Re: Language and Logic

[palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)]

> A speculation: I wonder if the general lack of explicit grammatical
> structure in English as compared to many other languages affects English
> speakers' ability to take in complicated sentences. It's very noticeable to
> me that my Italian/German/Hungarian/Croatian... students (whose languages
> are strongly inflected) seem better at digesting high register technical
> English than their English-speaking peers. In fact, I sometimes have to
> complicate what I'm saying in order to be understood! A difficult question
> to research as one can think of so many auxiliary hypotheses, but
> interesting to me.

Your experience should suggest that properly constructed English is at
least as competent to convey meaning as any other language*. Our students
have become accustomed to very sloppy English; that is more likely the
source of the problem. In our university students are not required to
take a foreign language to graduate, though almost all of them have done
so in high school (well, French anyway - which is a foreign language for
practical purposes here in BC). As nearly as I can tell from observing
my own children's schooling here they received most of their grammatical
training at home, including such basics as identifying parts of speech!
Somehow that topic has been soft pedalled in the BC English curriculum.

Children are not taught to prize language arts in school. I think that
is a great pity, and a shame. The English language is surely the greatest
intellectual gift we confer upon our children. We should be encouraging
them not to abuse it. The best way to do so is by example. After all,
that is the way we gave it to them in the first place.

Leigh

*Properly constructed language may be properly construed. (I just thought
of that,)