Re: specific languages, I think there’s a few ways to think about it.
In terms of “best for your brain” re:dementia, traumatic brain injury, etc:
I think the more different the better. So if your first language is synthetic, you should go with an analytic language and vice versa. In that same vein of thought, any language that has another alphabet and/or an entirely alternative writing system would be better too. Honourable mention also for sign languages, which combine additional motor skill practice on top of the linguistic and visual processing brain workout, and also everyone should know a bit of sign language anyway, because sometimes places are really loud or your throat is sore and it’s hard to talk.
So, Hindi, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Mongolian, Arabic, Greek, Russian, Javanese, ASL, etc.
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In terms of trying to intellectually “weaponize” languages:
Any language that can be very easily and comfortably associated with a specific mode of thought. E.g. If you were very interested in reading a lot of communist philosophy in the original Russian, and wanted to create a “communist “mode in your brain, or if you were very interested in learning to think more about theology and metaphysics (I personally think a lot of old metaphysics philosophical takes are going to start becoming much more useful in the near future with the rise of AI and hyperglobalization) and wanted to read a lot of Jewish philosophy in Hebrew, or old Catholic philosophy in Latin, Islamic philosophy in Arabic, etc.
The priority there is a language that has a very rich “backlog” of the thing you want to work with intellectually.
So that would be things like Latin, Arabic, Mandarin, Hebrew, Russian, German, Sanskrit, Spanish, French, etc.
One interesting note about the “mode” thing is that this is the one place where a language being dead might actually be a plus. But studying a dead language has its own drawbacks and is usually more demanding.
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In terms of trying to avoid being WEIRD / blinded by your own WEIRD-ness:
Native/Indigenous languages. Most languages considered “native”, and most languages that are predominantly spoken by populations that did not have a lot of industrialization 50 years ago generally, will still have a lot of the affectations, vocabulary, and other interesting features of their recent history, and will have a lot of stories, sayings, and associated modes of thought that are non-WEIRD.
So, Navajo, Cherokee, Igbo, Cree, Quechua, Maori, etc.
A lot of them are simply going to be missing the words for a lot of things, which means that in the process of translating something, you’ll have to reverse-engineer what the thing in question is and what you should call it, which I think is generally really good for intellectual rigour.
Personally I have no idea if this is a worthy use of the median EA’s time, but this is exactly the kind of interesting thinking I’d like to see.
Without asking for rigor at this particular time, do you think some languages are better than others for one or more of these outcomes?
Thanks!
Re: specific languages, I think there’s a few ways to think about it.
In terms of “best for your brain” re:dementia, traumatic brain injury, etc:
I think the more different the better. So if your first language is synthetic, you should go with an analytic language and vice versa. In that same vein of thought, any language that has another alphabet and/or an entirely alternative writing system would be better too. Honourable mention also for sign languages, which combine additional motor skill practice on top of the linguistic and visual processing brain workout, and also everyone should know a bit of sign language anyway, because sometimes places are really loud or your throat is sore and it’s hard to talk.
So, Hindi, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Mongolian, Arabic, Greek, Russian, Javanese, ASL, etc.
-
In terms of trying to intellectually “weaponize” languages:
Any language that can be very easily and comfortably associated with a specific mode of thought. E.g. If you were very interested in reading a lot of communist philosophy in the original Russian, and wanted to create a “communist “mode in your brain, or if you were very interested in learning to think more about theology and metaphysics (I personally think a lot of old metaphysics philosophical takes are going to start becoming much more useful in the near future with the rise of AI and hyperglobalization) and wanted to read a lot of Jewish philosophy in Hebrew, or old Catholic philosophy in Latin, Islamic philosophy in Arabic, etc.
The priority there is a language that has a very rich “backlog” of the thing you want to work with intellectually.
So that would be things like Latin, Arabic, Mandarin, Hebrew, Russian, German, Sanskrit, Spanish, French, etc.
One interesting note about the “mode” thing is that this is the one place where a language being dead might actually be a plus. But studying a dead language has its own drawbacks and is usually more demanding.
-
In terms of trying to avoid being WEIRD / blinded by your own WEIRD-ness:
Native/Indigenous languages. Most languages considered “native”, and most languages that are predominantly spoken by populations that did not have a lot of industrialization 50 years ago generally, will still have a lot of the affectations, vocabulary, and other interesting features of their recent history, and will have a lot of stories, sayings, and associated modes of thought that are non-WEIRD.
So, Navajo, Cherokee, Igbo, Cree, Quechua, Maori, etc.
A lot of them are simply going to be missing the words for a lot of things, which means that in the process of translating something, you’ll have to reverse-engineer what the thing in question is and what you should call it, which I think is generally really good for intellectual rigour.