I was interested in the ployglot=increased IQ idea about 12 years ago in graduate school. As I recall, the research at that time finally found that learning another language did not increase IQ, with one possible exception: English speaking youngsters who became fgenuinely luent (it took a few years) in Chinese did show a 10-15 point IQ increase. The sample size was small, but other research also suggested that learning a second language that was based on tones having meaning (chinese, fo example) is what increases the IQ. Speaking Englihs and then learning French would not, but speaking French and then learning Korean would. The idea was that strengthening and developing the part of the brain invovled with music and tones and connecting that with the language/meaning areas resulted in the increase. I am sure more research has been done.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I hope you guys don't mind my interjecting a couple of thoughts here. Sapir > Whorf doesn't address the emotional reaction we often have on hearing the sound of another language. We find French charming, Dutch funny, and German harsh, for example. > > Instead, the claim is that different languages constrain our thinking in > various ways. For example, in English Jesus said something like, "I am the truth and the light and the way...etc." But if a language doesn't have definite articles, as Chinese doesn't, for example, then that statement would read something like "I am truth and light and way...." This is a profoundly different statement from the one with the definite articles. If someone makes that statement including the definite articles, then some one else could come along and say, "No, I am the truth, the way..." and an argument might well ensue about who is the real deal. Without the articles, there would be no conflict if someone else said, "I am truth and light and way..." > > Or consider the word "knowledge." What happens to that word, that idea, > when we add an article, as the TMO does when it speaks of "the knowledge?" It makes knowledge into something that can be given intellectual property protection. That is an unthinkable concept in Chinese---though, of course, it is something they could learn. > > Articles isolate a thing with definite boundaries from the flux of > existence. Chinese has to make a special effort to create a word like "thing." It tends to use a locution such as "east-west" for "thing." > > The use of articles is just a very small example. The claim is that these > small examples accrue to form a sort of "cloud" in which the speaker of a language is embedded and which makes him look at the world very differently than would a speaker embedded in a different "cloud." A different world, moreover, is also a different self (since we are what we behold), and there is more than one eloquent literary statement by immigrants who speak of their "American self" versus their "Spanish self," for instance. > > MMY has said that learning another language is not good for children, but > he never said why he feels that way. I suspect the fact that a different language is tantamount to a different self is at the heart of his thinking. We know that language acquisition in babies is part and parcel with the formation of a separate sense of self. We also know that if a young child is removed from the environment of his mother tongue and plunged into a different environment, the result is almost always some personality disorder. Loss of mother tongue is a relatively new concern in psychology, but there is general agreement that this loss can be profoundly damaging. But the evidence points to the damage resulting from the loss of mother tongue, not from the acquisition of a new language. There is evidence that polyglots tend to have higher IQ's than monolingual individuals, which should not be surprising since IQ is 40% language related. On the other hand, there is also some evidence > that polyglots tend to be out of touch with their emotional bodies, which, > in turn, has the effect of lowering that same IQ--somewhat like a windchill factor tends to lower the feel of temperature. > > But there is a big HOWEVER in all this. The Sapir Whorff Hypothesis does a > very good job of predicting tendencies in systems, but it cannot predict individuals. The reason it cannot, in my opinion, should make immediate intuitive sense to everyone here. Sapir Whorff addresses the small self only. It has nothing to say about the big Self; indeed, it doesn't acknowledge that there is such a thing. > > This is where Chomsky and the deep structure comes in, but with a caveat. > Chomsky's description of the deep structure sounds to all TM'ers I know who've read it like a perfect description of Brahman or Para Vac. The problem is that Chomsky himself would most vehemently disagree with that. The reason I know this is that I've corresponded with him about that question, and I've come to no definitive conclusion about what is really going on with him in this regard. a > > > > > > > > > > > > cardemaister <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > Hey Card, > > > > Have you any opinion about the Sapir Whorf hypothesis? > > I've been pondering on it for a while now. > At least on *emotional level* various languages > seem to have very distinct effects on me. > I don't like the standard Finnish very much. > Some regional dialects OTOH are quite "amusing" > to listen to. And for instance when an Estonian > speaks Finnish well, that seems much easier to my > ear than, say, the "working class" accent > of my own home town. > > Sometimes when I occasionally watch "Finlands Svenska > Television" (Swedish TV of Finland), and after that > change to a Finnish speaking channel, the negative > emotional effect might be quite strong. But I guess > it's quite natural that one's mother tongue has such > emotional load, both pleasant and unpleasant, that > is lacking in a foreign language. > > This might be a trivial thing, but as an example > of how languges might affect one's thinking > is the difference of the (what's here called) "rection" > (rektio: "the case governed by a verb", I think) of many verbs in > Finnish compared to English (and many other IE languages, too, I > guess). In Finnish one reads *from* a book, buys *from* a store, > finds something *from* some place, that is, one uses the elative > [sic!] case in stead of the inessive, which corresponds for > instance 'in' or 'at' in English. > > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis > > > > Or, Noam Chomsky's transformational grammar? > > I've blissfully forgotten most of that little I once > knew about TGG. But I seem to recall I kinda liked > it, though. > > A more useful tool in interpreting e.g. suutras (especially > the tricky compound words like "viraama-pratyayaabhyaasa-puurvaH") > is the IC analysis of structural syntax: > > http://facweb.furman.edu/~wrogers/syntax/ic.htm > > > > > > Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com >
