We think in our primary language, no doubt about that. I was thinking recently on how such things would affect the different languages of thought and reflect on how we develop based on how we think.
I can barely think of any words that can be said in Bahasa Malaysia that has fewer syllables than its meaning in English or Chinese. Im not saying its not a beautiful language in itself, but what im looking at is efficiency...
Why would something like this matter? well, imagine a 100 lap run around the track of your school. At say, 200 meters a lap, that would add up to a 20KM run. Now say we add a pimple to the circular track, adding maybe 2 meters to a lap. 1% more aint that bad right? well, tell it to the guy that loses the run because he had to run an additional lap in total distance.
The number of syllables may not seem like much, but added up i think it would make a difference to the efficiency of how we input, document and process our thoughts and writings...
Take the way the chinese have developed their language...choosing to ignore multi-syllalble words. Is there a single syllable in spoken chinese that does not have one or more meanings to it? The way these are combined to for larger words are amazing as well, but i think the restriction may come down to documenting and decrypting written chinese, as some thought and context may need to be drawn for each character for the whole to make sense.
Im not saying everyone is affected by this syllable thingy, as i have met many, many intellectual folks who are obviously from a BM background, but on the overall, these are still a minority when compared with the general population here.
The chinese language on ther hand, is fairly interesting when viewed from a spoken point of view. I can see why math is their forte when it comes to comparing the chinese vs the other languages of thought on how we learn math.
The best example would be the multiplication table. The way we were thought in english was to pronounce every number and factor as well as the multiplication itself...
Remember "two times one equals two, two times two equals four" or "dua kali satu sama dua, dua kali dua sama empat"...
Again, syllable count comes into play, the chinese school of thought also used the multiplication table as a base, and the way they memorized it was far far more efficient...Taking this table as a primary table and not repeating unnecessaries like the multiplier function or "times" sped things up and made it so much smoother and easier to digest. I dont know how to type it out, but essentially, for anyone that has heard it, would recognize it like "2,1,2 - 2,2,4 - 2,3,6 - 2,4,8" and so on, and they coulod cover the entire table in a fraction of the time it takes the rest of us.
Its not that other languages could'nt do this, but we just didnt...but even if we did, syllable pronunciation factor again would give the chinese language an advantage here...
Upon hearing it being recited for me, i couldt but help think how smooth it sounded and not as draggy as the other methods used to teach us in our primary schoolyears. May not be a big deal now, since we are all familiar with our tables, but imagine the advantage of learning this way all the way back then...its a headstart for sure.
There are many other factors as well in determining the development of people from certain backgrounds, and im not saying anything above is 100% proof of advantages/disadvantages of a language, just what seems to me as plausible, so im praying noone takes any offense to anything said...and also apologies if i did offend anyone, its just one of those days that my brain decides to lau sai out things like this...
Just my RM0.02 for today...
Cheers,
-the ed-
No comments:
Post a Comment