Comments on: Interview: MIT Professor Wayne O’Neil, expert on second-language acquisition

By: Will Sherman

Will Sherman — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:45:39 +0000

Stephen, the world-wide communication problems you bemoan have nothing to do with language. You complimented the interview as "very interesting", but did you even read it? O'Neil said:

"The concept ‘ineffability’, the idea the some things are beyond expression, between languages has little empirical support"

So even if there were no lingua franca (as English happens to be today), all important concepts would – and do – get translated fluidly. Esperanto, whose epic failure you seem to ignore (have you even bothered wondering WHY it failed?), would not be an inherently better lingua franca than current, past or future lingua francas that naturally evolve. Nor would it be "fairer". Think: even if it did work, which societies would have the time and resources to invest in this sort of experiment. Answer: affluent first world countries, who might then proceed to impose it on third world countries. Sound familiar?

You say: "Esperanto is also no threat to "minority" languages". Yeah, because it's a failure. If it ever succeeded, can you guess what would happen?

By: Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:53:09 +0000

A very interesting article, especially to a former teacher of foreign Languages. But surely, the fair solution to world-wide communication problems is widespread introduction of Esperanto into schools. Not only is this fair, which English is not, but reasearch has shown that people introduced to language learning via Esperanto go forward with greater confidence and interest to learn other languages more effectively. Esperanto is also no threat to "minority" languages.

By: Will Sherman

Will Sherman — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:13:37 +0000

I meant to say:

"What's stopping people from assuming that the difference between the two IMPLIES the superiority of one over the other?"

By: Will Sherman

Will Sherman — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:06:51 +0000

Sure, Alex, but the point you're making is not really interesting. So, wow, the things that tend to pop up in your head are influenced by what your friends talk about all the time, or the particular media sources you listen to, or the speech community you are in and what people in that speech community talk about a lot. Who knew!

The point O'Neil is making is completely different, and it's important to draw a clear distinction between what you're talking about and what he's talking about. Because I think people confuse the two. What you're talking about is how ones thoughts, perspectives, and actions can be directed and influenced by the words that other people speak. (Which, again, isn't much of a revelation). What O'Neil is talking about is the biological blueprint in the cro-magnon brain that generates language, which is universal for all humans. As he puts it, "there are just human minds full of thoughts." Which then get translated into whatever language that person happens to speak.

O'Neil is also refuting the racist Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which is based on a sloppy study of the Hopi Indians by Franz Boas, in which Boas concluded they don't have a concept for time because they don't have any words for it. Turns out they actually do have words for it. Not to mention he was totes fetishizing the native americans, and promulgating the lingering and regrettably ubiquitous notion of "Iranian minds" as distinct from "Norwegian minds" etc. Talk about racism and nationalism.

I think O'Neil is right that aversion to foreign accents is one of the most dangerous aspects of language prejudice. But I wonder what is behind peoples' fierce distaste for accented English. There's this persistent notion that, say, the "USA mind" is different from the "Mexican mind". What's stopping people from assuming that the difference between the two doesn't imply the superiority of one over the other?

Could it be that that's what's behind language prejudice?

By: Alex Case

Alex Case — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:09:27 +0000

Anyone who has become more or less fluent in another language can say that the words you use changes the way you think. That doesn't mean that there is something you can't think of because of a lack of words, but you certainly notice that things are disgusting or cute more often when you are speaking Italian and Japanese where those words come up all the time

By: S.D.

S.D. — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:52:09 +0000

I think there's something to the idea of language prejudice, and it may have underlying elements of racism. Some time ago a man wrote an excellent op-ed piece for the Dallas Morning News about the immigration issue. He is Hispanic, third generation American born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and like many Valley Hispanics has a faint accent, although English is his first language. He told how he met his wife in college, and they married after graduation. She is not from this country (he wouldn't say where she was from at this point) and he described all the grief they went through to get her green card. He went on to say that more than 20 years later she still has her thick foreign accent, yet whenever the question of immigration comes up, people always ask HIM where he was born, where he grew up, etc., as if HE were the foreigner. He is frequently asked to show proof of citizenship, while nobody EVER asks his wife if she's in this country legally, or even when she came here–they always focus on his immigration status because he's obviously Mexican-American.

The punch line at the end of his story is that his wife is from Australia.

By: mattkennard

mattkennard — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:18:49 +0000

Interesting that language prejudice is sighted as the main obstacle to learning languages… Can totally see that…