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.