Idiosyncrasy

Guy Deutscher, The Unfolding of Language

It seems that each person adopts an angle on learning that meshes best with their own unique predilections. Here are several idiosyncratic approaches: 

1. Could an animistic perspective on language, associating it with agentic qualities in a sort of pictographic ecological system organized according to a sense of theos phobos, with a sort of narrative structure complete with numerous evolving schisms and allegiances aid learning? I do not know. In Rome, a slave sitting right behind a powerful general would from time to time whisper in his ear 後ろを見て to remind him of his mortality, "look behind," with the implication "remember, you're gonna die" (memento mori), just as I will. Or the Buddhist sounding opening to the book of Ecclesiastes:  伝道者は言う、空の空、空の空、いっさいは空である。
   
2. Could a perspective on learning that combines insights from both McGilchrist (on attention) and Stein (on education) aid language learning? What unites these thinkers is the importance of value. Stein says we need an educational renaissance and a distributed educational hub network, part of a "Transformative Education Alliance" initiative, to address the multiple crises in society today (seee Education is the Metacrisis. and his book Education in a Time Between Worlds). "Transformative education" is a loose translation of the German word Bildung. How does language, as an early cultural innovation for the purpose of aiding learning, help us to clarify value? 
3. If thought, and language itself, is bound up in ritual, in ways we barely understand, then perhaps language learning can understood as a process of ritual acquisition. Language acquisition then may be thought of as the memorization of culturally embedded "ritual scripts" within a memory "ritual palace". Rituals of greeting and departing, of food preparation and eating, and how these and the linguistic scaffolding surrounding them serve as an aid in clarifying value, according to this approach. And so one might create a list of rituals, whether those of Japan or any culture, to structure language learning around.
4. Can we understand linguistics as the study of ornament? Nikos Salingaros writes that "The means of verbal expression and accumulated culture defining a literary tradition has a parallel in an ornamental tradition and material culture. ...traditional fonts and text formatting evolved towards optimal legibility and psychological comfort, so as to enable reading without visual or emotional distractions. [This] shows clearly how ornament works to make form clearer, sharper, hence more distinguishable. ...successful ornament is integral to the form, and is not merely “added on”. The most effective serif fonts are vastly more complex mathematically than a similar sans-serif font. They show substructure on a hierarchy of decreasing scales. A serif typeface doesn’t simply add end-strokes; the entire font is adjusted so that new, more detailed elements cooperate to define a coherent whole. The font’s line thickness is everywhere different. Correcting an old misunderstanding, ornamentation does not superimpose unrelated structure; rather it is a subtle operation that generates highly-organized internal complexity. It therefore has to be extremely precise in order to be effective."
   
5. "This story, modified from Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language (p. 210), contains 23 different words arranged to violate English grammatical rules. Yet you probably more or less understood the story. Deutscher used some basic principles that are probably rooted in our ape cognition to construct the story in an understandable way without relying on English grammar. First, he used proximity: words for things that are closer in space are closer in speech. They "go together". This doesn't have to be the case in many languages, but it's our initial inference. Second, he used temporal sequencing: the events in the story follow the events in reality. Third, he relied on nonlinguistic causal structures: research with speakers from diverse languages suggests that actors (subjects) are first in thought. After actors, humans are next inclined to think of objects (patients) and, finally, actions (verbs). You can understand "girl fruit pick" more easily than "fruit girl pick" or "pick fruit girl" even though none are the subject-verb-object that English normally requires." [Found on 6/13/2018.]
   

Which might you prefer? Can you think of others?

Configuration of the Japanese language Gestalt

My job, my paid employment, is to "make things whole again". And in a similar way, language learning is a process of seeing "new shapes, new Gestalten - new wholes". It is all one work with many aspects.

What is a good “worker” mentality? One that applies to both personal and professional domains of life? Nietzsche once wrote that “he who has a why to live can bear almost any how”. A good worker must have the capacity to think several steps ahead, sees several levels above or below; they are never just in one place at one time but have a “thick” understanding of space and time. They can see the distant “why” that gives meaning to the present “how”. The “thickness” of their experience allows them to persevere in whatever area they apply their efforts and not lose sight of the Gestalt. There are also times when they need to thinly slice this thick experience to explore the intricate subtlety of the deep and broad “wholes” that we seek. This requires discrimination, and with it, restraint. Because a good worker must be very careful how they wield their scalpel. 

Wisdom is knowing when to remain broad minded and when to be discriminating. And the asymmetry between these suggests that, whenever in doubt, it's best to remain broad minded and "discriminate against discrimination". The reason is that we always have access to Gestalt perception, regardless of how discriminating we are. And although discrimination is a potentially very enriching experience, it can also end up with us losing sight of the very Gestalt that is sought. If we are careful, and know when to stop, it is a manageable risk that is worth taking and even necessary for tasks like language learning. However nothing truly essential is lost if we do not wield the scalpel in any given area of life. And so an unwillingness to slice our experience, and instead show restraint, is as much a virtue as to do so. There are many things that a discriminating attention is wasted upon, and only a few to which the application of this skill is of any benefit to us. In truth, the restraint we show is not in its application, so much as to which values it is to respond. And we see "mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters."

Local minima and language learning

Karl Friston noted that, if our planning horizon is insufficient to enable us to contemplate distal (and potentially preferable) outcomes, we can easily get stuck in local minima as we pursue our goals. However with a greater planning horizon, those local minima are vitiated, and we are able to plan and execute the shortest path to our ultimate goal, which often involves excursions through state (and belief) space that point away from it. (See his paper "Sophisticated Inference".) These conclusions were less formally echoed in Adam Grant's book Hidden Potential, Chapter five "Getting Unstuck", subsection "Backing Up to Move Forward". He writes: 

"After poring over more than a century of evidence on progress, cognitive scientists Wayne Gray and John Lindstedt observed a fascinating arc. When our performance stagnates, before it improves again, it declines. When people’s skills stalled in tasks ranging from Tetris to golf to memorizing facts, they didn’t usually ascend again until after they had deteriorated. Performance suffers as new methods are being invented, tested, rejected, or accepted. And when we discover a better method, our inexperience with it will usually make us worse at first. Those backsteps aren’t only normal — in many situations they’re necessary if we're going to surpass prior levels of achievement.

In typing, if you hunt and peck, you'll probably level off around 30 to 40 words per minute. No matter how hard you practice, you'll hit that wall. If you want to double your pace to 60 to 70 words a minute, you have to try a new method: typing by touch instead of sight. But before you can speed up, you have to slow down. It takes time to learn the keys by heart. We're often afraid to go backward. We see slowing down as losing ground, backing up as giving up, and rerouting as veering off course. We worry that when we step back, we'll lose our footing altogether. This means we stay exactly where we are - steady but stuck."

Grant noted that learning how to type on a keyboard involves a temporary dip in performance before realizing later gains. But he should try learning how to speak in a new language. This can often involve accepting still deeper levels of temporary discomfort. However, this discomfort may be easier to accept if we recognize that we've reached a plateau with our current language and knowledge base and can't continue to improve if we remain on our current course. There's only one way to improve!

And why not? It's entirely possible after all. Recall that McGilchrist wrote in The Matter with Things, "Experiments performed by Lionel Standing found that recognition memory for pictures is almost limitless. He was referring here to both accuracy and capacity. The unconscious memory can work on shapes, pictures and images, juggling many factors, in very short periods. Standing reckoned that the mind could search over 50,000 pictures in unconscious memory." But there's only 2,136 jōyō kanji (composed of 214 radicals). So this is emminently possible, as long as the discomfort can be endured. And interestingly, pictograms (icons and indexes) are less strongly lateralised to the left hemisphere than phonograms (symbols).

The primary relevance of McGilchrist's thought might be in serving as a bulwark against colonialism, homogenization, and assimilation by an increasingly globalized Western worldview. In short, in the context of a healthy culture, the hemisphere hypothesis can serve as an evidence-based defense for non-Western ways of being, an important part of any cultural "immune system". Cross-cultural studies could help to identify local analogues of the hypothesis, as well as how those analogues might have influenced how people understand themselves, their place in the world, and their future. I recently found a book review of The Matter with Things by Takashi Baba, which is quite good (he notes the Gestalt, Carlo Rovelli, and much more). He wrote:

ヒトの脳の左半球と右半球がそれぞれ固有の性格を持つほどまでに分離し、世界を2つの大きく異なった方法で見ている。近代以降の西洋文明（西洋に限らず先進国共通だと思うが）は左半球に偏った世界観に支配されており、このことが環境破壊、疎外感、極端な立場同士の深刻な対立など現代の文明の危機の根底にある。マギルクリストは2009年出版の「The Master and His Emissary」において、すでにこの説を展開していたが、本書「The Matter with Things」ではこの脳半球に関する仮説をベースに、人間はどのようにして物事を正しく知ることができるのか（哲学の認識論の問題）、さらには、空間、時間、意識、物質など世界の基本的な構成要素の本質にまで深い考察を展開している。… 私たちには世界を直接経験する力があるが、一度に見えるものは部分的でしかありえない。

I can't read that right now. But it's not impossible!

Week Seven

Something I read on Reddit recently: "It could be an amazing resource if someone creates an AI like chatGPT, but one that has been trained on accurate data only, specifically for language learning. Imagine: a chat bot that tailors its responses to your proficiency level and lets you chat in your target language, while peppering in some new vocab, etc. and corrects your mistakes while explaining what was wrong. Or just being able to get (factual) answers to your questions. Or what if it wrote sentences using the vocab you’re working on via a WaniKani api key?" It would be like a tutor with unlimited patience that is always available. It could revolutionize language learning. Adaptive learning platforms could create collaboration between students, educators, and technology.

Another place where AI is making rapid inroads is instant translation software, but this is not necessarily a satisfying solution. It tries to map one language onto another, but language learning is not really about mapping one language onto another, it is about creating a whole new map that includes things that the other map doesn't. Translation assumes a 1:1 correspondence, but immersive learning of a different language and culture opens up a whole new world. That's why mimicry methods can meet more success than translation - they don't rely on the language learner's preconceptions and biases as much. Rather they change our biases and preconceptions. Sometimes we like what we uncover, other times we may not, but our view of the world is transformed. (Everett Bleiler, as I noted earlier, said much the same: "Try to understand the psychology of language.") Language is a bridge between perspectives. The shorter the bridge, the closer the synchrony. 

In The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist notes: "Most languages of the non-Western world are structured so as to favour the right hemisphere; but, despite this, these right-hemisphere-prone languages have ceased to be processed by the right hemisphere, and are in fact now processed by the left, even though pictograms are less strongly lateralised to the left hemisphere than phonograms." Nonetheless, "The right hemisphere prefers vertical lines, while the left hemisphere prefers horizontal lines. If lines are vertical, the left hemisphere prefers to read them from the bottom up, whereas the right hemisphere prefers to read from the top down. In almost every culture writing has begun by being vertical. Some, such as the oriental languages, remain vertical: they are also generally read from the top down, and from right to left. In other words, they are read from the maximally right-hemisphere-determined point of view." Given that Japanese is traditionally written top to bottom, right to left, it would be interesting to try to write with my left hand (non-dominant) more often. (And eat with it too, correctly holding chopsticks.) 

I'll keep my eyes open for if and when some of these AI resources for learning become more available; there's a place for all of them. In the meantime I'll pursue an opposite path inspired by Juzhi Yizhi. In Japanese he is called Gutei Isshi, meaning "Gutei One-finger". When Tenryū held up one finger, Gutei was enlightened. Thereafter, Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A similarly simple approach was used by Masanobu Fukuoka in "The One-Straw Revolution" to describe his "do-nothing farming" techniques, which applied the philosophy of mujo to farming. One finger, one straw, but for me it will be "one word or phrase". In short, all a language learner needs is a single breath, and the word(s) that can be said within it. No books or other resources. And from that humble beginning the rest will follow naturally. For example, if all you know is 「＿は日本語でなんと言いますか？」 that may be enough! A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...

It has been said that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. And probably, the best way to begin teaching something to someone else is to first criticize the way they are going about doing it currently. What is there to criticize? What is there to teach? When one sees others doing things poorly, and believes they know a better way to act, they have a responsibility, an obligation, to effect the change they want to see in the world. This, not greed, is the true entrepreneurial spirit that drives people to do difficult things. 

Week Six: タロンヒアワゴン and タウィスカラ

What's riding on whether you study or not? Did you place a large bet? Could you be ostracized from your tribe? (Nobody wants that! Which is what makes peer pressure so effective.) If nothing is riding on success or failure, then why study? But even that's not a silver bullet. As many have noted, "motivation is rubbish! It's never there when you need it". Instead, it's self discipline, or more accurately, it's habit formation and making study "so easy you can't say no" (by making it almost frictionless) that is the key. Nonetheless, it's a fun exercise to ask: What's riding on your success with languages?

It feels as if one half of me is putting up endless roadblocks to learning and the other half is trying to tear those down as fast as they are thrown up. And it has been a stalemate. I’m faced with trying to outsmart myself. It’s not an easy thing to do. Can I outwit Tawiscara? (George Beaver suggests this.) What would Taronhiawagon do? I can organically construct my mental palace without any preconception ahead of time. “Action comes before motivation.” The corollary to that might be that looking for motivation, trying to apprehend a deterministic plan and certain reason to act, will prevent all action whatsoever. Dostoevsky said as much in Notes from Underground: “For the direct, lawful, immediate fruit of consciousness is inertia.” 

Week Five: Conversational interaction

I joined Line, the most popular messaging app in Japan, so I can chat with family members in Nihongo. One problem: what topics, shared interests, and so on, do I talk about? I recall Everett Bleiler said that Japanese can be extremely simple in its expression of basic ideas, yet very elaborate in expressing the speaker's feeling about the ideas. In other words, it's very meta and perspectival, it's not the 'what' but the 'how' that can be more important. That is a good area to focus upon. From a dual-aspect monist perspective, how one feels about or attends to something can be pluralistic, from a "both either/or and both/and" point of view. But as a novice language learner, I face severe limitations in communication. For instance, I cannot make a joke easily because humor is hard to translate, and anything more than simple statements could easily become gibberish in my sloppy attempts. So expressing the sort of intuitive, embodied coincidentia oppositorum views consistent with the McGilchrist/Iroquois hemisphere hypothesis that I aspire to convey will require a very slow and methodical approach: today one view, tomorrow the next, slow alteration and literal meanings allow time for consistency and comprehension before the next is introduced and elaborated. Eventually I should be able to work up to more complex sentences and concepts (such as the need to neither let ratiocentrism blend with us, nor let it drift too far from our awareness, so we will always see the relational continuity amidst fragmentation). If I try to coin new metaphors or figures of speech early on, while lacking the nuanced vocabulary, it will not make any sense at all. But I can try to write senryū, or at least some kind of poem in Japanese every day. (Maria Ortega recommended this to help us break out of the straitjacket of rules.) Having sufficient patience in the face of these limitations, while also accepting the reality that I will make countless mistakes, is challenging. But opposites usefully constrain and limit the excesses of each other. My limited language proficiency does limit my words, but limiting such tools of the rational mind sometimes permits greater metaphorical power (something poets know well). One "hack" to get around this limitation can be the use of "filler words" and aizuchi. 

In regard to staying focused, it helps me to be able to see the "two minds" within humans. Tawiscara is the one who with ADHD, and who craves the dopamine hit from social media. Taronhiawagon is the one who is making the longer term plans. He has trouble keeping Tawiscara from getting distracted too often, but he needs his discriminating attention so he can learn Nihongo. So he's told him that he can use social media no more than a few minutes a day because "it is right that he maintain a small distance, while at the same time keep his attention upon it; neither letting it drift too far from his awareness, nor letting it blend with him." 

I've now listened to over thirty language podcast episodes. A recent guest, polyglot Luca Lampariello talked about his "bidirectional translation method", but mostly the passion he has for learning new languages as a doorway to learning. He's a great speaker. There's a few more podcasts I want to hear to gain new strategies, but so far these seem core: SRS & interleaving (method of study), chunking (idea categories), and mimic (common phrases and filler words with accent). But it all comes down to the hours I put into it, that's why extensive reading is considered important. I need to fully commit to the mimic method. Write fewer original long sentences, and instead make a list of my favorite "common phrases", metaphors, idioms, expressions, and even poems that I can mimic and recite frequently. Each of these can be chunked with similar variations. Recall the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok", which features a language that is built upon metaphors and allegories. It's said that reading and writing, speaking and listening, constitute the four main areas of language learning. That makes me wonder if think more in words or images. I suspect images, and if that's so perhaps focusing on the reading and writing graphics may be an easy entry point. Although recently, on 11/24/22 I had a dream I was speaking in Japanese, so perhaps it is the words? I can make all grocery lists in Japanese, and Simon Ager, the creator of the Omniglot website, has a nice list of "useful Japanese phrases".

In a very nice conversation, Emanuel Vasconcelos pointed out that language is a performance skill, so deadlines can help with learning. Don’t learn the 500 or 1000 most common words, that’s just derived from a simple text analysis of printed media. It certainly doesn’t apply to beginning language learners. Instead, learn the core verbs, the five or six most important verbs and conjugations. The single sentence is the unit of the language “chunk”. 

I had lately been thinking of taking a university job, where part of the benefits package is a tuition waiver for dependents. But this is often administrative work (what David Graeber calls BS jobs); it's typically sedentary and requires far more use of McGilchrist's "left hemisphere" than I find comfortable. However the more embodied and creative jobs, such as teaching Japanese language to others, are more "right hemisphere" and potentially intrinsically rewarding. But is it possible that I could achieve such proficiency in a few years? Could I teach McGilchrist's The Matter with Things, in Japanese, as a government employee at a university? That's a very lofty goal. Perhaps not, but if I get just halfway there it would be worth it nonetheless. Were I to reach that, then perhaps I could do the same with the Ainu language. Ambition knows few limits!

Week Four: Song of language

Another motivation for learning Japanese is to not just understand another cultural framework and set of ideas, but to hear the sort of conversations that occur within that framework. There is a sort of rhythm and musicality to speech, the dance-like ebb and flow of conversation, which is a separate dynamic to whatever utilitarian content that it conveys. It is a processual thing that can establish a resonant dynamic between people. So if I can participate in that with others, I will learn to create new "songs" that I've never sung with family members before. Or at least I will be able to listen to and appreciate the songs of others (regardless of how well I can participate) as formerly indecipherable sounds transform into a relational web that catches a universe of meaning. This more expansive view on language is consistent with the non-utilitarian right hemisphere view.

The left hemisphere's utilitarian perspective optimizes for obsessive compulsive personality types whose narrow hyperfocus ignores relative value and context. This presents a problem when contextually prioritizing tasks and attending to them appropriately. The relative value of one thing compared to another is forgotten, all context is excluded from view, and the result is neglect of formerly recognized priorities. Laozi wrote:

"Though neighbouring communities overlook one another and the crowing of cocks and the barking of dogs can be heard, Yet the people there may grow old and die without ever visiting one another." [TTC 80]

Why? Was there simply no need nor want to do so? I think there was both need and desire, or at least there could have been. But the people were able to skillfully deploy their attention; they could see the context and relations clearly and knew where to best devote their time and attention. And that was not in the affairs of others. The parallel for language learning and studying in general is that this too is a pursuit that can only succeed with a contextual perspective, that is, one that will not get lost exploring other communities of thought and investigation. "Broad ways are extremely even, But people are fond of bypaths." [TTC 53] In the age of the 24 hour global news cycle, multiple co-extensive global risks, online social media, and instant access to supernormal stimuli on nearly any imaginable subject, this sort of capacity for skillful deployment of attention that Laozi described is needed more than ever. 

But how much is it really possible? Most likely we have to design our habits so that we can set aside the things that aren't a priority, but not abandon them altogether. Recall that, in the Iroquois legend, Taronhiawagon must "maintain a small distance from his brother, while at the same time keeping his attention upon him, neither letting him drift too far from his awareness, nor letting him blend with him". This is how we deal with those other things that would distract us from our priorities.