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Learning languages like these feels like the premise of Arrival(2016) where learning a new language expands the way you think about and solve problems. I'm tril

Learning languages like these feels like the premise of Arrival(2016) where learning a new language expands the way you think about and solve problems. I'm trilingual like most Indian people but I suspect learning languages like Japanese or Mandarin which use a different, pictorial way of representing words would be a similar way to improve cognition.

jallmann 4y ago
Try one of the sign languages. Not sure where you are located, but many countries have their own, including India.
teddyh 4y ago
LISP is worth learning for a different reason – the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot. (You can get some beginning experience with LISP fairly easily by writing and modifying editing modes for the Emacs text editor, or Script-Fu plugins for the GIMP.) It’s best, actually, to learn all five of Python, C/C++, Perl, and LISP. Besides being the most important hacking languages, they represent very different approaches to programming, and each will educate you in valuable ways. http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1 http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1
- jacquesm 4y ago
  May I suggest adding PROLOG to that list? Or Erlang, for yet another different take on programming.
- proper_elb 4y ago
  This would be my 2023 list: Python, C, LISP, Fortran, Haskell, Prolog, SmallTalk. Also likely Rust, it might replace C in my list and is quite similar to Haskell in some ways, particularly when it comes to turning runtime errors to compile time error.
  - macintux 4y ago
    + Erlang (or Elixir if you must)
- bmitc 4y ago
  > LISP is worth learning for a different reason – the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. I like Lisp (or rather Scheme and Racket), but I have never understood this perspective. The only thing I can think of that Common Lisp does truly uniquely is its condition system. I feel like something like Prolog is much more profound in the way that it reshapes how to think about programming.
  - teddyh 4y ago
    What LISP has, uniquely, is its macro system which, unlike text-based macro system like C, operate on the abstract syntax tree level.
    - jacobmartin 4y ago
      For sure. Additionally, the syntax of lisp also makes these AST macros ergonomic and, in many cases, beautiful. Rust has AST-transforming macros, but they're harder to use because the syntax is more complex. They're also quite ugly.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - bmitc 4y ago
      Is that enlightening though? For example, Common Lisp, Scheme, Racket, Clojure, Elixir, and Prolog all have abstract syntax tree macro systems that all differ from one another. And I would argue that macros should, in general, be avoided. They can be very enabling though to extend the given language when used with constraint and moderation.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    prolog is another step that's for sure but lisp is the gateway drug the emphasis on thin syntax, homoiconicity is really no joke to me. I'm finishing queinnec's l.i.s.p but writing some of it in python and using OO requires so many layers and layers to reacreate what is mostly various sexp trees it puts away a lot of sequential imperative, replaced by functional/function oriented, it may look trivial today but it's been like this since the 70s and about CL/CLOS, one could mention the MOP, the multimethod+combinations too
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  Though I'm not a Rust fanatic, I will say that spending time programming in Rust has made me a better C++ programmer.
haolez 4y ago
I've had an unexpected epiphany when I dug deeply into Makefiles. For some reason, its spreadsheet-like logic clicked with me an influenced my programs elsewhere.
culi 4y ago
you're mixing up language and orthography. For most of human history orthographies were secondary and words were not a symbol or set of symbols In addition, there's plenty of logographic, syllabic, and alternative English orthographies[0] you can try out if you think the orthography itself is what has a cognitive benefit. Blissymbolics[1] is a well-known historically important one to check out though it's more of an auxlang orthography than English-specific. Some even make them for fun![2] You might also be interested in shorthands (e.g. Gregg or Pitman) which are phonemic [0] https://omniglot.com/conscripts/english.htm https://omniglot.com/conscripts/english.htm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/3pfp9o/lets_see_your_alternate_english_orthographies/ https://old.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/3pfp9o/lets_see_y...
adastra22 4y ago
> I'm trilingual like most Indian people but I suspect learning languages like Japanese or Mandarin which use a different, pictorial way of representing words would be a similar way to improve cognition. The writing system for Chinese or Japanese isn't as different as you are probably thinking. It's certainly not pictorial. I think Chinese and Japanese (but especially Chinese) do think about words differently due to their writing system, but it's a much more subtle effect. Probably the larger mind-bending effect of learning a language like Japanese (in my experience) is the fact that its grammar is so radically different from Indo-European languages (and Chinese). Far more interesting to speculate about, I think, is if we could create a non-linear written language taking advantage of the two dimensional property of paper/screens to write things which aren't forcibly constrained to the 1D nature of speech.
- skissane 4y ago
  > Far more interesting to speculate about, I think, is if we could create a non-linear written language taking advantage of the two dimensional property of paper/screens to write things which aren't forcibly constrained to the 1D nature of speech. I think the problem is that human language is inherently one-dimensional. Spoken language involves a temporal succession of sounds, words, sentences. Even sign languages, while the signs may be 2D, there is still a 1D temporal succession of distinct signs. Real texts involve certain limited escapes from one-dimensionality – footnotes, hypertext (which exists even in printed books, with the table of contents, index, "see page 123"), etc – but, still they are only limited deviations from the essentially 1D nature of human language. SignWriting is interesting as a way of writing sign language by using pictorial symbols for each sign, as opposed to using the written form of a spoken language text – but SignWriting is like the CJK languages, they may be 2D at the micro-level of individual characters, but at the macro-level texts are still fundamentally 1D. If you could invent a truly 2D language, I doubt the human brain would be capable of processing it. Maybe some AI might become fluent in it, but no human ever could. But even software is predominantly 1D – memory is fundamentally a 1D array of numbers, and in some ways it has been becoming more 1D over time (witness the triumph of flat address spaces over memory segmentation) – which makes me think it might be less than entirely natural even for an AI.
bitwize 4y ago
Chinese characters (including kanji in Japanese and hanja in Korean) started off as pictographs but mutated over time, becoming so abstract they're probably better thought of as ideographs. One way in which Japanese may more profoundly affect your thinking is -- Japanese has completely different registers and even entirely different vocabularies depending on whether you are talking to an inferior, an equal or a superior, or someone from your ingroup or outgroup (and these may change depending on the situation!). Proper use of Japanese language -- proper functioning in Japanese society -- requires a sort of constant situational awareness of your social position with regard to the people you are talking to[0]. Given the similarly hierarchical nature of Indian society, I think it may be easier for an Indian to acclimate to this social awareness than, say, an American or Brit... but spending years in Japan may cause a Westerner to become more socially aware than when they first arrived! [0] The phenomenon of otaku and hikikomori is explainable in such terms: Japanese people with high-functioning autism and other social deficits would, ceteris paribus, be at a greater disadvantage than Westerners in their own societies, so their tendency to withdraw and to pursue hobbies they can engage in largely solo would be much greater. The word "otaku" came from the tendency of such people to address each other always in the most formal terms to overcautiously avoid causing offense.
Pompidou 4y ago
What about hungarian language? It's like if it was created by some programmer or mathematician.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I've had people that they like the ontological orientation of Mandarin, not so much the fact that the "words" are pictoral but the way they are combined systematically.
  - Pompidou 4y ago
    It raises the question of the (eventual) link between the grammar of 'spoken' language and our habilty to think the world. I personnaly think almost every human natural languages have the power to express almost everything with the help of circumlocution.
  - watermelon59 4y ago
    I’ve been learning it for over a year because I want to be able to speak to my wife in her native language. So far I’m loving to learn it for the exact reason you said, the way sentences are pieces together is outright fun to me. I’m also amazed by how much information can be packed in a small combination of characters.
- omeysalvi 4y ago
  I've heard about how difficult Hungarian grammar is. The closest analog I can think of is Sanskrit which we had to study for a few years in school. They're still discovering more things about the language that were lost for thousands of years: https://www.popsci.com/science/sanskrit-puzzle-2500-years-old/?amp https://www.popsci.com/science/sanskrit-puzzle-2500-years-ol...
  - Pompidou 4y ago
    I remember also when I was studying philosophy. The amount of non consensual traduction and interpretation from ancient greek is amazing. Ans what about the Επιούσιον case. I agree with you : hungarian is maybe some contemporary equivalent of the great language from the past such as latin, greek or sanskrit, in regard of scientific thinking. Nevertheless, its a agglutinative language, and the logic behind is different.

jallmann 4y ago

Try one of the sign languages. Not sure where you are located, but many countries have their own, including India.

teddyh 4y ago

LISP is worth learning for a different reason – the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot. (You can get some beginning experience with LISP fairly easily by writing and modifying editing modes for the Emacs text editor, or Script-Fu plugins for the GIMP.) It’s best, actually, to learn all five of Python, C/C++, Perl, and LISP. Besides being the most important hacking languages, they represent very different approaches to programming, and each will educate you in valuable ways. http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1 http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1

jacquesm 4y ago
May I suggest adding PROLOG to that list? Or Erlang, for yet another different take on programming.
proper_elb 4y ago
This would be my 2023 list: Python, C, LISP, Fortran, Haskell, Prolog, SmallTalk. Also likely Rust, it might replace C in my list and is quite similar to Haskell in some ways, particularly when it comes to turning runtime errors to compile time error.
- macintux 4y ago
  + Erlang (or Elixir if you must)
bmitc 4y ago
> LISP is worth learning for a different reason – the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. I like Lisp (or rather Scheme and Racket), but I have never understood this perspective. The only thing I can think of that Common Lisp does truly uniquely is its condition system. I feel like something like Prolog is much more profound in the way that it reshapes how to think about programming.
- teddyh 4y ago
  What LISP has, uniquely, is its macro system which, unlike text-based macro system like C, operate on the abstract syntax tree level.
  - jacobmartin 4y ago
    For sure. Additionally, the syntax of lisp also makes these AST macros ergonomic and, in many cases, beautiful. Rust has AST-transforming macros, but they're harder to use because the syntax is more complex. They're also quite ugly.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bmitc 4y ago
    Is that enlightening though? For example, Common Lisp, Scheme, Racket, Clojure, Elixir, and Prolog all have abstract syntax tree macro systems that all differ from one another. And I would argue that macros should, in general, be avoided. They can be very enabling though to extend the given language when used with constraint and moderation.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  prolog is another step that's for sure but lisp is the gateway drug the emphasis on thin syntax, homoiconicity is really no joke to me. I'm finishing queinnec's l.i.s.p but writing some of it in python and using OO requires so many layers and layers to reacreate what is mostly various sexp trees it puts away a lot of sequential imperative, replaced by functional/function oriented, it may look trivial today but it's been like this since the 70s and about CL/CLOS, one could mention the MOP, the multimethod+combinations too
jvanderbot 4y ago
Though I'm not a Rust fanatic, I will say that spending time programming in Rust has made me a better C++ programmer.

haolez 4y ago

I've had an unexpected epiphany when I dug deeply into Makefiles. For some reason, its spreadsheet-like logic clicked with me an influenced my programs elsewhere.

culi 4y ago

you're mixing up language and orthography. For most of human history orthographies were secondary and words were not a symbol or set of symbols In addition, there's plenty of logographic, syllabic, and alternative English orthographies[0] you can try out if you think the orthography itself is what has a cognitive benefit. Blissymbolics[1] is a well-known historically important one to check out though it's more of an auxlang orthography than English-specific. Some even make them for fun![2] You might also be interested in shorthands (e.g. Gregg or Pitman) which are phonemic [0] https://omniglot.com/conscripts/english.htm https://omniglot.com/conscripts/english.htm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/3pfp9o/lets_see_your_alternate_english_orthographies/ https://old.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/3pfp9o/lets_see_y...

adastra22 4y ago

> I'm trilingual like most Indian people but I suspect learning languages like Japanese or Mandarin which use a different, pictorial way of representing words would be a similar way to improve cognition. The writing system for Chinese or Japanese isn't as different as you are probably thinking. It's certainly not pictorial. I think Chinese and Japanese (but especially Chinese) do think about words differently due to their writing system, but it's a much more subtle effect. Probably the larger mind-bending effect of learning a language like Japanese (in my experience) is the fact that its grammar is so radically different from Indo-European languages (and Chinese). Far more interesting to speculate about, I think, is if we could create a non-linear written language taking advantage of the two dimensional property of paper/screens to write things which aren't forcibly constrained to the 1D nature of speech.

skissane 4y ago
> Far more interesting to speculate about, I think, is if we could create a non-linear written language taking advantage of the two dimensional property of paper/screens to write things which aren't forcibly constrained to the 1D nature of speech. I think the problem is that human language is inherently one-dimensional. Spoken language involves a temporal succession of sounds, words, sentences. Even sign languages, while the signs may be 2D, there is still a 1D temporal succession of distinct signs. Real texts involve certain limited escapes from one-dimensionality – footnotes, hypertext (which exists even in printed books, with the table of contents, index, "see page 123"), etc – but, still they are only limited deviations from the essentially 1D nature of human language. SignWriting is interesting as a way of writing sign language by using pictorial symbols for each sign, as opposed to using the written form of a spoken language text – but SignWriting is like the CJK languages, they may be 2D at the micro-level of individual characters, but at the macro-level texts are still fundamentally 1D. If you could invent a truly 2D language, I doubt the human brain would be capable of processing it. Maybe some AI might become fluent in it, but no human ever could. But even software is predominantly 1D – memory is fundamentally a 1D array of numbers, and in some ways it has been becoming more 1D over time (witness the triumph of flat address spaces over memory segmentation) – which makes me think it might be less than entirely natural even for an AI.

bitwize 4y ago

Chinese characters (including kanji in Japanese and hanja in Korean) started off as pictographs but mutated over time, becoming so abstract they're probably better thought of as ideographs. One way in which Japanese may more profoundly affect your thinking is -- Japanese has completely different registers and even entirely different vocabularies depending on whether you are talking to an inferior, an equal or a superior, or someone from your ingroup or outgroup (and these may change depending on the situation!). Proper use of Japanese language -- proper functioning in Japanese society -- requires a sort of constant situational awareness of your social position with regard to the people you are talking to[0]. Given the similarly hierarchical nature of Indian society, I think it may be easier for an Indian to acclimate to this social awareness than, say, an American or Brit... but spending years in Japan may cause a Westerner to become more socially aware than when they first arrived! [0] The phenomenon of otaku and hikikomori is explainable in such terms: Japanese people with high-functioning autism and other social deficits would, ceteris paribus, be at a greater disadvantage than Westerners in their own societies, so their tendency to withdraw and to pursue hobbies they can engage in largely solo would be much greater. The word "otaku" came from the tendency of such people to address each other always in the most formal terms to overcautiously avoid causing offense.

Pompidou 4y ago

What about hungarian language? It's like if it was created by some programmer or mathematician.

PaulHoule 4y ago
I've had people that they like the ontological orientation of Mandarin, not so much the fact that the "words" are pictoral but the way they are combined systematically.
- Pompidou 4y ago
  It raises the question of the (eventual) link between the grammar of 'spoken' language and our habilty to think the world. I personnaly think almost every human natural languages have the power to express almost everything with the help of circumlocution.
- watermelon59 4y ago
  I’ve been learning it for over a year because I want to be able to speak to my wife in her native language. So far I’m loving to learn it for the exact reason you said, the way sentences are pieces together is outright fun to me. I’m also amazed by how much information can be packed in a small combination of characters.
omeysalvi 4y ago
I've heard about how difficult Hungarian grammar is. The closest analog I can think of is Sanskrit which we had to study for a few years in school. They're still discovering more things about the language that were lost for thousands of years: https://www.popsci.com/science/sanskrit-puzzle-2500-years-old/?amp https://www.popsci.com/science/sanskrit-puzzle-2500-years-ol...
- Pompidou 4y ago
  I remember also when I was studying philosophy. The amount of non consensual traduction and interpretation from ancient greek is amazing. Ans what about the Επιούσιον case. I agree with you : hungarian is maybe some contemporary equivalent of the great language from the past such as latin, greek or sanskrit, in regard of scientific thinking. Nevertheless, its a agglutinative language, and the logic behind is different.