Tuesday, February 10, 2015
This sculpture in the memory
Interesting article** on the supposed disadvantages of English spelling, with yet another effort at Reformed Spelling. An old song, and not a catchy tune. The article suffers from two distinct 'compartmentalist' myths........
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(1) Compartmentalist myth that speech consists of a sequence of phonemes.
Nowhere near true. That's not how the ears and brain and mouth do it. Phonemes are ONE convenient way to notate and analyze speech for recording and replay, but the reality is much more continuous, more fugato, full of anticipation and nostalgia at every level. Most of what we hear and understand is contained in the anticipation. Maybe you can validly mark segments between clauses or phrases, but nothing finer than that.
The oldest representation of language runs at the clause level. A cave painting means something like "I killed three rabbits!" or "I want to fuck HER three times!" or "She's gone and I'm sad!"
We are returning to this clause level with aniGIF emoticons. Cave painters undoubtedly dreamed of ways to animate their paints. Maybe they even found an aniGIF technique that we don't understand....
She's gone and I'm sad.
More modern representations of language are finer than clause level. They range across a three-axis spectrum. Pure ideogram on one axis, pure phonemes on the second, and pure syllabary on the third. As with other complex spectra, the zero point is NOT "a little of both". In this case the origin of the graph is just sort of sloppy and chaotic.
Chinese is nearly pure ideogram with a few quasi-syllabic elements. Korean*** is nearly pure phonemic, grouped into syllables that form visual units. Japanese combines pure ideogram and pure syllabic with no obvious logic for choosing which goes where. English and French are around 60% phonemic and 40% sloppy, while most other Euro languages are around 80-90% phonemic and 10-20% sloppy.
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(2) Compartmentalist myth that education consists of a sequence of "subjects".
Certainly true that English-speaking kids spend more time and trouble on spelling than less sloppy languages. But there's no reason to believe that avoiding the time and trouble would leave more "brain space" for math. Chinese and Japanese require vastly more "brain space" and learning time for their purely arbitrary mix of ideograms and syllables. Are they worse in math? Nope, better.
But Orientals are genetically better at abstractions, so this doesn't tell us much. We need a cleaner comparison of the constants and variables. Let's try Argentina. It has roughly the same gene mix, culture and economic status as North America. Spanish spelling is much more regular than English. Spanish-speaking kids don't have Spelling Class at all, so they should have more time and more brain space for Math Class.
Here's a pretty good ranking of math literacy at age 15. Orientals are WAAAAAY up on top as you'd expect, but Korea and Japan are below all of the Chinese-speaking countries. Korea's perfectly logical alphabet didn't help. Argentina and Chile are well BELOW the US score. Their more logical spelling, and the corresponding saved time, didn't help. When I try to pick out other language groups like Germanic or Slavic, I find each group scattered across the non-Oriental part of the list.
This ranking leads to a blazingly obvious conclusion: Genes count. Culture and discipline may be mildly important, but are probably inseparable from genes anyway. Language is absolutely irrelevant.
I could hypothesize that time spent mastering the semi-regular semi-patterns of English builds up your problem-solving ability, which then helps you with math. Maybe, maybe not.
For sure: You can't separate brain activity into compartments. Any time and effort devoted to improving your ability in any area will spill over into all areas.
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As good old Emerson put it: (slightly edited to modernize syntax)
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what he can do; nor does he know until he has tried. ... It is not without pre-established harmony, this sculpture in the memory.
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** Footnote 1: I'm uncomfortable bashing this article because it's partly an advertisement for Dmitry Orlov's reformed spelling scheme. I admire Orlov HUGELY for his observations on collapsed empires. Probably the wisest and most important writing since Emerson. But his reformed spelling idea is just a waste of time and effort. I hope he makes money from it, but it's not going to make any real difference.
*** Footnote 2: Korean is unquestionably the most logical of all languages. It shares a logical grammatical structure with many other agglutinative languages. Every 'dial' you can set for a verb has its own 'column' of morphemic 'buttons', and every 'dial' you can set for a noun has its own 'column'. You run from left to right, starting with the root for the meaning you want, then pushing the correct 'button' for each 'dial'. Along with agglutination, the Korean alphabet is absolutely unique in schematically representing articulator position for consonants. The shape of the symbol tells you whether to close the oral cavity with the back, middle or front of the tongue, or the lips.
She's gone and I'm sad.
More modern representations of language are finer than clause level. They range across a three-axis spectrum. Pure ideogram on one axis, pure phonemes on the second, and pure syllabary on the third. As with other complex spectra, the zero point is NOT "a little of both". In this case the origin of the graph is just sort of sloppy and chaotic.
Chinese is nearly pure ideogram with a few quasi-syllabic elements. Korean*** is nearly pure phonemic, grouped into syllables that form visual units. Japanese combines pure ideogram and pure syllabic with no obvious logic for choosing which goes where. English and French are around 60% phonemic and 40% sloppy, while most other Euro languages are around 80-90% phonemic and 10-20% sloppy.
= = = = =
(2) Compartmentalist myth that education consists of a sequence of "subjects".
Certainly true that English-speaking kids spend more time and trouble on spelling than less sloppy languages. But there's no reason to believe that avoiding the time and trouble would leave more "brain space" for math. Chinese and Japanese require vastly more "brain space" and learning time for their purely arbitrary mix of ideograms and syllables. Are they worse in math? Nope, better.
But Orientals are genetically better at abstractions, so this doesn't tell us much. We need a cleaner comparison of the constants and variables. Let's try Argentina. It has roughly the same gene mix, culture and economic status as North America. Spanish spelling is much more regular than English. Spanish-speaking kids don't have Spelling Class at all, so they should have more time and more brain space for Math Class.
Here's a pretty good ranking of math literacy at age 15. Orientals are WAAAAAY up on top as you'd expect, but Korea and Japan are below all of the Chinese-speaking countries. Korea's perfectly logical alphabet didn't help. Argentina and Chile are well BELOW the US score. Their more logical spelling, and the corresponding saved time, didn't help. When I try to pick out other language groups like Germanic or Slavic, I find each group scattered across the non-Oriental part of the list.
This ranking leads to a blazingly obvious conclusion: Genes count. Culture and discipline may be mildly important, but are probably inseparable from genes anyway. Language is absolutely irrelevant.
I could hypothesize that time spent mastering the semi-regular semi-patterns of English builds up your problem-solving ability, which then helps you with math. Maybe, maybe not.
For sure: You can't separate brain activity into compartments. Any time and effort devoted to improving your ability in any area will spill over into all areas.
= = = = =
As good old Emerson put it: (slightly edited to modernize syntax)
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what he can do; nor does he know until he has tried. ... It is not without pre-established harmony, this sculpture in the memory.
= = = = =
** Footnote 1: I'm uncomfortable bashing this article because it's partly an advertisement for Dmitry Orlov's reformed spelling scheme. I admire Orlov HUGELY for his observations on collapsed empires. Probably the wisest and most important writing since Emerson. But his reformed spelling idea is just a waste of time and effort. I hope he makes money from it, but it's not going to make any real difference.
*** Footnote 2: Korean is unquestionably the most logical of all languages. It shares a logical grammatical structure with many other agglutinative languages. Every 'dial' you can set for a verb has its own 'column' of morphemic 'buttons', and every 'dial' you can set for a noun has its own 'column'. You run from left to right, starting with the root for the meaning you want, then pushing the correct 'button' for each 'dial'. Along with agglutination, the Korean alphabet is absolutely unique in schematically representing articulator position for consonants. The shape of the symbol tells you whether to close the oral cavity with the back, middle or front of the tongue, or the lips.
Labels: Experiential education, Grand Blueprint, Language update
¶ 6:56 AM
