Part 2/4 Christopher & Language Acquisition (Linguistics)

[pirlocheskaxxx]

I hope the sound quality was better, I cannot even decipher some words.

[avidalocan]

@Chezrocksall You should check out some of the works of Otto Weininger (1880-1903). He also knew a lot of languages.

[avidalocan]

@Chezrocksall Other than English just German, but German is almost lifeless today. 100 years ago they had a great language. I grew up around Polish but we're talking the extreme eastern part of that country which became Russian during the Cold War (i.e. it was not any other country) and they (actual living relatives of mine) write in the Cyrllic alphabet. 

[xhemexx]

Is it possible that any given language/dialect/ language group etc can be related or have similarities with any other? With so many variables and elements in languages, I would imagine there are possibilities of such resemblances, doesn't mean they are related, but I'm sure they happen. what do you think?

[segismundo77]

He doesn't transate the sentence in Spanish correctly at 0.48. He really doesn't... Not that his skills are less remarkable for that.

[avidalocan]

Translation is quite subjective. It's about multiple views of a text and which one you choose. Reading a book in one language and reading the same book translated, even brilliantly, is like chalk and cheese. The concepts are even different, because they cannot be seperated from the wider framework around them without defusing them significantly.

[segismundo77]

Agreed. I actually have a 5-year degree in Translation and Interpreting studies and am familiar with the theories, but none of them will allow a "contre-sense", which is the mistake that he unfortunately makes... Also, in this case, he's not familiar with the wider framework. He's just translating a heading.

[segismundo77]

But, avidalocan, the claim they make about Christopher in this video (and in all of the papers that Tsimpli has written about him) is that his language abilities are off the chart while his general IQ is rather low. Why would he have difficulty expressing a supposedly correct translation if his language abilities are so extraordinary? You say that he looks like he would do that often, but all the literature about him suggests the opposite, that his language capacity is intact.

[avidalocan]

It may be largely a beat-up. Perhaps Christopher has a processing centre in his head that he can access freely, which others struggle with and have to gradually develop over years without rising to his natural heights in it, which allows him to compare different languages' individual word meanings, in languages he has learned words from in a bilingual dictionary. However, this is low-level work. Real translating is much more than that, and I doubt with such a low IQ he can really do it.

[goraboniato]

Hi segismundo77, I was wondering whether you could possibly write the translation for me, because I don't understand it. Both the English and the Spanish one, please. I need it for a class presentation that is on Thursday, so the sooner the better, thanks so much!

Gora LAMS!

[Phunker1]

even if he ight make some mistakes, his abilities are still imensely impressive. Everone of us, who at some point has managed to speak at least a second language knows, what effort it was to aquire it. Being able to fit a mere 20 in one´s head is remarkable.

[stringy4life]

Christopher was right the first time, when he said "wants to" at 1:45 instead of will xD

[dnaland]

Linguistics question: Can all grammatically correct sentences qualify as logical?

watch?v=uCPfjyeB8kQ

[herrrob14]

According to UG theory, the acquisition of language has nothing to do with logic. But I don't know that I agree with that.

[sisidream]

Yes, I wish it was clearer.

[pixiemotion]

too bad about the sound quality..