupiter is up there as a literal figure, not some ancient alien even, but a literal god of a polytheistic pantheon, then thats a whole other thing. Maybe a language can shape a person, but maybe that is because the culture that speaks the language came first. The modern weak interpretation is a milder case but the strong/original interpretation is crap. Edited by Stolan on 11 June 2014 at 12:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5140 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 14 of 69 11 June 2014 at 2:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I have only read the post previous to yours, but I must say I fail to recognize a claim to authority expressed therein. In any case, whether the world looks the same in every language is a question that surpasses the kind of specialist knowledge provided by a scientific study of linguistics. Schopenhauer for instance thought translation was impossible, since the interrelated web of meaning that is embodied in each language can not be replicated in another one. I tend to agree with this, and for this reason I work very hard to learn as many languages as I can (perhaps foolishly even more languages than I should reasonably pursue) so as not to be forced to rely on translations of works of literature and scholarship, which the more I study languages the less I trust. It is interesting to note the contrast between the verbs traduce and traducir, both derived from the Latin traducere, the Spanish word being the term for "translation", while in English it means to "to speak maliciously and falsely of; slander; defame." Words give voice to representations, ideas and concepts, and the most significant and meaningful of these are precisely those creations of culture that account for the distinctness of civilizations. Take the Sanskrit संसारः for instance. There is simply no word in any other language that captures the complex interrelation of significance that this term expresses within the worldview of Indian civilization. "Avoir une autre langue, c'est posséder une deuxième âme." I think most of us have felt this ourselves, in which absence it would be difficult indeed to account for what compels one to devote thousands upon thousands of hours to study if in the end all one would get out of it was the same one started out with, only with a different set of characters. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3827 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 15 of 69 11 June 2014 at 4:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Question 1. Do you know anything about languages other than French/Spanish and kin? (Japanese does not count!) Question 2. While some words cannot be translated, do you think that a person suddenly gets more adept at something by speaking a language containing more terms of that area? Edited by Stolan on 11 June 2014 at 4:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5561 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 16 of 69 11 June 2014 at 6:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
??? And, Juan does know more than he wishes to share. It's rather obvious from his postings. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
