How many languages do you speak?
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Humans don't think in words. The brain deals with symbols or "emotional objects" and various sensory data attached to those symbols, such as pictures and sounds.Leto said:sytaylor said:
Your english
It is only when you feel the need to express yourself through the low bandwidth communication channel that speech is, that you convert those symbols into words and sentences.
Of course you can force yourself to convert every feeling into words but that would just be a shell on top of the real thinking.
Squeak said:
Yep, that's the easiest way to explain how things work. And also explains why it is relatively easy, given the right situations, to be bilingual or even trilingual.
I've read a very interesting article a long time ago about the study of bilingual's brains, and basically scientists found out that bilinguals don't use "one part of the brain for one language and the other for the second" like most people seem to think.
In fact, bilinguals and even trilinguals use the same portions of the brain as "monolinguals", which i guess means that the brain stores "information" which is not words, and bilinguals don't use more "energy" or more percentage of the brain in order to "switch" between a language and the other. In fact we use the same percentage of the brain as monolinguals.
Remember that bilinguals do not speak languages like people who are "confident" in a language which is not their mother tongue. Those in fact think in their first language then translate it into whatever language they need. Bilinguals "think" in either language, depending on what language they are speaking.
And another detail is that "technically", bilignuals are those who are bilinguals from the age of 8. Not sure how scientists got to that...
In fact, bilinguals and even trilinguals use the same portions of the brain as "monolinguals", which i guess means that the brain stores "information" which is not words, and bilinguals don't use more "energy" or more percentage of the brain in order to "switch" between a language and the other. In fact we use the same percentage of the brain as monolinguals.
Remember that bilinguals do not speak languages like people who are "confident" in a language which is not their mother tongue. Those in fact think in their first language then translate it into whatever language they need. Bilinguals "think" in either language, depending on what language they are speaking.
And another detail is that "technically", bilignuals are those who are bilinguals from the age of 8. Not sure how scientists got to that...
Ah well here are my 4 languages :
Dutch (Native), English, German, French.
Been thinking in English for years now and hence I am starting to make mistakes when speaking Dutch, especially numbers are an issue. In english you say for example : 53 = fifty - three but in Dutch that would be said as 53 = three and fifty... I now need to ask for phone numbers and other numbers to be spelled out to me in Dutch else I am sure to get confused :?
K-
Dutch (Native), English, German, French.
Been thinking in English for years now and hence I am starting to make mistakes when speaking Dutch, especially numbers are an issue. In english you say for example : 53 = fifty - three but in Dutch that would be said as 53 = three and fifty... I now need to ask for phone numbers and other numbers to be spelled out to me in Dutch else I am sure to get confused :?
K-
Kristof said:
That's also the German way to say numbers, right? I'm sure it is...
Kristof said:
Yay!! Zwei und funfzig!!!! (just trying out)
FWIW, Turkish uses the same convention as English except, I suppose, for "the teens" where I guess English has it the other way around, e.g. English's thirteen is effectively "three and ten" but Turkish is always "ten three".Kristof said:
Come to think of it, English probably also used to say "four and twenty*" instead of "twenty four" but the former version died out.
Simon F said:
The "teens" are always a beast on their own, in every language.
In Italian, it is also inverted, only to go back to "normal" after 17.
Weird huh?
It's one-and-ten to six-and-ten (undici to sedici), then it's back to normal with diciassette, which is ten-and-seven...
That's the weird thing. Turkish is completely consistent with its numbering system.london-boy said:
I studied German and French in school (and obviously English), and honestly, Turkish is the most logical of all of them... but that still hasn't helped me learn it.
Simon F said:That's the weird thing. Turkish is completely consistent with its numbering system.london-boy said:
I studied German and French in school (and obviously English), and honestly, Turkish is the most logical of all of them... but that still hasn't helped me learn it.
I think the problem with Turkish is that when us non-turkish-non-arab-non-weird-language speaking people try to say a word that sounds pretty much like this prtchklipiry, it doesn't quite come up as intended.
Still, the 17 thing in Italian is just weird. I'm sure there's an explanation i'm supposed to know, having studied Latin for about 10 years, but i just can't remember.
In finnish the teens are also separate form 11 to 19.
I've never really thought of it before, but in finnish for example 11 translates something like "one of the second" 12 "two of the second" etc.
It must come from that one has ten fingers, if you go beyond ten you have to take the "second" person and his fingers.
I've never really thought of it before, but in finnish for example 11 translates something like "one of the second" 12 "two of the second" etc.
It must come from that one has ten fingers, if you go beyond ten you have to take the "second" person and his fingers.
English, and broken Spanish. Can understand some Italian spoken/read (mostly due to Spanish) that I brushed up on before a month long stay in Italy. Forgotten 5 years of French I took in highschool/freshmen college due to lack of use and overwritten by about 20 programming languages.
Learning Mandarin right now (spoken and pinyin, not written ideographs of course), since I have a baby on the way, and I want my wife (Chinese) to teach it Chinese.
Learning Mandarin right now (spoken and pinyin, not written ideographs of course), since I have a baby on the way, and I want my wife (Chinese) to teach it Chinese.
DemoCoder said:
IT?!?!?!?
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