Thinking like a beginner
I must say, one of the pleasures of being back in Japan after 10 days in the UK is to get back to the International Herald Tribune. I’ve just been reading a book where an American writer very kindly states that British newspapers are the best in the world. Quite apart from the question of how many languages that writer can read newspapers in, I will have to disagree. The British press is very wittily written, but it’s all style and no substance, just like the hotel I stayed in in London where the stylish shower leaked all over the bathroom floor…
Today’s little gem from the IHT is about a policy to switch the Timorese national language to one in which few people are fluent. The big question here is- does the level at which you speak your first language affect the level of complexity at which you can think? In this case, if the other languages die out before people become fluent in Portuguese, will the thoughts of all newspapers, lessons, research papers and political debate be reduced to the level of what you can express with Intermediate level language?
As with most dichotomies, the answer to the question “Do we think with the language we have or think seperate of language and just use language to express those thoughts?” is probably- a bit of both. I must say, though, that all my personal experience since I started learning and teaching languages points to the “you can only think what you can say” theory.
When I was living my whole life in Spanish and even started thinking in it I honestly believe it put a cap on how complex my thoughts could be- if I didn’t have Spanish words for it in my head I couldn’t get the idea to appear there. Similarly with witty, intelligent students who are reduced to a Mr Bean sense of humour once they get in the classroom. Getting back to Timor- even if the teachers can still fully understand their subject despite limited fluency in even their first language, that would mean they wouldn’t be able to hand that on to the pupils. The same thing goes for parents talking to their children in a language that is not their own, which all the evidence points to being a stupid idea. Needless to say, this does not stop the most extreme of the Japanese ‘education mums’ from trying to speak to their own kids in English…