Do you think learning a language requires empathy?

[Glizdka]

Learning a language is a difficult thing to do. You need to memorize a plethora of words, some of which are simply not-translatable, and some are false cognates. Learning grammar, especially when it's completely different from that in your first language, can make you question the grammar rules of your mothertongue, or even make you start making grammar mistakes when speaking your first language (something that's happend to me, for example, I blame it on the fact I can speak several languages to some extent). However, I don't think that's everything it takes to learn a language. If it were the only things required, that would mean you (just) need to be intelligent enough (as intelligence is the ability to recognize and replicate patterns), but there are many people who are inarguably intelligent, yet they aren't able to learn languages, so there must be something else.

I remember that I loved watching videos in English back when I was a little child. I didn't understand squat of what the actors were saying, but through their acting, I could deduce what emotion and intention they had when speaking some words. I still remember the first English phrase I learned this way: "trust me". But to be able to get yourself into the mind of someone who's speaking, to feel their emotion and intention, you need to have empathy. I'd even say a higher than average level of empathy. It is, after all, the trait that allows you to imagine what the others feel, based on their body language, intonation, and all other non-verbal ways of communication.

The tiny differences in meaning between different grammatical structures and word combinations all come down to what meaning the person wanted their words to convey, and this is closely related to their emotion and intention. "You're always losing your keys" does not mean you literally mean somebody always loses their keys, it's more of a complaint. "We could've had it all" indicates regret, seeing the situation as a missed opportunity, something that "we could have it all" doesn't convey. If you don't have enough empathy to feel these emotions, you can't understand these differences, or at least it won't be natural for you to use the same structures yourself and, therefore, you aren't able to truly learn the language. Understanding jokes, sarcrasm, irony, poetry, and metaphors is an indication that you've learned the language, on the emotional level.

Anyways, this is how I see it. What do you think?

 

[probus]

Here's a quick answer. I will flesh out these points in another post.

1. The case of autistic people probably has answers for your question. They lack empathy but can still use language. I have no first hand experience with them.

2. Language is innate. Infants WILL acquire a language. This is the principal, if not the only, thing that distinguishes us from other animals.

3. There are degrees of language. Mother tongues differ from languages acquired later in life.

4. There is a genetic factor. This is probably my only controversial point, but I believe some of us are more able rhan others.

 

[jutfrank]

I completely agree with pretty much everything you've said.

But, as probus points out, you don't need to be exceptionally intelligent or empathetic to learn a language. However, I do think that to be exceptionally good at using language (what some would call high in 'linguistic intelligence'), you do need to be highly empathetic. Autism is a pretty good example, actually.

This is just my opinion. I do believe there is good evidence to support this opinion but I can't offer it here.

Another point I would make is that I don't think that linguistic intelligence is particularly related to pattern recognition. It is, but not particularly, especially when compared to other kinds of intelligences, like visual-spatial, or musical, for example. Again, just my opinion.

(If you don't already know about Howard Gardner's 'multiple intelligences theory', check it out.)

 

[Glizdka]

Thank you for your opinions. Can I ask two more questions?

What do you think about the influence of the lateralization of brain function on the ability to learning language? The case of children brought up among wild animals is a curious one.

Written language is much different from spoken language. Do you think that spoken language can evoke emotions written language can't? I think books are a great example of how differently a written conversation can be imagined, which is why adaptations are always a subject to dissatisfaction caused by being different from the interpretation of the viewer.

EDIT: I believe this is why some actors can be really good at evoking emotions, and some can be painfully bad to watch.

 

[jutfrank]

What do you think about the influence of the lateralization of brain function on the ability to learning language? The case of children brought up among wild animals is a curious one.

I don't really understand what you mean. I'm convinced that lateralization plays a part in the process of language acquisition. I'm not sure what you mean by asking how it influences ability, though. And what do children brought up by wild animals have to do with brain lateralization?

Written language is much different from spoken language. Do you think that spoken language can evoke emotions written language can't?

Absolutely, yes.

I think books are a great example of how differently a written conversation can be imagined, which is why adaptations are always a subject to dissatisfaction caused by being different from the interpretation of the viewer.

Why do I get the feeling you're talking about Game of Thrones?

 

[Glizdka]

I don't really understand what you mean. I'm convinced that lateralization plays a part in the process of language acquisition. I'm not sure what you mean by asking how it influences ability, though. And what do children brought up by wild animals have to do with brain lateralization?

Children brought up by wild animals have difficulty in learning language, especially if they're already in their late teens. Could it be because they've already passed the point where language skills stop developing?

 

[probus]

Children brought up by wild animals have difficulty in learning language, especially if they're already in their late teens. Could it be because they've already passed the point where language skills stop developing?

In my opinion that is definitely the reason. The innate infantile ability and compulsion to acquire language fades as we age. My own experience leads me to believe its persistence varies among individuals, but in most of us it is greatly reduced by the age of twenty.

 

[jutfrank]

Children brought up by wild animals have difficulty in learning language, especially if they're already in their late teens. Could it be because they've already passed the point where language skills stop developing?

It definitely could be, yes. The evidence is not completely unequivocal, because these wild child cases are extremely rare and complex, but I'm personally convinced that this is at least the main reason. It's what we call the critical period hypothesis.

 

[probus]

Allow me to flesh out my gene hypothesis with a little family history.

One of my grandmothers, an English speaker, married a French-Canadian soldier she met during the First World War. After the war they settled in his hometown of Quebec City, then as now a strongly unilingual French-speaking town. She lived there for twenty years, but on her husband's premature death she had to leave Quebec, because in all those years she had been unable to learn any French.

My wife, who speaks several languages, and I have two intelligent and highly educated daughters. Both of them have post-graduate degrees, and both have proven throughout their lives to be utterly incapable of learning a second language, and not for lack of trying.

As a result of those facts I have formed the hypothesis that a gene runs in our family that if expressed causes us to lose the ability to acquire language completely and relatively early. Fortunately, that gene has apparently missed me. I learned most of my Spanish after the age of twenty.

So that's why I think that people vary widely in how able they are to learn a second language. The degree of ability depends upon both age and heredity.

 

[Glizdka]

That's interesting, I think I need to read up on the topic. Thank you. :-D

Do you think that grammar is necessary to organize thought, but what allows you to avoid using much grammar is precise vocabulary?

 

[jutfrank]

I like your theory, probus.

I'm not making any comment on your family here by the way, but it is true that linguistic intelligence, (which is highly associated with various measures of success in language acquisition) is itself highly heritable, so what you're saying about individual variation makes a lot of sense to me.

I wouldn't expect that there would be a single responsible gene, though.

 

[jutfrank]

Do you think that grammar is necessary to organize thought, but what allows you to avoid using much grammar is precise vocabulary?

It seems like there's a very interesting discussion question close by. Could you perhaps bring the question into focus by first saying what you mean by 'grammar', especially with regard to 'avoid using much grammar'?

 

[Glizdka]

By grammar I meant all ways you add meaning to, and transform words, whether it be grammatical cases, syntax, prepositions, or tenses. I guess I should've said 'using many subjects of grammar', but I thought I could use grammar uncountably in that context.

I think that the lack of precise vocabulary makes my grammar worse because I need to find other means of describing what I want to say.

 

[GoesStation]

My family history supports Probus's theory. My mother started learning English in an illicit school while interned in a Nazi ghetto at age thirteen. She moved to London after her liberation at age eighteen and earned her high-school equivalence (I forget what the certificate was called), all in English, of course. She immigrated to the United States after a year and a half in England, earned her Master's degree at the University of Chicago, got married, and had three kids. She went on to have a career as a writer -- in English, of course.

Her first sale as a writer was to the very prestigious Atlantic Monthly. My father assures me that by then, the editor would not have found a single grammatical error or unnatural phrase in her writing.


Many years later, her first cousin immigrated from Russia. The cousin was in her forties and spoke no English. Within a year, she was speaking complex English. She has never mastered articles and makes other errors, but she can express any idea in a language she learned as a mature adult. Her husband, on the other hand, never got very far in English. He once remarked (after having been in California for at least fifteen years) "English ... uh, uh, ... very bad language!"

My father learned English as a second language at the tender age of three. He attended a Yeshiva, where Hebrew was the language of instruction in religion classes, and speaks fluent Hebrew. He also studied French in high school, attaining a vast vocabulary. His French is hopelessly ungrammatical; he speaks it by surrounding his ideas in words until he beats them into submission.

My parents lived in Italy for several years in their fifties and sixties. My mother easily learned enough Italian to converse on a variety of subjects. I visited them towards the end of their sojourns there. After five days, I knew far more Italian than my father. I got my mom's language skills, luckily!

 

[Glizdka]

What amazing stories you guys have... mine seems uninteresting in comparison.

My parents were born in Poland when it was governed by Soviet Russia. Russian was a mandatory subject in school back then, yet both of them can't really speak Russian, though the number of cognates in Russian makes even me understand it when it's spoken (written Russian is different because of the cyrillic alphabet). They could never learn any other language, except for a few isolated words.

 

[probus]

I wouldn't expect that there would be a single responsible gene, though.

No, of course not. I did consider writing group of genes, but thought it too cumbersome.

Very little is controlled by single genes. A key point made by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene is that genes survive not only by increasing the chance of survival of their carriers (us for example) but by being good at working in concert with other genes. The observation that we share 99% of our genes with chimpanzees has become trite, but Dawkins estimates in another book that a human and an oak tree have about 50% of their genes in common. Distant cousins, but cousins nonetheless! I hope I don't live to see People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants��

But I digress. Back to language. The Cyrillic alphabet is easy, Glizdka, easier than the Latin alphabet we use. I'm sure you could master it quickly.

 

[Glizdka]

"The Selfish Gene" is a good read. It is one of my favorite counter-intuitive statistics that humans share about 50% of their genes with an oak (and a banana!), but it isn't as amazing when you consider how redundant our genetic code is, and how functional some fragments of DNA are (genetic grammar?). Redundancy in the genetic code has in it the curious case of the gene DRD4-7R, which codes the dopamine receptors in your brain. The gene DRD4 comes in three variants: 2R, 4R, and 7R (the number of Repetitions in a row of the same gene). The gene DRD4-7R is associated with the tendency to take risk, do drugs, cheat on your partner, learning language, and higher IQ. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter responsible for the sensation of pleasure and reward, and DRD4-7R codes the most responsive dopamine receptor.

But I digress. Back to language. The Cyrillic alphabet is easy, Glizdka, easier than the Latin alphabet we use. I'm sure you could master it quickly.

I wasn't precise. I can read the cyrillic alphabet, I learned a bit of ancient Greek for the same reasons I learned a bit of Latin - many words derive from either Latin or ancient Greek in European languages, which makes it much easier to learn any European language when you can speak even a tiny bit of Latin or Greek. The cyrillic alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet, so it was very easy to learn the cyrillic script. While at it, do you think there is something like "script cognates"? I'm particularily interested in how Anglo-Saxon runes were influenced by Norse runes, and the differences between the Futhark and the Futhorc. I studied a few runic alphabets and it's curious how there are a few symbols that look exactly the same, but represent a different letter. But it might well be just a coincidence because there's only so many symbols you can make up with a bunch of straight lines, and it might have nothing to do with borrowing other symbols.

 

[probus]

do you think there is something like "script cognates"? I'm particularily interested in how Anglo-Saxon runes were influenced by Norse runes.

That is well beyond my depth. But we have some teachers more scholarly than I who contribute only occasionally these days. They may be able to help. Bhaisahib? BobK? for example.

Your notes on the genes that code for dopamine receptors were fascinating and a good jumping off point for further research. Thanks.

Dawkins is the best popularizer of science working, in my opinion. Fifteen to twenty years ago I decided to read all his books and I'm very glad I did.

 

[Glizdka]

I can still remember how 10 years ago my teachers told us not to use online translators because they do a poor job, and it's obvious the text has been translated in one. Today, Google Translator is capable of translating even long and complex sentences that contain precise vocabulary, and it uses flawless grammar doing it. It doesn't do it every time, but the longest flawless translation from English to Polish I've got from Google Translator was in about 300 words (it was an extract with hotel regulations).

Google uses machine learning to improve the translator, which is trained by reading text in all languages. In 2017, OpenAI used their bot to utterly defeat a multiple world champion, Danil 'Dendi' Ishutin, in a game of Dota 2. What makes this event particular is the fact that the bot was not written exclusively to be good at playing the game. The program is based on the idea that if we let a program experiment with writing its own code, and compare the difference in performance in order to decide whether to keep the change or not, the program will evolve and its performance will be improving exponentially. The bot even learned how to fake an attack to intimidate its opponent because it found it effective. After they let the bot play with humans, it learned how to use in-game chat to send insults in form of instant messages.

I believe we aren't farm from creating sentient artificial intelligence. I think it's just a matter of when, not if. Do you think that if machines can learn language, it answers 'no' to my original question "Do you think learning a language requires empathy?"

 

[probus]

I think the answer to your original question is no, regardless of whether or how machine learning may develop.