the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

I'd like some people to chime in on this with their own experiences or good resources to look at. Some things to think about - Orwell's 1984, bilingual kids, the tendencies of different cultures (The Germans and Japanese come to mind). Does having words for things determine if you can think about them? Does being taught a larger vocabulary make you smarter?

I'll put some more of my thoughts later.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

huh? :P

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

there's definitely a correlation b/w bilingual and intelligence.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

There are many artful words of other languages that I have heard that mean something you cannot really express that well in english. This means to me that english is sort of a simple language. As well, different structures of languages really make a difference I believe in how people think. I mean, I can only have cognitive thoughts in my own language. It's like, my brain speaks English, and not other languages. So other people who think in a language with different structures are thinking in a different way at the base of thought than me.

I'm tired and watching the Simpons movie on bootleg so I'll stop now. Something that's really funny that is sort of related to this topic is that I'm watching a german copy so at the beginning it said in the intro sequences, DIE SIMPSONS, not THE SIMPSONS, and I thought that was put in there for some funny reason. Turns out it was because it was the German version, but if they did that for the real one it would be funny imo.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

Kurosh, u seem like a smart guy, wtf are u SSing for?

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

For my emotional and mental health

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
There are many artful words of other languages that I have heard that mean something you cannot really express that well in english. This means to me that english is sort of a simple language. As well, different structures of languages really make a difference I believe in how people think. I mean, I can only have cognitive thoughts in my own language. It's like, my brain speaks English, and not other languages. So other people who think in a language with different structures are thinking in a different way at the base of thought than me.

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There're also English words that describe concepts that some other languages don't. They're generally technical concepts, but that doesn't really lessen the language.

I know a few bi/trilinguals, and they tell me that they think in the language they were most recently talking in. I once spent so long learning French that I was using random French words in my thinking.

What I find interesting is whether people act the same if they speak one language vs. another? You presumably use different pathways in your brain to access the different knowledge, does that affect anything else?

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

Bilingualness is weird.

I think my bilingual GF mostly acts the same whichever language she is speaking.
Maybe a little different with Spanish but that might be as much a cultural/family thing than anything.
People from Peru and Venezuela are a bit different than people from the U.S. afterall.
And people act differently with their parents or brother than they do with their BF or other friends.

It's funny listening to her and her brother chat on the phone. They both grew up in South America but both took a ton of english classes and have slightly accented but otherwise mostly perfect english.
His accent is stronger than hers.
Anyway, they alternate between english and spanish from one sentence to the next a lot of the time.
Usually has nothing to do with trying to keep part of the conversation private or anything like that. It's just comfortable for them.
If she's speaking in english, and then comes to a word that comes to her in spanish then she switches. And they'll yap in spanish until they get to a point where she first thinks of the english version of a word.

She does this with her best friend also.

Obviously her instincts prevent her from doing anything like that with me. She has VERY rarely said "si" instead of "yes" around me and that is about it.
Same thing mostly with her parents on the phone who speak no english but she does occasionally interject an english phrase with them like "exactly" or "I don't know" instead of the spanish phrase and probably doesn't realize it.

What's weird is that she can only do it instinctually.
If I ask her "how do you say such-and-such in spanish" she has to really stop and think and it's like she temporarily can't access that part of her brain.
Even for really simple phrases that I know she knows because, well, Spanish his her native language afterall.

So she can go back and forth when chatting with her brother just fine.
But when she's just talking with me then her brain shifts to english-only mode.
If the pressure is on and she has to think of spanish for "turkey" or "fish" or something insanely simple she occasionally draws a total blank.

And completely forget about confirming the correctness of a phrase with her.
If I say, "Is such-and-such how you say, 'The blue cars are on the road'?" she'll think about it and then say "Yes, that's right."
Then she'll stop and think, "Wait, that's not right at all. The word order is all messed up. It's like this."

Thus, even though her spanish and english are both close to perfect she is pretty much the worst Spanish teacher ever because of how her brain accesses each language or something.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
Does having words for things determine if you can think about them?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you're interested in reading about this, this is called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
Does having words for things determine if you can think about them?

[/ QUOTE ]

Kurosh's Q somewhat reminds me of:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=co-c5gPWfiM


This is a clip from an old French film where the main character randomly starts chatting with an old philosopher in a cafe.

It does not have to do with bilingualness specifically but the discussion of language, communication, thought, etc is a somewhat interesting one.

Although around the 5:00 mark he does reference how a guy like Plato from 2,500 years ago writing in old Greek that nobody really knows anymore, at least, not exactly, can still be understood today because enough is able to get through.
Even if you are probably not getting the exact/precise intention of his words after translating you still can understand.

This specifically seems relevant to the Q I guess of whether you have to know the word/language for something in order to be able to think about it or comprehend it.

Apologies if the clip is too boring or too far away from the bilingualness discussion but hopefully someone enjoys it.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

This thread got deep quickly. I thought kurosh was just sniffing glue again.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

My g/f can spk 3 languages but thinks in mostly 2 of them, and now that I am solidly learning a second language, I find that I think in the 2nd language sometimes too.

In conversations with my g/f I will also switch between languages mostly because words in the 2nd language are easier to say or sound nicer than in English.

But regarding if it means you are more intelligent, I don't know.

I also think that bilingual people seem to always think more before they speak which can't be a bad thing.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

Words seem to have absolute correlation to their referents, but we know that this is not actually the case. Even here, threads such as, "What color is a tennis ball?" have proven that there is not a shared experience even for a simple english word such as "yellow." How much farther afield are our individual appreciations of the words for a concept like freedom or a temporal designator such as "momentarily?"

But having a word for something is not what allows you to think about it. The existence of the word is proof that someone made it up to cover a concept they had. I wish I had a point here, but I'm going to make breakfast instead.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

Chip - Kurosh might be. Who knows? But he sparked a few thoughts in me about it so I thought I'd contribute just for the hell of it.


The Haq - Yeah, that 'which language do you think in' is weird.

Weird stuff in my brain:
Take an 8-hour drive to a vacation somewhere with her and a relative or friend or whatever and they're yapping in spanish the whole way down.
After a day or two of that stuff I'm freaking DREAMING in Spanish. WTF?
I have absolutely no idea what I'm dreaming and I'm sure I'm making up some nonsense words in my subconcious too.
But I'm also picking up a lot of the words that get repeated over and over in regular conversation like "but" "exactly" "for sure" and I think I'm actually remembering slightly longer phrases for my dreams too.

I still can't speak the language. But when I'm around it enough I start to actually think in it in a very weird way and/or start to dream in it.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

The other thing I find weird about language is how I can type a word that is completely different from what I intended to say in a post on here.
It's not a typo where I missed the letter by one key or something.

It's like saying "that's a good song" but instead I write "that's a good book" and then I re-read my post, catch my mistake, and wonder how the hell I screwed up that word and didn't even realize it.

I do this ALL the freaking time on here, especially pre-coffee, although I usually make the correction before posting it (or I go back an edit it).


It reminds me of my grandfather who passed away in his 60's after multiple strokes. He had played football and also boxed in the army so probably took his fair share of concussions.
He had the slurred-speech, etc that one expects but also would mess his words up.
My grandma would call him to dinner and he would try to say, "be there in a minute" but couldn't. He would say "be there in a week.....errrrr.....year.....errr......chair."
He knew after he said it that it wasn't right . But he still couldn't find the right word for 'minute' and would get really frustrated.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

Yes I do this a lot too, dreaming in Czech, and I'm pretty sure I am listening to real words in the dream but I still have no idea what people are saying to me. It's rather confusing. But one day I'm gonna reply to these [censored] in my dreams.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

OP, you should read this book.

Godel Escher Bach

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
Does having words for things determine if you can think about them?


[/ QUOTE ]

Kurosh,

Google "Whorf Hypothesis", this is the exact hypothesis you are describing and a lot of research has been done. My understanding is that the answer is "no" to the strongest form of your statement.

One counterexample off the top of my head: Cultures without words for certain colors can perceive/discriminate those colors just as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
Anyway, they alternate between english and spanish from one sentence to the next a lot of the time.


[/ QUOTE ]

Probably an obscure reference, but Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle explores this quite a bit, as I recall, discussing siblings who grow up *tri*lingual and who are able to switch mid-stream from one language to another to another. And understand each other perfectly while anyone listening is probably lost.

Wiki also lists this book with the tag "Category: Incest in Fiction", but that's another story. So to speak.

***

In my experience with language, I've seen where the second language bleeds into any later language learning. So if you learn some French or Spanish in high school, then later learn something of another language, the French/Spanish will bleed into the third language.

But not the first language; you never start popping in English words--or at least without knowing it. So often struggling with limited vocab you throw in the English word and hope for the best...

It's as if there's an area in the brain that's first-language reserved, and then another area for all-other-languages. The two areas don't mix, but whatever's in them, does. And people who grow up with several languages have them all mixed together (but in the first area rather than the second).

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

Inuit eskimos have 18 different words for snow.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

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Inuit eskimos have 18 different words for snow.

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wiki

There are two principal fallacies in this myth. The first is that Eskimo languages have more words for snow than English does, when they may have a few more or a few less, depending on which Eskimo language. As in English, these words are related to each other: for example, blizzards and flurries are two different types of snow, but they are both recognized as 'snow' in the general sense. Speakers of Eskimo languages categorize different types of snow in a similar manner to English speakers.

The second fallacy comes from a misconception of what are to be considered "words". As in other polysynthetic languages, the use of derivational suffixes and noun-incorporation results in terms or language codes that may include various descriptive nuances, whether describing snow or any other concept. Because Eskimo languages are polysynthetic, they describe concepts in compound terms or 'words' of unlimited length.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

One thing that I think hasn't been mentioned is that when you know two languages, you have the ability to read books, watch movies (TV etc) in two languages. That means you have access to a lot more material, whether the they haven't been translated or the translation sucks (I think translated material is always worse than the original anyway).

English is my second language, and I'm glad I can read the 2+2 books, american books on finance, Shakespeare, watch South Park, as well as read litterature etc in my first language.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

Having a larger vocabularly has strong correlation with financial success in life.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

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Having a larger vocabularly has strong correlation with financial success in life.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://content.answers.com/main/cont...250px-D_oh.jpg

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
Does having words for things determine if you can think about them?

[/ QUOTE ]

there's this very interesting study by a couple cognitive psychologists that i recently read. apparently, the russian language has different words for light blue and dark blue, whereas english obviously requires you to use an adjective when discriminating between the two. in the study, the authors had native russian speakers and native english speakers discriminate between different shades of different colors, and whereas the native english speakers were unable to differentiate between different shades of blue (the differences were quite subtle), the native russian speakers did it with relative ease. pretty interesting results as they suggest that language influences your perception of the world and by extension your thoughts about the world. obviously, i'm making a big jump comparing the ability to see different colors to how we think about the world, but it is pretty interesting that there is empirical validation for this.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
There are many artful words of other languages that I have heard that mean something you cannot really express that well in english. This means to me that english is sort of a simple language.


[/ QUOTE ]

It is natural that one language will not have some nuances that another does. That doesn't make one language more complex than another.

The size of the English language dwarfs most, because it encompasses so many words or derivations from so many other languages. English originally came from germanic languages, and was conquered by Vikings, Romans, and French, each of which made enormous contributions to the language.

Those contributions made for far more fine distinctions in language than other languages tend to have. Words were adopted where they were needed to make those distinctions.

Prejudice toward one's mother tongue is natural, and many languages are interesting and beautiful. But English is the world standard in the financial and scientific fields and culturally too. It is a mess of conflicting rules and bizarre exceptions, but its position as the America of languages -- the one that has prospered by accepting all mongrels -- has given it an unprecedented and unmatched vitality and utility.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

Sapir and Whorf and their work are pretty much a joke among philosophers. Their stuff is usually reserved for sociology courses (where it is just as laughably stupid).


[ QUOTE ]
Among the most frequently cited examples of linguistic determinism is Whorf's study of the language of the Eskimo people, who were thought to have numerous words for snow. He argues that this modifies the world view of the Eskimo, creating a different mode of existence for them than, for instance, a speaker of English.

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-from wiki

lol

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You might think that "tree" means the same thing, everywhere and to everybody. Not at all. The Polish word that means "tree" also includes the meaning "wood." The context or sentence pattern determines what sort of object the Polish word (or any word, in any language) refers to. In Hopi, an American Indian language of Arizona, the word for "dog," pohko, includes pet animal or domestic animal of any kind. Thus "pet eagle" in Hopi is literally "eagle-dog"; and having thus fixed the context a Hopi might next refer to the same eagle as so-and-so's pohko.

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-Whorf http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/...ghtReality.htm


These guys are the epitome of contrived and confused.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
Words seem to have absolute correlation to their referents, but we know that this is not actually the case. Even here, threads such as, "What color is a tennis ball?" have proven that there is not a shared experience even for a simple english word such as "yellow." How much farther afield are our individual appreciations of the words for a concept like freedom or a temporal designator such as "momentarily?"

But having a word for something is not what allows you to think about it. The existence of the word is proof that someone made it up to cover a concept they had. I wish I had a point here, but I'm going to make breakfast instead.

[/ QUOTE ]

Kurosh - if you're interested in the above concept, look up "signifier v. signified", Saussure, Magritte ("Ceci n'est pas un pipe"), Lacan, Platonic ideal, stuff like that.

I'm not exactly sure what amp's point is either, but what the "signifier v. signified" concept does is ground you in ideas of how language came to be, and what it might represent.

Blarg - your comment, "larger vocab correlates with financial success" - leveling? Can't tell.

-Al

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

Whoa, talk about this becoming one of my favorite 2p2 threads - basically out of nowhere.

Deep stuff.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Does having words for things determine if you can think about them?

[/ QUOTE ]

there's this very interesting study by a couple cognitive psychologists that i recently read. apparently, the russian language has different words for light blue and dark blue, whereas english obviously requires you to use an adjective when discriminating between the two. in the study, the authors had native russian speakers and native english speakers discriminate between different shades of different colors, and whereas the native english speakers were unable to differentiate between different shades of blue (the differences were quite subtle), the native russian speakers did it with relative ease. pretty interesting results as they suggest that language influences your perception of the world and by extension your thoughts about the world. obviously, i'm making a big jump comparing the ability to see different colors to how we think about the world, but it is pretty interesting that there is empirical validation for this.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've read a bit along these lines in psychology studies that suggests that having a larger vocabulary for emotions allows for not just expressing, but actually *having*, subtler shades of feeling.

As it goes, if you only know "mad" and "angry", and can maybe qualify as "very mad" or "very angry", then you're limited in your emotional range. Versus being "furious" or "enraged" or perhaps maybe just "upset"...not actually angry at all.

But the key here is along the lines of the OP's question -- that this isn't just how we express to others through language, but how we express & understand these feelings to ourselves.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Does having words for things determine if you can think about them?

[/ QUOTE ]

there's this very interesting study by a couple cognitive psychologists that i recently read. apparently, the russian language has different words for light blue and dark blue, whereas english obviously requires you to use an adjective when discriminating between the two. in the study, the authors had native russian speakers and native english speakers discriminate between different shades of different colors, and whereas the native english speakers were unable to differentiate between different shades of blue (the differences were quite subtle), the native russian speakers did it with relative ease. pretty interesting results as they suggest that language influences your perception of the world and by extension your thoughts about the world. obviously, i'm making a big jump comparing the ability to see different colors to how we think about the world, but it is pretty interesting that there is empirical validation for this.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is true. It can be very hard to nail down a coalescing thought until you find a word for it. Then suddenly it falls into shape and perspective, not just because you couldn't recall a word to characterize and describe your thought until just then, but because you couldn't properly form the thought itself without using the thought-concepts of words to trace it out. The word helps shape the thought, and bring it to the workbench of consciousness long enough for any necessary further work.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]

Blarg - your comment, "larger vocab correlates with financial success" - leveling? Can't tell.

-Al

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Read it here and there over the years. Seems fair; larger vocabularies tend to go with higher education. And many better jobs require somewhat formal communication skills, from report writing, to oral and written presentations, even to letter and memo writing.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

Blarg - yeah, definitely makes sense at first blush, I just immediately thought of my brother (who's a Phd in literature in a top U.S. program) - he and all his humanities Phd friends are pretty damn poor haha [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]
I think this is true. It can be very hard to nail down a coalescing thought until you find a word for it. Then suddenly it falls into shape and perspective, not just because you couldn't recall a word to characterize and describe your thought until just then, but because you couldn't properly form the thought itself without using the thought-concepts of words to trace it out. The word helps shape the thought, and bring it to the workbench of consciousness long enough for any necessary further work.

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't thought much about this concept but it's definitely interesting. I'm sure every one of us has had a "eureka" moment, wrt finding the right word to express a feeling or concept.

-Al

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

This also reminds me of a psych study that I read once (but no one else ever seems to have heard of it, so I trot it out given any excuse to do so):

They put a woman in the middle of a suspension bridge over a high gorge, then had each participant walk out over the bridge and stand there, swaying over open air, and answer a bunch of questions (dummy questions). Afterwards, someone else asked them to rate the interviewer's attractiveness.

Then they repeated this, but with the female interviewer on a street corner. Same woman, same outfit/clothing, same clipboard of questions...just no bridge in the air. These men rated her lower in attractiveness than the men who'd been on the bridge.

The cognitive psychological explanation was that the men on the bridge had some *unnamed feeling* inside them, and when they (internally, subconsciously) tried to figure out what it was and put it into language and make sense of it, they decided it was interpreted as "physical attraction" to the woman on the bridge. Whereas what the feeling *really* (if that word applies here) was, was "anxiety/fear" from being on the bridge.

So our feelings exist only insofar as we're able to define them through language. And if we define them incorrectly, that's what they become.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

hmm, google. doh. and not a street corner and involving a phone #, not a rate-this-girl. close enough otherwise, i guess.

One account, LA Times

[ QUOTE ]
For years, scientists have known that attraction is more likely to happen when people are aroused, be it through laughter, anxiety or fear. Aron tested that theory in 1974 on the gorgeous but spine-chilling heights of the Capilano Canyon Suspension Bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia -- a 5-foot wide, 450-foot, wobbly, swaying length of wooden slats and wire cable suspended 230 feet above rocks and shallow rapids.

His research team waited as unsuspecting men, between ages 18 and 35 and unaccompanied by women, crossed over. About halfway across the bridge, each man ran into an attractive young woman claiming to be doing research on beautiful places. She asked him a few questions and gave him her phone number in case he had follow-up questions.

The experiment was repeated upriver on a bridge that was wide and sturdy and only 10 feet above a small rivulet. The same attractive coed met the men, brandishing the same questionnaire.

The result? Men crossing the scary bridge rated the woman on the Capilano bridge more attractive. And about half the men who met her called her afterward. Only two of 16 men on the stable bridge called.

Fear got their attention and aroused emotional centers in the brain. "People are more likely to feel aroused in a scary setting," Aron says. "It's pretty simple. You're feeling physiologically aroused, and it's ambiguous why. Then you see an attractive person, and you think, 'Oh, that's why.' "


[/ QUOTE ]

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
I think this is true. It can be very hard to nail down a coalescing thought until you find a word for it. Then suddenly it falls into shape and perspective, not just because you couldn't recall a word to characterize and describe your thought until just then, but because you couldn't properly form the thought itself without using the thought-concepts of words to trace it out. The word helps shape the thought, and bring it to the workbench of consciousness long enough for any necessary further work.

[/ QUOTE ]

What do you mean nail down a thought? Do you mean think about it in precise terms? I think you can think about a concept say 'gravity' for example in precise terms without having any word for it. People have done this. You did say it would be very hard (not impossible) though. I think you're right, but it is not because of language it is because when you don't have a word for something it is likely something you haven't thought about consciously very much. It is likely a newish concept to you and thus will be harder to think about. This is not a function of language though just familiarity with the meaning/concept. It just becomes convenient early on for us to attach symbols to the concept, because it helps us remember it and relate it to other concepts. So, the concepts which we don't have words for are ones we haven't thought much about and thus are harder to 'nail down'.



You have the thought, but you couldn't properly form it? I think it was already at the workbench of consciousness if you were trying to find the right word/description for it.

I suspect the reason that these thoughts are 'suddenly falling into shape' when you use the 'thought-concepts' (meanings?) of words to trace it out is that you are doing some thinking and language is helping you organize this process. You are still using concepts, the words are just symbols for the concepts. The fact that you are saying it is not because you couldn't recall a word shows that you DISAGREE with what you quoted.

Obviously what language you speak influences your thoughts (because you will attach different symbols to identical concepts)... In some cases you will have thoughts and feeling which your language has no symbol for. In those cases you can still relate that concept with other concepts it is just that you will likely not have heard/read other's thoughts on them so it will have to be more difficult and original thinking on your part. The question is 'does the language you speak cause you to experience colors differently.' Or more generally does it cause you to experience the world in a different way. Do you feel different emotions based on whether you speak Japanese or Hopi? The reason these people had trouble differentiating is more likely that they simply can't express themselves as well wrt those colors. Being born Russian will not make you better at differentiating colors internally or make certain colors look the same to you or make you capable of feeling a certain level of anger you wouldn't have otherwise been able to.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]
This also reminds me of a psych study that I read once (but no one else ever seems to have heard of it, so I trot it out given any excuse to do so):

They put a woman in the middle of a suspension bridge over a high gorge, then had each participant walk out over the bridge and stand there, swaying over open air, and answer a bunch of questions (dummy questions). Afterwards, someone else asked them to rate the interviewer's attractiveness.

Then they repeated this, but with the female interviewer on a street corner. Same woman, same outfit/clothing, same clipboard of questions...just no bridge in the air. These men rated her lower in attractiveness than the men who'd been on the bridge.

The cognitive psychological explanation was that the men on the bridge had some *unnamed feeling* inside them, and when they (internally, subconsciously) tried to figure out what it was and put it into language and make sense of it, they decided it was interpreted as "physical attraction" to the woman on the bridge. Whereas what the feeling *really* (if that word applies here) was, was "anxiety/fear" from being on the bridge.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cool experiment - but it just proves that our judgment / feelings are impacted by our context, no? Because:

[ QUOTE ]
So our feelings exist only insofar as we're able to define them through language. And if we define them incorrectly, that's what they become.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion based on the experiment.

-Al

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

kurosh,

Good thread. I have a lot of thoughts on this that maybe I'll get to later. But, two quick points.

1: Based on lots of anecdotal evidence, I think that people who grow up bilingual have an easier time learning lots of things (not just languages). Especially if the languages are completely different. I feel like people's brains get wired a little differently when they learn two completely different ways of communicating in their early formative years.

2: Most people who read a lot at an early age also seem to turn out smarter than most. I suspect there are lots of other contributing factors here (prob a culture/family of education, maybe better resources, etc), but I do think that reading is about much more than just vocabulary and information. Reading a ton at an early age imo exposes people to different thought and logic processes and perspectives, all of which contribute to overall smarter people.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

[ QUOTE ]

2: Most people who read a lot at an early age also seem to turn out smarter than most. I suspect there are lots of other contributing factors here (prob a culture/family of education, maybe better resources, etc), but I do think that reading is about much more than just vocabulary and information. Reading a ton at an early age imo exposes people to different thought and logic processes and perspectives, all of which contribute to overall smarter people.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you think this is correlation or causation? That is, are smarter people just reading earlier? It's something I've wondered about quite a bit; I started reading when I was 2. I do agree with the spirit of what you're saying, though.

Re: the correlation between language, thoughts and intelligence
 

I like to think that I can pick up all kinds of things about a culture just by listening to them speak in their native tongue. I'm sure this is complete nonsense, but it's fun anyway.

Thai: such a beautiful, lyrical language - it's hard to imagine barking orders to pillage a city in Thai

Russian: complex, mysterious, there's something going on there

I tried to do some others but they just come sounding like trite stereotypes of that culture. It's hard to put into words (!) It would be cool if there was some kind of experiment that isolated people who grew up in the exact same culture, just speaking different languages, to see if there were any general differences. But I can't imagine how that situation could come up naturally.