"More Brain Power Needed for Mandarin Than English"

[Laura Miller]

The study Hal refers to was from a book by Tadanobu Tsunoda, entitled "Nihonjin no no: No no hataraki to tozai no bunka" (1978), it was later translated and published as "The Japanese Brain, Uniqueness and Universality" (Translated by Yoshinori Oiwa, Tokyo, Japan: Taishukan Publishing Company, 1985). Tsunoda is an otolaryngologist who made up an odd "tapping method" to determine which hemisphere of the brain processes sounds and language. He claimed that Japanese process some sounds, especially music and natural sounds such as insect chips, differently than Westerners, thereby making them more in tune with nature. He doesn't claim that the Japanese brain is superior, or that the difference is genetic, just that it develops in a different way because of the "unique"  nature of the Japanese language. The book was awful science, but the Japanese reading public loved it! It made the bestseller list and went through several reprintings. Tsunoda and his perplexing brain testing ap!
paratus are featured in a short vignette in the film Sukiyaki & Chips: The Japanese Sounds of Music.


>>> "Harold F. Schiffman" <haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu> 07/01/03 08:07 AM >>>
This business reminds me of claims made years ago, and reported by Roy
Andrew Miller in his book "Japan's Modern Myth: the Language and Beyond"
that Japanese also supposedly used different parts of the brain, and
therefore was cognitively different from every other language on earth.
Miller tried to show that this was part of Japanese agendas to show some
kind of deep cultural superiority of the Japanese; at least it was
'racist' (covertly maybe).  The "research" done in Japan even showed that
Japanese Americans did not use the same parts of their brains as did
Japanese speaking Japanese, etc. etc.  Supposedly this also had to do with
the difference in writing, and it explained (as Peter points out for
Chinese) why the Japanese have such difficulty learning other languages.

Hal Schiffman

On Tue, 1 Jul 2003, Patrick, Peter L wrote:

> i haven't seen more than the news items, which are obviously badly reported
> by Reuters, the BBC and the Guardian (eg English speakers use "half their minds")--
> those supposedly intellectually-superior organs of the British press...
> (not that i can see much evidence for that, as a regular reader!)
>
> Eg, the inference that Mandarin is "harder to learn" than English appears to derive
> from an off-the-cuff remark the researcher made about adult SLA of Chinese by
> English speakers -- not from any research reported. And the "long-held theories"
> that this "overturns" are not described or identified.
>
> While it's nice when research confirm things one suspects, there doesn't
> appear to be anything else new here -- certainly not the speculation that lexical
> tone involves music-like properties -- you have to wonder what it is that
> made the researchers (psychologists, apparently) "very surprised"!
>
> Rudi's point is well-taken. The BBC online illustrated this with a picture of a
> repressive-looking Chinese soldier making a "Stop!" gesture in Tiananmen Square.
> What picture would have been used if it WERE about Yoruba speakers? Or, god forbid,
> about Deaf native signers? (though that research would be interesting to hear about...)
>
> 	-p-
> Peter L Patrick
> Dept of Language and Linguistics
> University of Essex
> patrickp at essex.ac.uk
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Gaudio, Rudolf [mailto:Rudolf.Gaudio at purchase.edu]
> > Sent: 30 June 2003 22:33
> > To: 'linganth at cc.rochester.edu '
> > Subject: "More Brain Power Needed for Mandarin Than English"
> >
> >
> > More Brain Power Needed for Mandarin Than English
> > http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030630/hl_
> > nm/brain_langu
> > age_dc_2
> >
> > The link above is to a news story about some recently published
> > neurolinguistic research that found that Mandarin-speaking
> > listeners used
> > both sides of their brains to perceive & interpret Mandarin
> > speech, whereas
> > English speakers used only the left side to process English
> > speech.  This
> > has apparently set off a lot of buzz about how Mandarin (or
> > "Chinese") is
> > harder to learn than English is.
> >
> > Is anyone familiar with this research?  I can't help but
> > wonder whether, if
> > similar results were obtained in a study comparing, say,
> > Yoruba and English
> > speakers, the media buzz would be the same.
> >
> > Rudi
> >
> >
>
>