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The process you describe is effectively translation. This works with natural languages as well.

• kazinator 10y ago
  The process I describe of installing a translation method in seconds, bringing about instant understanding, doesn't work with natural languages.
  • mablap 10y ago
    Just because it takes more time does not mean the process is fundamentally different.
    • kazinator 10y ago
      Right, it's fundamentally different for other reasons. For one thing, no two "installations" of a natural language are identical. The natural language learning process isn't like loading a program into a machine, but a "reverse engineering": forming a refined set of hypotheses about what the rules are, from examples. Thus after years of learning, still no two competent, even native speakers will agree about all the fine points of what they learned. By contrast, we can easily install the same version of a programming language interpreter/compiler and run-time onto countless machines and get the same behavior. The machines do not have to guess what the language is by forming hypotheses and testing them against more competent "speakers", to obtain either approval or correction. They just receive a ready-made software image. In essence, a million installations of the same programming language are just manifestations of one image, whereas a million speakers of a language are individuals (not just as people, but as speakers of that language). If people could receive a language as an image dumped into the brain, it would be a game-changer. It would still be a game changer even if it took five years to complete, rather than an hour. It would make fledgling languages more viable. Because languages are hard to learn and even harder to learn very well, people tend not to be so interested in fledgling languages that can't be used outside of a small locale with a small number of speakers. Not as a second language, that's for sure.
      • mablap 10y ago
        You're right of course, and this is precisely why preserving languages is important. They are loaded with knowledge, and passing around this knowledge is time consuming, hard, or sometimes unfeasible if not enough speakers still live :)
        • kazinator 10y ago
          Languages contain pseudo-knowledge consisting of a set of conventions that people made up. They have no external value. I'm not comfortable with the idea that something which pops into my head today represents a burden for future generations to preserve, who will have perfectly good heads of their own into which similar stuff can pop just as well. Linguists require specimens of languages to study so that we can understand language. But we have more than enough non-dying languages to keep linguists busy.