Language Myths

[JT]

Perhaps they are gaining ground—I don't have the historical data to show one way or the other, though. But I do know that I never see them in edited works like newspapers or books. As long as that is the case, they'll be considered marginal at best.

But wouldn't those two be the last places you would see reformist spellings?

How about alright?  Do you see that one in newspapers, cause I do?

[Jonathon]

But wouldn't those two be the last places you would see reformist spellings?

I don't think so. Most of our American spelling reforms came from Noah Webster, a dictionary maker—hardly a grassroots campaign. I think that a newspaper in Chicago tried using thru and nite early in the 1900s, but they gave up on it a little while later. In most countries, spelling reform comes from the top down—some sort of government organization. I'm just speculating, but I imagine you'd see them show up first in edited, published works and then trickle down to ordinary people.

How about alright?  Do you see that one in newspapers, cause I do?

I don't know if I've seen it in newspapers. Maybe I have, but I don't remember. I know it does show up sometimes. I use it myself, even though (and sometimes because) it makes Rivka wince.

[Primal Curve]

Trickle-Down Spellonomics!

[Porter]

While reading, I keep running into situations where they present evidence, and then pull out of a hat a conclusion that, as far as I can tell, is not supported from the evidence they've presented.  It makes it look like they've been looking for evidence to support their conclusion instead of forming conclusions based on the evidence, but I suppose that it might just be that each one of these essays is really short and there just isn't enough space to really develop their arguments.  Also, it might be that if they really developed their arguments, it would be way over my head.  Nevertheless, these essays do not inspire confidence in me for their arguments nor their methods.

----

Minor nitpick.  In the chapter about whether some languages are harder to learn than others, it says that since writing systems and spelling are considered "outisde" language, they won't be considered, since it's possible to switch from one writing system to a completely different one without changing the language.  This is a convincing point, except for the fact that one of the earlier chapters in this same book about language was all about spelling.  It made me wonder if  they didn't want to include that aspect of language in this chapter because it doesn't support their conclusion.

I'm not convinced that is the case, however, because the chapter does continue to show some ways in which certain languages are easier to learn than others.  Maybe they didn't address writing systems because there wasn't enough space to do so, and just gave a lame excuse.

------

I've probably been more annoyed by the chapter "Do Women Talk Too Much?"  First of all, that hardly seems like a question that linguists are uniquely qualified to answer, but we'll let that slide.

First they produced evidence that it's actually men who talk more in relatively formal settings such as board room meetings, classrooms, discussions created to talk about specific subjects, etc..  Then we get this quote:

So on this evidence we must conclude that the stereotype of the garrulous woman reflects sexist prejudice rather than objective reality.

Well, that very well may be the case, but there's no way you can conclude that from the evidence you've shown.  The stereotype of the talkative woman (which really seems to be a thing from from generations past, in my experience) is mostly centered around familiar, informal settings such as within the family.  So far you've only discussed  relatively formal settings where type-A personalities tend to dominate talking time.  Let's not be so quick to play the sexism card, OK?

Only after making that conclusion does it even bring up the idea of talking in less formal settings.  No surprise here, but it turns out that women talk more in informal, relaxed settings.  

The book makes sure to mention, though that "men still talked more in nearly a third of these informal studies".  Why do they say that men talk more in nearly a third of these studies instead of saying that women talk more in over two-thirds of these studies?  I suspect it's because that would make it sound like they were supporting an obviously sexist and wrong myth.

Later, they made a truly fascinating point that people's perception of how much women talk in semi-formal situations is drastically skewed -- women can be talking  less them men as far as time lengths are concerned, but the perception will be that women are taking up more time than the men.  Fascinating stuff -- tell me more!

Then they say:

In other words, if women talk at all, this may be perceived as 'too much' by men who expect them to provide a silent, decorative background in many social contexts.

o_O.  That didn't seem called for.

[Jonathon]

Like I said before (though this was a little while back), I was rather disappointed with the book as a whole. Some chapters were good, but most were a little weak, and at least a few were pretty bad. The thing that saved it for me was that I could fill in some of those holes with stuff I learned in class. But since the book is intended for non-linguists, it kind of fails in that regard.

Some Languages Are Harder Than Others
There is at least a little truth to this one, especially if you take writing systems into account. It does make it easier to set aside writing (which is artificial and in many ways distinct from spoken language) and just consider the spoken language. The reality is that for most people around the world, it's easier to learn a language that's close to your own. That's why it's easy for English speakers to learn Spanish, French, or German, harder for us to learn Russian or Hindi, and harder still to learn Finnish or Dyirbal or Cree.

Some people say that it's false to say that one language is more complex than another, but this is not entirely true. Creoles, which are full-fledged languages that arise from pidgins, are rather simple in their syntax and inflectional systems. Complexity in those systems usually arises over time, and creoles just haven't been around long enough to have accumulated all those little grammatical oddities.

Also, languages that are very widely spoken tend to lose some of their rough edges, while languages that are spoken only by a village or tribe tend to hang on to those difficult aspects. In the book I'm reading right now, John McWhorter's The Power of Babel, he says that speakers of Cree are still putting the finishing touches on learning the grammar at age 10. For most people worldwide, they've got the spoken grammar down by age 5. It's just a matter of learning vocabulary from that point on.

A while back on Hatrack, Lalo said something about how if aliens came down to Earth, they'd learn Spanish first because it's the easiest, most logical language. It's precisely this sort of statement that the chapter is trying to refute. Spanish may have a very simple phonology and mostly regular spelling, but it still has grammatical gender and a boatload of verbal inflections. But for the most part, for most people, the difficulty in learning a language depends on how close it is to your native language.

[Brinestone]

When we were hiking in Zion National Park, we ran into some people from Denmark. We mostly spoke to the twenty-something man (I'm guessing his English was better than the woman's . . . his mother's?). He said that he knew German as well as English. I don't remember how it came up, but he said that English had been much easier for him to learn because we often have a word for a concept that would take a phrase to say in German (and some other languages he spoke). I wouldn't have thought this would make the language easier to learn, but apparently it did for him.

Aren't German and Danish more closely related than English and Danish? Do you have any input on this little anecdote, Jonathon?

[Jonathon]

Women Talk Too Much
First off, for a really thorough and fascinating treatment of this subject, I'd highly recommend Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand. It's also written for a general audience, but she goes into a lot more depth and detail than the chapter in Language Myths. The only problem I saw with it is that she uses a lot of examples from literature, but most of her examples come from real life, so it doesn't weaken her point too much.

The myth in its canonical form is that men use 7,000 words a day and that women use 20,000 (the numbers may vary in different versions, but women always use between two and three times as many). These numbers were apparently fabricated out of thin air.

The truth is that on average, there aren't very significant differences between how much men and women talk. I don't remember what the book says, but I suspect that many of those studies showed that they're about equal, not that women talk more in two-thirds of them.

Remind me, is there an example in there about a teacher who felt like he was spending 90 percent of his time just trying to get the girls to talk 50 percent of the time? Or did I read that elsewhere. 'Cause that was pretty eye-opening, I think. There definitely is a perception that women talk too much, and it's still alive and well today.

There have also been a bunch of Language Log posts on this subject (in response to a horrible pop pseudo-science book called The Female Brain. They're more technical than either the Language Myths chapter or You Just Don't Understand, but that's mostly because they use a lot of statistics, not because they use a lot of linguistic terminology (if I remember right, anyway). I can dig up some links to some of the better posts on the topic if you'd like.

[Jonathon]

When we were hiking in Zion National Park, we ran into some people from Denmark. We mostly spoke to the twenty-something man (I'm guessing his English was better than the woman's . . . his mother's?). He said that he knew German as well as English. I don't remember how it came up, but he said that English had been much easier for him to learn because we often have a word for a concept that would take a phrase to say in German (and some other languages he spoke). I wouldn't have thought this would make the language easier to learn, but apparently it did for him.

Aren't German and Danish more closely related than English and Danish? Do you have any input on this little anecdote, Jonathon?

Nope. Not really, anyway. Danish is a North Germanic Language, while English and German are West Germanic. English does have a fairly significant North Germanic influence due to the Viking invasions during the late Old English period, though. But German is a historically conservative language, while English is a much more liberal one. I don't know where Danish falls.

But I don't know how much this plays into what he said or if it does at all. I know hardly anything about Danish, so I have no idea whether it'd be easier for a Danish speaker to learn German or English.

[Porter]

Remind me, is there an example in there about a teacher who felt like he was spending 90 percent of his time just trying to get the girls to talk 50 percent of the time? Or did I read that elsewhere. 'Cause that was pretty eye-opening, I think. There definitely is a perception that women talk too much, and it's still alive and well today.

Yes -- this is the part that where I responded "Tell me more!".  Here's the passage from the book:

Another study reported that a male science teacher who managed to create an atmosphere in which girls and boys contributed more equally to discussion felt that he was devoting 90% of his attention to the girls.  And so did his male pupils.  They complained vociferously that the girls were getting too much talking time.

I'd like to know more specifics about this.  Were the boys trying to participate more than the girls were, so that when a boy raised his hand, he had a very low chance of being called to speak, but a girl raising her hand had a very high chance of being called on?  I can see how that could produce a skewed perception of how much attention the two groups were given, without it necessarily being attributed to sexism.

Yes, I'd love it if you'd dig up those links for me.

[Jonathon]

For starters, here are all the posts that mention the author of The Female Brain, Louann Brizendine. I'll go through them later and pick out the better ones.

[rivka]

How about alright?  Do you see that one in newspapers, cause I do?

I don't know if I've seen it in newspapers. Maybe I have, but I don't remember. I know it does show up sometimes. I use it myself, even though (and sometimes because) it makes Rivka wince.

   

[Porter]

I'm reading Mother Tongue.  Parts of it are interesting, but his sources are almost always articles written by other journalists, so he perpetuates language myths that other journalists have stated as fact.

The worst part of it is that the audio book is read by somebody with the most insufferable snobby British accent I've ever heard.  I know that prejudice isn't pretty, but there it is.

[Porter]

Oh, and I finished Language Myths.  Thanks.  There were some good parts and some bad parts, but it was worth reading.

Let me quickly share one more chapter which bugged me -- it was the one bout the myth that Appalachians speak Elizabethan English.

Now, on the face of it, this is absurd for many reasons, which the book communicates very well.  First, language doesn't stop changing for any group, even if they're cut off from the rest of society.  Second, the settlers of Appalachia didn't even speak Elizabethan English anymore.

So far so good.

But then the chapter spent pages railing about the fact that people keep claiming the myth as true even though there haven't been any studies to back up their claim.

But then it admits that there are no studies which show that Appalachians don't speak Elizabethan English, since it is obvious to all linguists that the myth is false.  

Which means that the author is committing the very same sin that he berates others for.

---
This chapter is also an example of a problem that occurred repeatedly in the book -- they'd set up an extreme, strawmanish version of the myth and debunk that, while it would be much more interesting to look and see what, if any, truth there is to the myth.

[Jonathon]

Oh, and I finished Language Myths.  Thanks.  There were some good parts and some bad parts, but it was worth reading.

Let me quickly share one more chapter which bugged me -- it was the one bout the myth that Appalachians speak Elizabethan English.

Now, on the face of it, this is absurd for many reasons, which the book communicates very well.  First, language doesn't stop changing for any group, even if they're cut off from the rest of society.  Second, the settlers of Appalachia didn't even speak Elizabethan English anymore.

Not only this, but the ancestors of the settlers of the Appalachians never spoke the same dialect as Elizabeth and Shakespeare. They came from a different part of England.

So far so good.

But then the chapter spent pages railing about the fact that people keep claiming the myth as true even though there haven't been any studies to back up their claim.

But then it admits that there are no studies which show that Appalachians don't speak Elizabethan English, since it is obvious to all linguists that the myth is false. 

Which means that the author is committing the very same sin that he berates others for.

I don't remember the chapter in detail, because it was about four and a half months ago that I read it, but I don't remember seeing this as much of a problem. If someone makes a claim with very little supporting evidence, and the claim is easily debunked with a handful of facts, then do you really need to do a study to prove that the claim is false? Also, I'm not so sure that there have never been studies on the issue, but I haven't really looked into it.

This chapter is also an example of a problem that occurred repeatedly in the book -- they'd set up an extreme, strawmanish version of the myth and debunk that, while it would be much more interesting to look and see what, if any, truth there is to the myth.

This does sum up the problems with the book pretty well. One of the worse examples that springs to mind is the "some languages have no grammar" chapter. Total strawman. The same idea was covered infinitely better in The Power of Babel.

[Porter]

This chapter is also an example of a problem that occurred repeatedly in the book -- they'd set up an extreme, strawmanish version of the myth and debunk that, while it would be much more interesting to look and see what, if any, truth there is to the myth.

This does sum up the problems with the book pretty well. One of the worse examples that springs to mind is the "some languages have no grammar" chapter. Total strawman. The same idea was covered infinitely better in The Power of Babel.

While I've nitpicked about some other issues I've had, I agree that this is the big one.  I wonder if it's a consequence of the format they chose -- debunking common language myths.  If they choose a version of a myth that's not debunkable, then they've "failed".

[Jonathon]

I don't think so. I think the same topics could've been covered better—better supporting facts, better arguments, and so on.