LL-L "Language programming" 2009.01.10 (05) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 10 January 2009 - Volume 05
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language programming" 2009.01.10 (01) [E]

> From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
> Subject: LL-L "Language programming" 2009.01.09 (09) [E]
>
> give his telephone number as: 053 – 57 – 21 – 8, 3, 9. Go figure! Does
> this have anything to do with whether we say "zevenenvijftig" or
> "fifty seven"? How do people in other countries solve this? Is there
> anything known about how we arrive at the rythm for large numbers. I
> am not even speaking about the 16 digit credit cards that we are
> schlepping around with us.
>
> Does anybody have an answer to that question?

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language programming
>
> Jacqueline, Heather and the rest of you Lowlands lot,
>
> I may be way off here, but when it comes to memorizing and saying (and
> dialing) strings of numbers it seems to me that I use the same
> mechanisms I use when I memorize and recite poems and songs. It seems
> to be a matter of the combination of rhythm and sounds, probably
> specifically rhythm and vowels.
>
> Am I just weird or does anyone else share this perception?

Jacqueline and Ron,

A good way of seeing how other people deal with this is to search for
sites or forums run by people who memorise pi to thousands of decimal
places. They do seem to depend to a great extent on just reciting it
with some sort of rhythm.

Personally I have a tendency to visualise numbers to find them in my
memory, then I use the rhythm and sound to complete the number. For
example, the phone code for my area in Scotland is greenish-brown, which
makes me think of 7 and 8, from which I can use the rhythm to get 01875.

I tend to think of 7 as green, 5 as blue, 2 as yellow, 9 as black, 8 as
brown, 3 as red, 6 as grey and 4 as light brown. Zero seems light or
soft somehow, while 1 seems heavy or indents the background. This isn't
a deliberate scheme devised for memory, it's just how I've come to think
of these things.

In my work, we often use forms or database records with reference
numbers for engineering error logs and suchlike. If a problem is
persistent, it's not unusual for people to start naturally referring to
it by its number rather than it's title. Thus there may be a discussion
about "Observation 24963" and "24740", so that my interpreter has no
clue what everybody's talking about! But it does show that if a long
number is associated with a meaning and used frequently in conversation,
it "sinks in" quite easily, almost as if it had become a word. "24963"
becomes as easy as Raxacoricofallapatorius :)

Apart from those that sink in naturally, I find I almost never bother to
memorise numbers at all. If I know a long number, it's because I've used
it so much it's just sunk in.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Numeralia" 2009.01.10 (02) [E]

> From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Numeralia"

> Re Bushmen, I was somewhat wrong, they happen to count to four (not
> three) and then say many. Maybe their system matches the five fingers
> of one hand, with which they may want to sign those numbers. Btw, the
> Chinese use the fingers of one hand to show numbers from one to ten.
> With five fingers you could theoretically code 2^5 (= 32) numbers in
> one go; with both your hands even 1024.

Yes, I wonder what's really behind this though? I doubt if I'd try to
steal a cow from an owner of nine cows just because he uses this
counting system: my guess is that he knows how many cows he's got and
probably there is a way of expressing "nine cows" in his language!

Really, we need someone who knows the language properly to answer these
questions. I wonder if it's like in English where you can say "once",
"twice", "thrice" and then you're stuck? But you can still say "four
times", "five times" and so on. Not having a word for something doesn't
mean you can't say it.

In English you can say, with one word:

one, two, three, four... (until the numeration system splits into
separate words).

once, twice, thrice, four times... nine times.

first, second, third, fourth... (until the numeration system splits into
separate words).

In British Sign Language you can sign, with one sign:

one, two, three, four... (until the numeration system splits into
separate words).

once, twice, thrice, fourth... tenth (or so, depending on dialect).

one more, two more, three more... nine more.

one year old, two years old, three years old... (until the numeration
system splits into separate words).

one pound sterling, two pounds sterling, three pounds sterling... (until
the numeration system splits into separate words).

yesterday, two days ago, three days ago, four days ago.

tomorrow, in two days time, in three days time, in four days time.

last year, two years ago, three years ago... ten years ago.

next year, in a years time, in two years time... in ten years time.

----------

From: M.-L. Lessing <marless at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2009.01.09 (07) [E]

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2009.01.09 (01) [E]

When I was a habitual observer I could also tell people where planets
and stars were by full daylight. It's not that I could actually see them
(except for the moon), it's that I was so used to the rhythms in the sky
I just knew where they were whether I could see them or not.

I suspect therefore that this is yet another case of "the natives"
playing tricks on unsuspecting anthropologists  :)

This is a fine idea, Sandy! It may have been astronomy rather than
perception!



Yes, it's possible. Anyone who studies maths to university level will
tell you that all sorts of new ideas can be learned: imaginary numbers,
countable and uncountable infinities, topological spaces and so on,
although there's nothing in any natural language to describe many of the
features that you learn in mathematics. In physics you ultimately get
that General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics seem to make sense,
despite the more difficult bits being not actually well understood by
anybody yet.

So human thinking *is* limited because of language, or is it the other way
round? What is "well understood"? That which is pictured, brought into our
tangible reach. By analogy, by metaphor, by "model". I studied physics,
being anything but a natural talent. I found several concepts of math and
physics hard to imagine, and at some point I just said to myself: "Come on,
this is abstract. Just do not try to visualize it. You know how it works,
you can work with it. That's enough." I felt that at that moment I somehow
lost interest in the phenomenon. A stimulus was gone. Likewise, it was an
almost physical joy to really comprehend (german: begreifen = touch!) a
phenomenon, bring it into my "world of objects".



Even that joy of comprehension can be learned, I know; mathematicians feel
it when the find solutions in their abstract world. For me it was always
difficult to let go of the figurative. I felt limited by this stone age
heritage very much and often grew impatient with myself. -- By the way, my
finest moment was when I really succeeded in seeing a 3D cube as a
projection of a 4D cube into 3D :-)) I "saw" the 4D cube. It lasted ca. 20
seconds and never returned. But my brain could do it at that time, thanks to
training.



I think there's also too much importance assigned to the power of
natural language. Much of the power comes not from the words or grammar
of the language but from metaphor. Natural languages often don't
describe abstract concepts directly, but use metaphor to talk about
abstractions in terms of something more concrete. Generally, if your
language doesn't have a way of talking about a thing and people really
need to talk about it, a metaphor will be created rather than new syntax
or grammar.

This idea comforts me a little. So you think humans can perceive abstract
things in principle independently of language, and language is dragged
behind? So there is more reality in things than in language? -- And a
metaphor is just a projection of strange (not necessarily abstract) things
into the known world of objects, hm? To see the 4D cube... (oh, this is a
metaphor here...)



I think that this means that ultimately it doesn't matter what tools
your language provides you with, there are other ways of putting across
you want to say.



Hmmmm... everything?



Hartlich!



Marlou
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