not just disciplining the mind, but also mortifying the body
August 31, 2024 1:26 AM Subscribe
It used to be thought that learning a language as an adult involved packing words and grammar into a finite space in the brain, where multiple languages would jostle each other for room. The language faculty belonged to a specific region of the brain, in much the same way that languages were seen as rooted in homelands and thus as expressions of their geopolitical essence. Contemporary neuroscience has amended these ideas. from Cannibalinguistics by Michael Erard
In part a review of The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi
In part a review of The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi
Okay, but: By contrast, elites elsewhere, such as in China, appeared to have no distinctive polyglot desires. People with educations, time and resources were probably using their cognitive resources to learn to write thousands of Chinese characters.
Do you ever find a sentence that strikes you as so...ah...just-so, that you immediately think it must be wrong and start staking out an area around it to find its weak points? I mean, here's a time I wish search engines weren't so dumb. If you ask for a list of Chinese polyglot translators, say, you get a little box to put a Chinese word into, to translate it to English. I know there must be disproof of this, but I'm not the person who knows how to find that information. (Erard would be--he's written a book on polyglots and has been profiled a bit...but! but!)
(What I would say about the review itself: Isn't it interesting, the idea that someone would give everything to help you learn a language? There's a metaphor in there, for the sacrifices our teachers make to try to put that grammar into our heads!)
posted by mittens at 4:30 AM on August 31, 2024 [4 favorites]
Do you ever find a sentence that strikes you as so...ah...just-so, that you immediately think it must be wrong and start staking out an area around it to find its weak points? I mean, here's a time I wish search engines weren't so dumb. If you ask for a list of Chinese polyglot translators, say, you get a little box to put a Chinese word into, to translate it to English. I know there must be disproof of this, but I'm not the person who knows how to find that information. (Erard would be--he's written a book on polyglots and has been profiled a bit...but! but!)
(What I would say about the review itself: Isn't it interesting, the idea that someone would give everything to help you learn a language? There's a metaphor in there, for the sacrifices our teachers make to try to put that grammar into our heads!)
posted by mittens at 4:30 AM on August 31, 2024 [4 favorites]
“technisque” is an interesting misspelling, given what's described
posted by HearHere at 4:41 AM on August 31, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by HearHere at 4:41 AM on August 31, 2024 [1 favorite]
“technisque” is an interesting misspelling, given what's described
Let's see what you make of "gestusssres."
posted by mittens at 4:47 AM on August 31, 2024 [2 favorites]
Let's see what you make of "gestusssres."
posted by mittens at 4:47 AM on August 31, 2024 [2 favorites]
@mittens
Until very recently, virtually all Chinese elites were polyglot. They learned their native language growing up, then had to learn the spoken language that was in use among officials of that time, one that was usually closely tied to the language spoken in the capital.
They also learned Classical Chinese which had before long become like Latin: nobody's native language, always acquired through education, the language of the learned elites, and one that was mainly used via writing and reading. Many elites also came from ethnic groups who had their own languages from families other than Chinese, and some would pick up other dialects through their postings since they were never posted to their own native place, although they mostly relied on interpreters who knew both the local spoken language and the lingua franca of officials.
So in summary - whaaaa?
posted by sudasana at 5:12 AM on August 31, 2024 [10 favorites]
Until very recently, virtually all Chinese elites were polyglot. They learned their native language growing up, then had to learn the spoken language that was in use among officials of that time, one that was usually closely tied to the language spoken in the capital.
They also learned Classical Chinese which had before long become like Latin: nobody's native language, always acquired through education, the language of the learned elites, and one that was mainly used via writing and reading. Many elites also came from ethnic groups who had their own languages from families other than Chinese, and some would pick up other dialects through their postings since they were never posted to their own native place, although they mostly relied on interpreters who knew both the local spoken language and the lingua franca of officials.
So in summary - whaaaa?
posted by sudasana at 5:12 AM on August 31, 2024 [10 favorites]
(Just for fun, since pages turn up in the margins: "The traveller's manual of conversation in four languages, English, French, German, Italian : With vocabulary, short questions, etc," 1875, Baedeker. )
posted by BWA at 5:53 AM on August 31, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by BWA at 5:53 AM on August 31, 2024 [2 favorites]
So our old joke in college about eating the professors to learn what they knew, that arose after we learned about the learning experience experiments with planarian worms, is not a joke?
posted by njohnson23 at 6:54 AM on August 31, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 6:54 AM on August 31, 2024 [1 favorite]
I was unaware that this was a review of a novel until after the weird part.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:14 AM on August 31, 2024 [5 favorites]
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:14 AM on August 31, 2024 [5 favorites]
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