What an insult!!RockLee said:...brain capacities...I thought you only used 10% or something.
I, for one, am using 110% of my brains! So there!!
Oh, wait... :?
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What an insult!!RockLee said:...brain capacities...I thought you only used 10% or something.
wb Tuff xD 呆けTuffy said:What an insult!!
I, for one, am using 110% of my brains! So there!!
Oh, wait... :?
Yeah I think you are 100% right on that, French ppl usually don't even bother to speak english, but start rambling in french wich I find rude(not saying every french person does).We pick up the language quite easy because we use it in daily life, on tv(NO DUBS) and we learn english in school.In Japan people study english for X year and still know ZIP of it ☝ ...but they have their (mostly) japanese,korean or chinese shows/series.So they don't come much in contact with english besides the katakana thingy maybe...that should be an explanation why they are not so good in english even though they studied it.(and need lots of foreign persons to teach them ;-)).myrrhine said:also (and this is key), no foreign media is dubbed (beyond kids stuff). and most entertainment media is in english. advertisement is often at least partially in english. people throw in english words all the time when they speak.
Maciamo said:The funny thing is that we didn't even talk about the "beauty" of the head or facial traits in this thread. If you are Japanese as you name implies, that reveals a lot about Japanese values or way of thinking ;-).
Now that's really offtopic, but beauty is a subjective concept. Personally I don't think all races are beautiful. I especially don't find Aborigenal Australian attracive (and I have met a lot in Australia). Btw, my wife is Japanese. ;-)
myrrhine said:however this suggests that people with generally larger brains would have a generally larger potential for intelligence (in the greater sense as noted by maciamo) - and from what i understand this isn't true.
ok, that said the biggest leap in logic that i'm seeing here is the leap from skull shape to brain shape. does anyone know if this is an at all valid leap?
take sweden for example. the majority of the population speaks english, and pretty good english at that. most also know a smattering of french, german, or spanish. pretty average. of course, for one, it's the same alphabet. also plenty of common roots. also (and this is key), no foreign media is dubbed (beyond kids stuff). and most entertainment media is in english. advertisement is often at least partially in english. people throw in english words all the time when they speak. your average swede cannot go a day without a whole lot of exposure to the language. which naturally makes it easier to learn.
and lo and behold, are the french generally known for their amazing language skills? or the english?
anyways this turned out longer than i intended and now i must eat dinner.
kara said:conclusions: The results showed a persistent positive secular trend in head circumference in Japanese children of both genders. Comparison of these data with those of recent Caucasian studies revealed ethnic difference in head circumference, with Japanese having relatively larger head circumference for height as compared with Caucasians.
canadian_kor said:Another thing, about Japanese being more sensually oriented because they have bigger top heads sounds absurd. A personality is not determined by skull structure but through neurons and life experience. The idea that skull structure determines personality is that outdated 19th century concept which also fed into the Nazi propaganda machine.
rakuten said:In Japan, a "sea-locked" country ;-), for the average guy there's not much need to be able to speak English.
The way of thinking is indeed different throughout all cultures, but that does not solely mean one way of thinking is more emotional or logic than another. If logic is defined as a strict mathematical and programcode-like schema, I agree that western logic is more logic.
Also consider that this is a phenomenon of our time. Or is your grandma a remarkably logic person?
If there are any good logic tests available, we could start a series on this forum and draw our own conclusions.
Irrelevant? But the conclusions I quoted in my last post was wriiten by an expert.... Well, logical people like you may have your own thought. で、その反論からすると「骨格と身長の相関関係と、骨格と体重の相関関係とは同視してかまわない」、となりますが。。。Maciamo said:"Larger head circumference for height" ? That is completely irrelevant. What about weight then ? The proportion of the head to the body does not affect the size of the brain. What if I told you that the tiniest mouse could have a bigger brain than humans comparatively to its body ?
Have you really seen that study? I think what you presented was not the whole study, but only an abstract. And I posted another.Maciamo said:Btw, I had seen this study on the website of the first link I posted in this thread.
kara said:Irrelevant? But the conclusions I quoted in my last post was wriiten by an expert.... Well, logical people like you may have your own thought. で、その反論からすると「骨格と身長の相関関係と、骨格と体重の相関関係とは同視してかまわない」、となりますが。。。
Have you really seen that study? I think what you presented was not the whole study, but only an abstract. And I posted another.
Why is it "weird" exactly that a French person would speak better English than a Japanese? French and English are far and away more closely related languages than either one of them is to Japanese. Furthermore, as for the Japanese you mention who may have studied "English" at university -- how do you know they didn't specialize in English literature or something of the like? If they did, maybe their reading (and possibly writing) ability in English is just fine. Studying Shakespeare, for example, at a Japanese university is not going to make you a more fluent speaker of English in day-to-day conversation, especially because I would imagine that their discussions and papers about the topics they study are probably done in their native language. They've probably lived their whole lives in an environment where conversational fluency in English is _not_ a prerequisite for functioning in daily life. Likewise, I know plenty of Americans who have studied Japanese history or literature at university whose competence in the Japanese language is nearly non-existent.Maciamo said:The weird thing is that most French people I have met in Japan (about 30 people) speak better English than many university-educated Japanese (even those who studied English at university !).
First of all, I have to highly question your assertion that the average French speaker "usually" becomes fluent in Japanese after one or two years in Japan. What exactly are you basing this on? People you've met? It seems to me like you're comparing very different groups of people. The average Westerner who is devoted enough to learning Japanese to choose (and be successfully able!) to live in Japan for an extended period of time is going to be far more devoted to achieving a practical command of the language than e.g. a housewife who goes to an eikaiwa school as her "hobby." For every Westerner you can show me who's become a fluent in the language after a few years of living in Japan, I can show you countless others who have taken four years of Japanese language courses at university and have almost no real proficiency to show for it. For the housewives or salarymen who go to NOVA every week without ever coming close to achieving spoken fluency in English, I can show you a recent graduate who studied abroad and received a four-year degree from an American university, something which requires a level of proficiency in English that I would say is achieved by only the rarest, most devoted American students of the Japanese language.Of course, it's easier for French-speakers to learn English, but when it comes to learning Japanese, they usually speak it fluently after 1 or 2 years in Japan - better than Japanese people speak English after 6 years at school 4 years at university, a few months o a year abroad and additional Eikaiwa lessons.
I don't believe that all people are equal, but I do question where this sort of excessive analysis of racial differences will take us. If, for example, it were actually proven that Caucasians enjoy certain advantages over Asians in areas like logic and language abilities, or are more "creative" or good at abstract thinking, or that Japanese are more 'practical' or 'sensual', what exactly are we supposed to do with this knowledge?Maciamo said:Aren't you a bit too naive ? Do you believe in physical (incl. psychological/intellectual) equality between all people in the world ? Then everybody should succeed equally well at school, at work and in love if given equal chances. I believe that not even identical twins are equal. But the mistake is to think that you can rank people simply. There are thousands if not millions of differences between 2 individuals. How could we ever rank which one comes as the "better" one ?
Unfortunatly, I come to understand that people who need political correctness are those who lack understanding of things of the worl or real deep-rooted tolerance.
jt_ said:(I apologize in advance... this turned out to be a rather long rant.)
Why is it "weird" exactly that a French person would speak better English than a Japanese?
Furthermore, as for the Japanese you mention who may have studied "English" at university -- how do you know they didn't specialize in English literature or something of the like?
...
Likewise, I know plenty of Americans who have studied Japanese history or literature at university whose competence in the Japanese language is nearly non-existent.
First of all, I have to highly question your assertion that the average French speaker "usually" becomes fluent in Japanese after one or two years in Japan. What exactly are you basing this on? People you've met?
It seems to me like you're comparing very different groups of people. The average Westerner who is devoted enough to learning Japanese to choose (and be successfully able!) to live in Japan for an extended period of time is going to be far more devoted to achieving a practical command of the language than e.g. a housewife who goes to an eikaiwa school as her "hobby."
Of course, both of us are only citing anecdotal evidence, but I think there are enough examples of Japanese who have become proficient in English (or another European language) and Westerners who have failed to become proficient in Japanese to say with any degree of certainty that a biological predisposition to language plays any sort of a significant role here compared to factors like quality of education, study skills, motivation, and the degree to which 'survival' in their daily life is dependent upon their ability to learn.
jt_ said:Also, as for what you say above about the difficulty of the Japanese to comprehend "Western logic" -- do you honestly think that this is in any way caused by biological factors?
Hypothetically speaking, if you were to take an ethnic Japanese and have him adopted by an American or European family and raised as a monolingual speaker of English (or another European language), do you think that his "Mongoloid" brain would in any way put him at even the slightest disadvantage in being able to function in a world of Western language and Western ways of thinking, compared to his Caucasian countrymen?
If, for example, it were actually proven that Caucasians enjoy certain advantages over Asians in areas like logic and language abilities, or are more "creative" or good at abstract thinking, or that Japanese are more 'practical' or 'sensual', what exactly are we supposed to do with this knowledge?
More frighteningly, as we gradually move to a more internationalized society, I'm afraid that too much focus on these sort of ethnic differences are going to lead to people taking this to extremes and suggesting that individuals of certain races are more inclined to succeed in certain fields.
...
I realize that you personally might not be saying these things, but I think the problem is that there are unfortunately people out there who would be more than happy to take these theories to those sort of unpleasant extremes.
I think that no matter how you look at it, other factors like environment and a person's own free will are so much more important than race in determining these things that to put any sort of belief in these theories is only going to do us a disservice in the end.
jt_ said:I welcome any further debate or rebuttal of any of the things I've said here.
Although recent findings have coalesced around a small number of neural substrates working together for language (specializing in detecting particular properties) rather than one or two localizable areas and that an intermediate-level second language would be coded over an even wider cortical area. Even subdivisions of Brochas area, btw, participate in other abilities, such as music recognition and motoric imitation, so you should be seeing a range of disfluencies for Japanese production, articulation plus others. Basically there's virtually no pathway for a structurally impacted frontal lobe to effect second language acquisition in particular, at least after controlling for intelligence and short-term auditory memory (which is generally one of the main culprits in poorer L2 learners). At least since my days in the loop as a grad student...someone else may well have a more updated story by now....Yes, I don't deny that some Japanese are very good at languages, and can even become better at English than native English speakers. But I want to know whether their proportion is the same as that of Caucasians with the same motivation and intelligence.
Anyway, my assumption about language was only if language was located in the frontal lobe. In fact, there are 2 areas for language (see above post). The one in the frontal lobe controls syntax and complex sentences. As a matter of fact, it is almost impossible to make complex sentences in Japanese, as there are no relative sentences.
Have to go, we continue later...
Elizabeth said:...
More likely are the small number of sounds in Japanese or the way it was once originally taught (forced memorization of arcane grammatical points by non-English teachers).
Most probably they are listening -- translating into Japanese -- framing an answer in Japanese -- translating back into English before replying. Is that the procesessing strategy they've learned in school ?I have been teaching English in Japan for about 3 years, but in average I don't feel that their memory or rapidity of comprehension are as good as that of my Western aquaintances.
It was a bit rash to dismiss everyone who did not instantly agree as biased or having preconceived ideas. Don't think you are the only one aware of the obvious differences between individuals in particular and between ethnicities in general. And I don't think we hide behind the so called "political correctness" (not that you said so, directly).Maciamo said:So far this thread has not be the discussion it ought to be, but a display of how people react to preconceived ideas that they associated with the title of this thread. I only understand better to what level each of you is biased or politically correct in their approach to comparing head size and brain shapes. Some associated it directly with phrenology because they have heard that name somewhere and it looks cool to spit it out on a public forum. Others start talking about completely irrelevant things like how beautiful each race is or the proportion of head to body size.
No, it's not. And if I didn't know better, I would doubt that you are in Japan. Tokyo is not Japan, as NY is not the US. The big business, glamour, fashion and everything else under strong influence from the west is aggregated in Tokyo (and particularly in Osaka). Working in the industry reveals only one part of the reality. Our company sends business people to Tokyo although they don't speak Japanese. It's not necessary because our partners are fluent. More and more English enters the Japanese language and especially in Tokyo it seems omnipresent, but pronounced in Japanese it's hardly understandable and memorizable, similar to Latin when you hear it for the first time spoken at a foreign university - completely incomprehensible. A lot of business men you meet in Tokyo as well as Japanese who spent several years abroad, speak English fluently and on a very high level. Further and strong English influence comes from movies, TV, popsongs, fashion etc., yes that's all true but - for the average Japanese living in Japan, there is no urgent economical need to have a proficient level in spoken English. I was accentuating "sea-locked" country because I was indirectly referring to other countries i.e. in Europe, with its many countries bordering on each other. Especially Switzerland as a small and completely land-locked country has no choice but to adapt to its neighbours. Our market and economy strongly depend on the EU and although we are still not a member yet, regarding the dozens of agreements with the EU, it makes almost no difference anymore. It is inevitable to be able to speak multiple languages, even for an average job. There is an urgent need, and the bad employment rate adds to the pressure. Getting a simple job in an office or as a cashier? Well we are sorry to say that we preferred someone who has the same qualities, but also speaks English and French. My Spanish friends have (also due to the bad economy and low employment rate) no choice but to fit best for the European market. I don't recall this for the country of Japan.Maciamo said:I am sorry, but have you ever been to Japan ? English is like a second language for most people here.
Try Finnish or Welsh, same alphabet so no disadvantage. These languages are hard to learn if you're not already familiar with a related language (Estonian for Finnish and Breton for Welsh). It's not about the few letters from the Latin alphabet, the language is entirely different.Maciamo said:As for the alphabet, all Japanese know romaji (Latin alphabet) since the age of 6 or 7, much earlier than they can master their own kanji. So they have no disadvantage.
Yet a lot travel although having really low English skills. Popular destinations as mentioned above, also Europe (especially Italy and Switzerland). But statistically Korea, Hongkong and Sydney are in the top charts. Not surprising with a statistical average of 1-2 consecutive holidays - if someone doesn't believe this, go look it up. The popular destinations are usually too far away, so it has to be a destination within reach. Golden Week is one of the few occasions when the popular places come within the realm of possiblity.Maciamo said:But Japanese people also need English to travel. There most popular holiday destination are Hawaii, Guam and Saipan (all English speaking). But wherever they go, they know that they will need English because it's the world's lingua franca. That may explain why Native English-speakers may not feel the need to learn foreign languages, but that does certainly not apply to the Japanese, who are very aware that their language is only spoken in their country.
Thanks to a governmental resolution, all station and street names had to be printed in English throughout the whole country - regarding the influence on the English skills of the Japanese....I'd say negligible.Maciamo said:As for the environment, all signs in the street, subway, stations, etc. are bilingual Japanese English. There are certainly more signs in English in Japan than anywhere in continental Europe. See the above reply for more.
Nobody ever said they don't need it, there wouldn't be that many eikaiwa school throughout Japan, more than in any other country (as you already pointed out). But the economical pressure and the competition among each other are not high enough, and the conditions regarding language family, absence of direct competitors and borders for the whole time resulted in a different development, and most of the consequences are present until today. Of course there are more reasons, some were already mentioned in this thread.Maciamo said:Anyway, saying that Japanese don't need English is not knowing them at all.
Well then you learned something new. The purpose of logic? Logic seen from a mathematical point of view is different from logic applied in philosophy. And it's not the same as used in daily conversation and in colloquial speech. The definition you might find in an encyclopaedia relates to logic as developed and defined in the occidental area. Argumentation you find in eastern philosophy or war-related books do neither follow nor match our definition of logic, but still the argumentation is highly logic and understandable.Maciamo said:I didn't know there were many definition of the word "logic". The purpose of logic is to prove an argument right or wrong.
That's a typical western way to argue. Hopefully when staying in Japan for longer, you will understand why this kind of arguing is not working. On the other hand, a lot is changing and not everyone happily agrees or kills himself for the good of the company etc. The way of debating we know (some Swiss even see it as the 'art of debating') puts westeners into trouble also when in China. But this is culture and education, not testosterone. I for example grew up in Europe, I wouldn't confront people this way or debate if I'd grown up in Asia, I'd rather refrain from discussing without arguing anymore. But I grew up here, and sometimes I'm way too aggressive when arguing at company meetings - should be impossible with my low testosterone level.Maciamo said:Take two people and make them debate and see who has the most compelling arguments combined with the most efficient structure to prove it. Japanese people are so bad at debating that the government is considering introducing special courses in schools. You could say that the non-confrontational consensus approach of the Japanese prevent them from debating and asserting their views. But many business people now realize that they need more efficient and logic decision-making. It's not always the boss that is right and not always the feeling of the majority that is true either.
The politeness is also a fassade, and behind the curtain the politeness is gone. Still there's a huge difference in daily life between east and west concerning respect and how they treat each other. But it's not that everyone's nice as they appear to be. In general I prefer the Japanese way, but here in Europe I wouldn't get far if I was overpolite all the time, that's sad but you know how it is. When I'm in Asia I change completely, that's adaption. I doubt that testosterone is significantly involved. My relatives in Asia are absolutely different in behaviour, and I wouldn't dare to confront them how I do it with my family in Europe. I'm somewhere between the cultures and between my relatives in Europe and my relatives in Asia. And I assure you, not everyone's polite and respectful!Maciamo said:And whatever the brain shape, testosterone does have an infuence of rationality and logic too. That also explains for the more collectivist and less confrontational way of Mongoloid people. Don't forget that higher testosterone levels in blood not only means being more rational/logical, but also more aggressive and uncompromising. So I am not saying that being logical is necessarily better, like Elizabeth or Kara (among others) presupposed. At the contrary, it is this lower testosterone that make the Japanese so polite, respectful and altruistic. But as in the Yin and Yang, it is difficult to conciliate opposites in one same person.