Paper 4 Question 2 (Page 15)

    The text is taken from a Stanford University magazine and discusses the effects language has on thinking. The founder of this study had traveled around the world to test out how individuals who use different languages think and how it affects their reactions and overall thought process. An important part of this study found that in languages such as Japanese they tend to not put the blame on the individual if it were an accident while in English we put the blame onto the individual directly. For example in English we would say “She broke the cup” while in these other languages one would say “the cup broke itself.”

This study has also researched the different meanings for words that people who speak different languages may have. Boroditsky states “‘What I’m really interested in are the ingredients of meaning. I don’t believe we can explain how we construct meaning without understanding patterns in metaphor and language.” This quote shows the developed meaning of the study. The meaning of these major things has caused the study to have a reason as in different languages the meaning of different prospects can slightly change.

The aspect of time has drastic differences on how one may think. In English every time a verb is used it states a different point in time. For example, ‘I made that,’ ‘i will make that,’ and ‘i am making that.’ This however is very different in certain languages, for example in Indonesian the verbs never change to express the time and stay the same. For example they would just say ‘i make that.’ They have sometimes added additional words to address the time such as ‘already’ or ‘soon’ but it is not very common and not needed to make a grammatically correct sentence. This could definitely change the thought process that Indonesians use and could make it very different from an English speaker.

This also ties into the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This theory supports the view that the words and grammar of a language directly shape the thoughts of its speakers. Another example based on the different uses of tenses is between the English language and the languages of Native Americans. Whorf compared these two languages as he believed that the Indians don’t think through their use of tenses. He did not understand and realize that they did have a concept of time. This shows the relationship between language and thought as the Indians do have a concept of time.

 

Paper 4 Section A (Page 15)

Language

The text discusses whether English can remain as one of the world's most popular languages. The most important issue that the article talks about is the reality that China had more people that spoke English as their second language than people in the United states who had spoken English as their first language. The author had also emphasized the amount of people that had spoken english in China by saying “According to a study published by Cambridge University Press, up to 350 million people there have at least some knowledge of English – and at least another 100 million in India.” The author had also stated the number of people in India that had spoken English as a second language to show the large number of people around the world.

The English that is spoken around the world is most likely not perfect English and is most likely a mix of the native language of the individuals and the English that they are learning. This would be a mix of mandarin and english which could sound very different then what american english sounds and looks like. The English language is constantly changing as well as the rise of social media has led to American English using more slang such as “lol” which are easily teachable to non english speakers.

Another important issue that the article had brought up is the rise of translators which can translate English into any other language in seconds. The author had said “Thanks to advances in computer translation and voice-recognition technology, they can each speak their own language, and hear what their interlocutor is saying, machine-translated in real time.” This could end the rise of the English language that the author previously stated was taking over China, India and many other countries around the world. This also relates to the rise in technology around the world and would need to be constantly updated in order to keep up with the constant changes in the English language.

There is also the rise in technological communications which could cause customer service helplines to be unidentifiable as either a human or a robot speaking to you. The author states “In California, Wonkyum Lee, a South Korean computer scientist for Gridspace, is helping to develop translation and voice-recognition technology that will be so good that when

you call a customer service helpline, you won’t know whether you’re talking to a human

or a computer.” This would be in the future and could definitely be noticeable as the English language changes. 

However, there is also an argument that the rise in online translators would not nearly provide any benefits from using a human translator. The author states “Christopher Manning, professor of machine learning, linguistics and computer science at Stanford University, insists there is no reason why, in the very near future, computer translation technology can’t be as good as, or better than, human translators.” They would provide benefits over human translators so that would prove some of these digital translators to be pointless in most cases.

English however is known as the world's favorite lingua franca which means English is “the language people are most likely to turn to when they don’t share a first language.” This allowed for people to have a language that was used for global communications and trading because the global leaders from various different countries did not speak the same exact language so they all knew English to converse about business.