New excuse: atrophied right lobe
More Brain Power Needed for Mandarin Than English
Using brain scans on volunteers, Scott discovered that different areas of the brain are used to interpret words and intonation.
The left temporal lobe of the brain is active when English speakers hear the language but Mandarin speakers use the left and right lobe, which is normally used to process melody in music and speech.
Intonation is important in Mandarin because it gives different meanings to the same word. The word “ma” for example can mean mother, scold, horse or hemp, depending on the tone.
“We think Mandarin speakers interpret intonation and melody in the right temporal lobe to give the correct meaning to the spoken word,” Scott said in a statement.
She believes the research could provide insights into what happens when people are forced to re-learn speech comprehension following a stroke.
“It seems that the structure of the language you learn as a child affects how the structure of your brain develops to decode speech. Native English speakers, for example, find it extraordinarily difficult to learn Mandarin,” Scott said.
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I think Mandarin must also use the part of the brain that makes you believe in ghosts. That would explain alot. I also like to think that Scott they refer to in that article is Scott Hayes.
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I think mandarin is tired. Whenever I hear Jenny speak on the phone, it\’s always interspersed with english nouns, presumably because there are no mandarin equivalents. I couldn\’t rely on a language that doesn\’t have the words \”panties\” and \”hamburger\” in it (or am I thinking of japanese).
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Those specific examples, if memory serves, are from Japanese cartoons, but they do use lots of English when they talk to each other. Jenny\’s grandmother somehow gets by without using English though. I wonder how?
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Through the use of compound words, of course! The germans have mastered this technique for centuries.. when you don\’t know what to call something, simply keep concatenating words together until it resembles what you are describing. Examples: Computer – GlowGatesNumberBoxDevil. Spaghetti – ThinYumMommaMiaSticks. The list goes on.
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Actually comptuer in Chinese is 電腦 – Dian4 Nao3 – Electric Brain.