Joanna
----- Original Message -----
From the interview I quoted earlier <http://www.nancho.net/advisors/chomsky.html
>:
[Q]: You spoke today under a banner reading Pax mundi per lingua ("World peace through languages"). How many languages do you think it is necessary for an individual to learn to planetize or at least deprovincialize the consciousness?
Dr. Noam Chomsky: I really don't think that's the right criterion. I mean there are people who know many, many languages who are monsters. And there are people who know one language who devote themselves selflessly and tirelessly to world peace. There's no doubt that first of all knowing a language in itself contributes very little to your conception of the nature of the human species and the need for human cooperation and so on. This would begin to happen if you know not just a language, but a language as part of a culture and part of a society. So you begin to gain richer perspectives and broader understanding. And that certainly is one contributing ... could be, could be - it need not be - but could be a contributory factor towards making a more sympathetic, understanding human being. But I don't think there's anything mechanical about it...
On Feb 23, 2012, at 10:09 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> ...I think that speaking more than [one] language greatly
> expands one's cognitive capacity, so including ability to speak more
> than one language in intelligence tests would have an interesting
> effect as white Anglo males would trail below people of color...
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