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The Price of Silence (brain activity) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| SapereAude Tetraglot Newbie Spain Joined 3650 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Japanese, English, French Studies: German, Italian, Arabic (classical) | Message 1 of 5 13 June 2014 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Hey guys, new member here.
Pleased to meet you! I've read HTLAL for some time now, and I haven't seen a topic like this posted before, so if it is repeated or if doesn't belong here I apologize in advance. I haven't registered until now because I know being a forum member can often drain a lot of time, especially in this forum where posts tend to be longer than elsewhere :p. Nonetheless, I gathered that I might benefit from some interaction especially since there are a lot of experienced people in here. Anyway, I wanted to start a thread on additional brain activity due to polyglotism. Have you ever felt additional stress or fatigue due to foreign language knowledge? I have. Since it is a process that takes place in the brain it is not apparent to others but it certainly adds up at the end of the day. I mainly encounter this increased brain activity in two ways: 1) Being able to understand This of course doesn't only apply to foreign languages but could perfectly apply to one's native language. Have you ever been in public transportation (or any other place for that matter) where you where stuck for a long time hearing a dumb conversation between people or on the phone? Don't you wish your brain didn't feel obligated to process that information? Well, the same conversation in a language you don't understand would simply be background noise and it wouldn't bother you as much. Obviously, the more languages you know the more likely this will happen. Moreover, especially if it is a foreign language your brain will have to work harder in order to 'decode' the conversation. It is important to note that I'm not saying being able to understand is bad. I love being able to understand other tongues and I believe it is a very cool skill to have. However, with that ability there is the downside that your brain is constantly translating/thinking/processing the surroundings and this is something I have been feeling for a while and have felt that has drained some of my energy for the day. I think some of the polyglots in this forum might relate. 2) Not being able to express I think this is more frustrating than the previous case and it motivated that title of the thread (The Price of Silence). Have you ever been in a conversation where you had so much to contribute, be it linguistically, humorously or in other ways, and you simply couldn't say anything because the other person wouldn't understand? Moreover, don't you feel "the need" to use a foreign expression in certain situations because it just fits so well but you simply can't in the language you happen to be speaking at that particular moment since it doesn't exist in that language or it wouldn't make any sense? Sometimes I say, "as they say in X language...", but often times I just suppress this urge and just shut up and move on with the conversation. I feel like there is so much expressiveness that is lost that I feel almost as if my identity was suppressed and people could only see the surface of my entirety and my thinking. To sum up, I think that polyglotism has many wonderful advantages but at the same time the ability to have different lines of thought and multiple interpretations of the same thing or concept (thus gaining a deeper understanding of them) can, ironically, hinder your ability to process them efficiently due to intrinsic linguistic interference. Moreover, I also think that polyglotism can cause fatigue due to increased brain activity since the 'user' can't really stop understanding and processing his surroundings in multiple languages once he has acquired such ability. What do you guys think? I'm looking forward to your feedback! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4237 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 2 of 5 13 June 2014 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I don't think your observations apply to all the polyglots. I knew a lady who spoke 5 languages including
English, French & Spanish before she died. She enjoyed learning languages. Being a school teacher, Spanish was her specialty. She could easily switch between English, Dutch and Spanish. From my personal experience there are times people would come and ask me questions in their native language because they're not fluent in English. Some are tourists while others are recent immigrants. It's a easy way to get to know people from different backgrounds. Listening to people talk about their problems can sometimes be like watching a comedy TV program. It is interesting to hear other perspectives when discussing different topics. In public places especially public transport people don't really talk loud. I tend to find people who listen to loud music on their portable devices more a distraction than speaking a foreign language you can understand. Edited by shk00design on 13 June 2014 at 3:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4101 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 3 of 5 13 June 2014 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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They sound like minor "problems," I envy you if you feel stressed by the burden of your
own knowledge. That said I'm not sure how you're quantifying the amount of thinking you're doing, and how it amounts to more than a monolingual. Your post seems to imply that you have several "tracks" of simultaneous thoughts going on at once, rather than the ability to switch one track at will. Is this accurate? Regarding #2, I think that this feeling you have is something like the reason why authors like Nabakov and Joyce were so unapologetic about resorting to foreign phrases and expressions in their fiction when (presumably), to them, anything equivalent within the idiom they were writing in (English) would give a poor impression of their genius. With regards to this literary style choice, I'm definitely against it. The effect is completely alienating to 99% of readers when done to the extent of the French in "Lolita" or the Latin in "Ulysses". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| SapereAude Tetraglot Newbie Spain Joined 3650 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Japanese, English, French Studies: German, Italian, Arabic (classical) | Message 4 of 5 15 June 2014 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I think they do. Knowing multiple languages at a high level requires some sort of maintenance (reading, speaking, listening, etc.) or else they inevitably deteriorate. Once you have multiple languages "living" in your head it's inevitable to start thinking in them interchangeably, as it must have been the case with your acquaintance. Like any sort of elite in any field, like chess grandmasters, mathematicians, musicians, etc., they are constantly thinking about things related to their field. It's inevitable. I'm sure some of the most accomplished polyglots in here behave in this way, and every other one of us will fall naturally between this extreme and the other extreme, that of a monoglot.
Results may vary among countries :)
They are, but they increase over time and over number of languages. For example, for every word you encounter in your strong languages (L1, L2, L3, etc.) you start wondering if you know them in all of your other languages (and may god have mercy on you if you don't know them in your strong languages!). The words you don't know, and you should, are now holes in a sinking boat where you struggle indefinitely, and these thoughts accompany you whether you are laying down trying to sleep, doing some activity or in the middle of a conversation.
I'm only quantifying the amount of thinking related to languages (in their spoken, written, and other forms), so I think it's evident that the more languages you know the more likely you are to having thoughts related to them. I can switch between tracks at will, but sometimes some thoughts "pop up" from other tracks, usually because the situation or the point in the conversation suggests so. I think, in some sense, acquired languages behave like an instinct that reacts to external stimuli and therefore it's inevitable that these thoughts pop up in some contexts against your will and against the language in use. C'est la vie.
Interesting observation! For one, I love when authors do that in the languages I know but hate it otherwise! I have seen this multilingual tendency in "old" books, but not in any recent ones. Languages are the tools we use to convey our thoughts and have their limitations. More languages give you the opportunity to have more fire power in your expressiveness. Can you really blame them to want to immortalize their thoughts as true as possible and leave to their readers and future generations the burden to understand them? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3649 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 5 of 5 15 June 2014 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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@SapereAude
I think most of what you say you experience is, in part, due to an inability to switch off and/or ignore. While I'm clearly not a polyglot, and have no particular aspirations to become one, my brain seems to come equipped with an 'auto-translate' function that (irritatingly) seems to work better when I don't want it to. By this, I mean that my brain tends to translate whatever incongruous language I may be hearing when, for example, on the tram or a train. This happens even with languages I don't know very well, or don't study at all: my brain tries to grasp meaning without me wanting to do so. However, I've become quite adept at simply tuning this out. As I currently live in a country where my mother tongue is not the most spoken, this often leads to quite relaxing public transport experiences! With regards to what you say about trying to translate things: I do this sometimes, although with most of my languages it's usually done on purpose. However, I often find myself trying to translate things into French if I'm going into a situation where I might get stressed out or flustered, before realising that I'm in England. This is pretty automatic, and it takes a lot of effort to stop - by which time, I've often used up a lot of effort trying to search my memory for elusive words and turns of phrase. So I can see where that could be problematic if I knew more languages to a high level. Finally, I agree with you on the literature front. Authors like that are part of what drive me to learn languages, and there've been plenty of times when I couldn't even find English alternatives for quite basic and simple words in French! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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