House of Eratosthenes

I have mentioned a few times that since I already speak English, I really don’t see any value in learning other languages, since the time and effort needed would be much better spent on other things. There is so much opinion, information and knowledge available in English that I can only ever read an infinitesimal portion of it. Besides, in this petabyte word that we live in, the problematic part is not acquiring the information but filtering the signal from noise. If somebody has something important to tell me, he can do that in English, and if he doesn’t want to do this, then that something probably wasn’t that important in the first place, simple as that. The English language is perhaps the most underrated bozo filter currently in existence, silently blocking out tons of idiocy. Of course you could argue that I must learn some language so that I could understand and relate to the people who speak it. Very well, tell me then which language A I ought to learn, instead of any one of the other languages B, C, D, … Also, please tell, why is this duty unidirectional the same way that all multiculturalism always seems to be? Couldn’t the speakers of other languages just as well learn to speak English? Why do I have a moral duty to learn their language, when they clearly don’t have the reciprocal duty to learn mine?

I’ve been hearing a very long time now that the simple act of learning any non-native tongue has a “broadening” effect upon the mind. Back when I was in high school this made perfect sense to me, although looking back on it I should have paid better attention to the evidence I was seeing. I’m referring here, mostly, to those fellow students in high school who were members of the “Esperanto Club.” Indeed, their communication skills in English did seem to go up as they learned second-languages, and of course they were on the fast-track for other accolades, positions held, class President, et al. One problem: When I talked with them one-on-one about deeper matters, computer programming, trigonometry, etc., they didn’t know a whole lot. But never mind, because all the teachers acted as if they were little geniuses.

I just don’t find any evidence to support that this truly broadens the mind. Quite to the contrary: People who learn multiple languages tend to become pretentious. Not all of them. There are those who use it as a tool — I need to know this other language, so I learn it, I don’t brag about it. Like that. The folks who learn multiple languages as a social signal, as in ooh look at me, I’m so smart, I know more than one language…they’re a bunch of freakin’ pinheads. Always have been.

And no, that’s not jealousy talking. If I wanted to learn another language, I’d have done it by now. But it comes down to — Ilkka’s right. You invest the time, you get a benefit. If you already know the English language you’re not going to get much of a benefit unless you’re about to spend more than a few days in some country that speaks a different language.

And there are all the problems with logic, for which the polyglots fall, again and again. Like this one: English-only is racist. No, it’s NOT. English is not a color.

Sen. Obama made an issue out of this. He says our children need to learn more than one language — specifically, Spanish — but Obama hasn’t done this himself. Millions of people are falling for it. Some of them know more than one language…in which they help prove my point, multiple-language people falling for crap…and some of them don’t, in which case they’re no better than he is.

And here’s something else peculiar I’ve been noticing. Languages I’m supposed to learn in order to become a “better” individual, it seems, are languages from Europe. People don’t say you’re better if you learn Swahili. They say you should learn one of those high school fad-and-fashion languages…French…Italian…Spanish. And Europe is historically mostly white. Listen to the rhetoric sometime — how does the politically-correct crowd protest a school exam that has not been sufficiently “diversified”? They call it euro-centric. How does that help keep me from being a racist if I learn languages from a continent whose name is virtually synonymous with whiteness?

What is it about Europe, anyway? I don’t see anyone saying people from Chad are ticked at Americans for not having passports. I don’t see anyone saying people from Ghana are opining away about our isolationism…or people from Tibet…or people from Madagascar. It’s always Europe. Europe, which from what I’m told, has been made into a tourist trap. Hmmm…guilt for dollars.

Here’s some irony. English is the official aviation language as of January 1, 2008. Internationally. There ya go. You want to identify with other countries, the first step is to speak English.

I like the point about the bozo filter. Gathering information for yourself is always useful, but I think it’s high time the point was made that an ability to filter things out is far more useful. Once you’ve given it a fair hearing, I mean. Someone says “A big problem we have with kids today is they’re traumatized when their parents are overly competitive” and you say “Oh really? Like who?” and the other person says “Well, I saw it in a whole bunch of movies…” (Thing I Doubt #18). One eyeball-roll later, that should be the end of the discussion. And we have a great many more people walking around lacking an ability to filter out stupid things, than lacking the ability to gather the raw material. They see things in movies, and they think those things are true. Does learning multiple languages help stop people from doing this, indulging in this confusion between reality and fantasy? The opposite seems to be the case.

There is also a point to be made about differentiating between learning something, and learning something well. From listening to people, and observing things for myself, I have come to gradually notice that people in foreign lands who are addressed by tourists in their native tongues, don’t seem to appreciate the gesture unless some high degree of proficiency has been attained. Maybe not even then. I still think, if you’re going there, you should learn the language of where you’re going to some utilitarian level. I’m just saying, don’t count on people showing an appreciation for it. Why should they? Isn’t it rather conceited to assume some guy over in France, minding his own business, will appreciate the opportunity to tell you where the damn bathroom is just because you know how to say S’il Vous Plaît? How insulting.

One other thing I keep getting told is that people in foreign countries — again, Europe — don’t like Americans because Americans are rude. Maybe our multi-culturalists are the problem. Shouldn’t someone be asking them about it? I mean, if you’re the kind of person who’s going to get a passport and travel to Europe just so you can say you’re so much better than another American who will stay home, it just makes sense that you’re probably the kind of person who’s going to bug people over there for directions and then act like you’re the one doing them a favor. And if I happen to be that foreign guy, you’re probably going to piss me off pretty well. Next guy who asks me about Americans, I’m going to say they’re rude and full o’ themselves. Anyway, that’s my theory. Makes pretty good sense from where I’m standing. And as Ilkka points out in a more recent post, don’t forget all the carbon you’re blowing out your rear end by flying there in the first place.

But above all, that parting-shot question has to stand. And it seems to me unanswerable. How come I have to learn your language, but you don’t have to learn mine?

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

I speak French. It has helped me in a very limited scope. When I lived there I had no choice. Most people in the area I was in did not speak English. When I see a movie in French it’s easier than reading the subtitles. (Needless to say this doesn’t happen often.) Or if I go to a French restaurant (this is even less frequent). I have visited France a few times and can definitely say that speaking the language opens more than a few doors.

English, however, is the language of Business and Technology. That ain’t going away. No amount of wishing by France or China is going to change that. There’s a reason one of India’s official languages is English.

You don’t have to learn English but you’ll be left further behind of those who do not.
- Duffy | 08/12/2008 @ 17:00
I choose International (maybe American) sign language as a second.
It would come in handy at gatherings where most of the menu revolves around wine and cheese .
- CaptDMO | 08/12/2008 @ 17:31
Here is something to consider. In your comments about IT hiring you you question the wisdom of filtering employees through a single type because the type you filter out may be the very thing you need to solve a problem. Different types think differently and that is valuable for innovation. Well, different languages necessarily foster different thinking. Is it wise to filter them out?
- BroKen | 08/13/2008 @ 08:28
Yup.

It creates a high expenditure of resources with very low achievement, to try to translate an idea at the same time you’re trying to make that idea better. One is an exercise in broad thinking and one’s an exercise in deep thinking. That’s why there’s this push to get students to learn more than one language; it feels like there is work getting done, but in the final analysis, finding different ways to say something is a whole lot different from proving that thing is right, or finding ways to make it a better thing.

I believe that’s why those Esperanto geniuses couldn’t do trig. They were spending all their brain cycles that would normally be spent learning to analyze things, on simply finding new ways to express.

A slightly different point — communication is all about agreement. As an isolated process, it has nothing to do with innovation at all. Finding a “new” way of thinking in a process that is all about agreement, adds little or no value because your aim isn’t to find a new way of doing things, it is to achieve agreement with those participating. Think of the mechanic working on the car. It may make “sense” for him to use a metric-sized wrench…we’ve all heard the arguments, working in factors of ten, etc. etc. etc. — but if the bolt that has to be removed is 9/16″, the metric system is just something that gets in the way, no matter how much sense it makes.
- mkfreeberg | 08/13/2008 @ 09:03
There has always been a push to get students to learn more than one language. Used to be Latin and Greek until it was decided that it was pointless to learn “dead” languages. The push against learning another language is pretty recent.

My point is that a language is more than just a different way of saying something. It is also a different way of looking at things. Learning that skill (looking at things differently), or at least having some of those differences around, can be valuable for both broad thinking and deep thinking.
- BroKen | 08/13/2008 @ 12:25
Yes, I’ve heard that viewpoint before, it’s what I was talking about with the Esperanto kids. I never did see much evidence they were actually practicing a multi-point perspective on anything, practicing deep thinking to go along with the broad thinking. The thoughts they found different ways to say, were just echoings of what they had been told to think by their teachers. In other words, I saw them find synonyms for things, but I didn’t see them show any good old-fashioned skepticism.

There’s really nothing dangerous about that, except it does give people the feeling that they’re thinking things over diligently when they really aren’t.

One point that never seems to be made about communicative acumen, is that it has a very sharp point of diminishing returns. If you have sub-par or mediocre communication skills, you can communicate things to your peers but when a stranger comes along he’ll say “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say to me, can you find a different way to say it?” and then get frustrated with you when you’re trying to express something simple, and it turns into a dialog far more complicated. If you have above-average communication skills, you can overcome this; there is value in that. But if you have even better communication skills, of the excellent kind, there really isn’t much benefit at all anymore. What an excellent communicator can do over-and-above what an above-average communicator can do, just amounts to compensating for weaknesses in others.

Now that our society has matured, it seems to me we’ve been wasting a large sum of energy concentrating on developing “excellent” communication skills in people, when above-average skills will do just as well for the tasks at hand. This promotes broad-but-not-deep thinking, because when people find new ways to express an existing idea, they’re given the impression that their effort has gone into validating the idea or inspecting the idea, when this is not the case.
- mkfreeberg | 08/13/2008 @ 12:46
Well, I don’t know your Esperanto kids but you describe them as immature ones who think that since they know something you don’t know that they are better than you. They were probably compensating for their own insecurity like Ned Your Company’s Computer Guy. Not too likely to be deep thinkers (or broad either for that matter.)
- BroKen | 08/13/2008 @ 20:33
Sorry, Nick Burns, not Ned.
- BroKen | 08/13/2008 @ 20:34
It’s got to do with economy. People will always choose the option that most economically fulfills the goals they have in mind, and it’s always more economical to fake intelligence than to show the real thing.

These theories about learning a foreign language manifesting some sort of intellectual talent, or inspiring some intellectual maturity — the thing you’d have to presume in order to confer any merit to those ideas, is that it takes intelligence to learn a language. It comes under the heading of not articulated outright — I seldom to never hear anyone saying that word-for-word, even though the idea would have to be based on something like this. And of course nobody even thinks such a thing about learning the mother tongue. How low can your I.Q. be, with you still left able to learn a second language? About as low as it can be when you’re able to learn your first one. But nobody says you have any special ability when you’re simply able to learn your first language. It’s memorization. Learning a second language is simple memorization, too.

But it impresses the grown-ups. In that way, I think it might even be a disservice to the kids. They have what essentially amounts to a gimmick…an ability to get in on the “fast track” through the educational process, but meanwhile, if you presented them with the classic Mensa question “Sally likes 400 but not 500 and she likes 900 but not 800…” they’d be lost.

My point is not that multi-language students are shallow. I’m simply pointing out that these are different brands of intelligence. One type of intelligence concerns itself with substance, and one type messes around with packaging.
- mkfreeberg | 08/13/2008 @ 20:57
I’ve heard it theorized that there is a “language aquisition module” in the brain that goes away sometime around puberty. Learning any language is quite easy for children, even second or third languages, when they are emersed in them. It doesn’t require any special intelligence.

Now, learning a second language for grown-ups does feel like it’s all about memorization. But that is until you become fluent. You write well enough to know that your command of English is much more than one to one correspondence of word and object. When you really know another language, you are swimming in a different pool. The water is the same (reality) but there are different shallows and depths and eddies and temperatures, etc, etc, etc. For example, have you ever been with someone trying to translate and they say something like, “Gee, there just isn’t a word for that.”? It’s just a hint of what I mean by saying another language brings in new ways of looking at things.

And isn’t the “fast track” what education is supposed to be about? Imagine the kid who knows English, Spanish, and Chinese fluently. That child has the opportunity to influence about three times the number of people than one who can only speak one of those three. It isn’t about inherent intelligence. It is about opportunity.

Help me with your last paragraph. What is the difference between “messing around with packaging” (not substance) and being shallow? I’m not saying that bi-lingual people are necessarily deep thinkers either. But knowing another language does give opportunities. The economic and social opportunities are obvious. But it does bring opportunities for deep thinking, too. If people don’t use them, well, as you say, it is easier to fake intelligence than to have it.

BTW, I don’t think I qualify for Mensa, but I do think Sally likes perfect squares.
- BroKen | 08/14/2008 @ 12:04
I’ve heard it theorized that there is a “language aquisition module” in the brain that goes away sometime around puberty. Learning any language is quite easy for children, even second or third languages, when they are emersed in them. It doesn’t require any special intelligence.

Yes I’ve heard that too. There’s probably merit to it, and I can’t opine too heavily on it since I haven’t gone through the experience of learning a second language myself. (Unlike Obama, I’m willing to declare a perimeter to what I know, and make some effort to stay inside it.) I can certainly see that babies and toddlers have a certain mental agility that is somewhat lost by puberty. Except, to my way of thinking, this somewhat discredits the “acquisition module” theory because it raises the possibility what you’re seeing is a degradation of intellectual ability in all areas, not just in linguistic comprehension. And, of course, agility is not the same thing as power.

For example, have you ever been with someone trying to translate and they say something like, “Gee, there just isn’t a word for that.”? It’s just a hint of what I mean by saying another language brings in new ways of looking at things.

I agree with you a hundred percent there — although, again, having not witnessed this phenomenon first-hand I have a limited understanding of it. But it does make good sense, if one language has four words for something and another language has none, there is value to be gained from the additional perspective.

Help me with your last paragraph. What is the difference between “messing around with packaging” (not substance) and being shallow?

It gets into the Yin and Yang theory. These disappointments I had with the Esperanto kids, in which I was told (or it was implied to me) they were super-bright kids burning the candles at all ends…and then, when I queried them about pressing school problems, in solitude, I discovered they lacked comprehension. I offered the example of trig, because it is rich in conceptual challenge. Process & procedure will not get you all the way there with trig. The teacher can say “step one, measure the distance of the hypotenuse; step two, find the angle; step three, refer to your chart, the one that says “cosine”; find the angle; set up your division equation.” Once you are walked through those steps, in fact, once you show absolute mastery at those steps — how prepared are you to conquer trigonometric math? Not at all, right? Hence my shock at finding these kids didn’t understand the concepts.

What they had been trained to do, was: Once an idea was formed by others, find a way to express it to maximum effect. Sen. Obama, in essence, is a product of this kind of education — the kind that presume an expressive child must, out of necessity, be an intelligent child, and vice-versa. What keeps those systems functioning is a sort of penguin logic. Remember the penguin cartoon that shows the penguin thinking “old television shows are in black and white, penguins are black and white, therefore penguins are old television shows” and the caption is “penguins aren’t very good at logic.” We have some kids who are really do burn the candles at both ends; they can form thoughts, and then they can express them. Those kids end up being in Esperanto as well. The logical construct might be shown as “bright kids are in Esperanto, therefore kids in Esperanto are bright” — the unversality of giftedness in the ability to express, ends up being just the garnish that makes this appealing. But the teachers get what they want out of it, which is another radial joint in the vicious cycle of politics. The kids are thought to be intelligent, and so the teacher identifies with the kids and starts to mentor them; the kids do well (are able to answer the test questions); the teacher is lauded for teaching the kids. And it all has the appearance of an effective teaching job being done.

But there’s more than one way to trip up most of these kids. You needn’t rely on trig. In fact, the Mensa test is constructed for the purpose of passing only the kids who can both formulate and express ideas. So you get questions like “if all freeps are glorgs and all glorgs are nimps, what is the relationship between freeps and nimps?” The question is isolated from the field of expressive talent, because “freep” “glorg” and “nimp” are all nonsensical words — so any test subject whose conceptual acumen is interwoven with his ability to express, will be derailed. He’ll need to understand what those things are, before he can proceed (or else re-wire his thinking on the spot).

I would compare it to washing a cup. Every idea, like a cup, has an inside and an outside. These are different surfaces; our folly in communication is that the merit, or lack thereof, of each idea is determined by the inside. How it is communicated, and this includes how it is taught & learned in the class, is determined by what is on the outside. Like sonofsheldon said, “Teachers aren’t trained to teach in the ways that some students learn.” Teachers are like dishwashers who wash dishes by hand, and in inspecting their own work, tend to only look at the outside. And so the whole foreign-language thing, to my way of thinking, tends to offer the outside-washers the idea they have achieved some teaching work that they haven’t really achieved. And that would be my explanation as to why so many of the second-language kids couldn’t do trig. If I polled them all, I’m sure I could’ve found some very bright ones who could. All I’m saying, really, is that it’s a little unsettling to see a plurality of kids thought of as “geniuses” who can’t do this basic work, because they can’t conceptually handle it, and I think that should be of concern to somebody before we start talking about the virtues of all kids being taught Spanish as a second language.

Wow. A post of its own, huh? 🙂
- mkfreeberg | 08/14/2008 @ 12:39

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