#titone

[roughridingrednecks]

Titone

[frenchly-anxious]

Expert readers, bilingualism and inhibition: somes thoughts on my own writing with the help of my studies

I’ve started writing a fanfic in English (wooo, cheers to me!) and as someone who is studying language, neurology, bilingualism and some other things, I’m fascinated by what I’m doing.

I’m currently writing random words in place of the ones I’m actually thinking about.

Why, though? I think first because I type fast and when you do, your brain sometimes goes toward reflex: typing the word which is almost written the same, but that you use more often than the one you actually want.

But also, and that’s my own interpretation (you’ve been warned), because of some neat things I learned recently in class.

Did you know bilingual (or multilingual) people have better executive functions?

That’s because when you know more than one language, you have to get better at inhibiting one language when you’re speaking the other.

The studies where this is proven showed that knowing more than one language is not a bad thing. For a very long time, we thought it was slowing children down when learning language in general. It absolutely isn’t. They’re not late per se.

Of course, if you count the number of words they know at a given age, there’s a high chance they’ll know less than a monolingual child. But because you’re only taking one language in consideration. If you ask those children to answer in any language, you’ll see the numbers of words they know is more or less the same; except, it’s shared between the different languages they knows. It’s not rare to see children considered “late” by traditional tests who are actually developping quite well. Let’s say they’ve been able to name 5 of the 10 objects shown to them. An average child should have been able to say at least 8. But if we ask our bilingual kid, there’s a chance he can say his 5 objects in both language, or 5 in one language and 3 in the other, maybe a mix of both...

And those executive functions? Even if they’re better, it’s actually easier to not inhibit any language. It requires less effort.

Which brings me back to my situation. I’m not bilingual to the definition widely recognized. I’ve started learning English later on in my life. It depends on who you consider being right, but some says being bilingual is not just people growing up since birth with 2 languages. Titone (1972) said being bilingual means being able to speak another language while following its rules of structures and concepts, and not paraphrasing the native language.

Anyway, I’m at a point in my progression in English where I confuse words, expressions and pretty much anything depending on the day, between both language. (No, ‘convénient’ doesn’t exist in French, you’re thinking of the English word ‘convenient’.) To the point that, now, when I’m taking notes in class, they switch back and worth between French and English with no real logic. Because it’s easier to go along my train of thought than trying to stop it and go back to the other language. I’m mostly writing in French (because I’m waaaay better in term of grammar and vocabulary in that language); but sometimes, there are words that are faster to come to my mind in English. And, you know, so be it.

But what does this have anything to do with me writing fanfic and using random wrong words ?

Well, first because I think my executive functions are a bit at lost because it’s hard to inhibit when I’m typing that fast, plus completely focused on a story and what I’m trying to express, rather than being terrified of using the wrong word or a bad spelling, like I usually am when posting on Tumblr or writing to someone.

But also, hang on, we’re now going deep into linguistic and neurological studies!

Coltheart (1977) studied how expert readers... read. Yeah, I know, but bear with me. By ‘expert’, he means ‘good enough/not currently learning’, by opposition of ‘learning readers’.

He has an interesting theory of “orthographic neighbours”, words that have one letter of difference. Hit => Him Hip or Hat Hot or even Bit Lit Sit, ... As you can see, ‘hit’ has a lot of possibilities. Certainly less than ‘win’, or even ‘neighbour’.

I even just saw that the concept of orthographic neighbours has been widen in 2009, with things like ‘trial’ / ‘trail’, or ‘end’ / ‘send’ / ‘spend’.

Also in case of bilingualism, orthographic neighbours can come from both language: ‘rire’ in French (to laugh) with ‘fire’ / ‘hire’ / ...

So if we consider words like ‘hit’, ‘win’ and ‘neighbour’, we are actually quicker at recognizing words like ‘win’ and ‘neighbour’. Why? Because our brain is a funny thing. When reading a word, he also activates the representation of those “orthographic neighbours”. (it applies only to expert readers, because learning reader will tend to decipher each letters slowly, where an expert will see the word on a global way because he has experience. And because an expert relies more on his lexical route than his phonological one. But that’s another topic I could gladly talk about if you want to)

And by activating those other words, we create what Coltheart call a “lexical competition”; it means we then need to inhibit those “orthographic neighbours”, those useless words we have activated, so there can only be one left. So let’s say that ‘neighbour’ doesn’t have any, and ‘hit’ has at least 7 of them; it’s easy to see which one will be the longer to deal with. Even if we are counting in milliseconds.

Plus, ‘hit’ might be more frequent in English than, let’s say ‘lit’. Then it’s quicker to read ‘hit’ than ‘lit’, because your brain knows it’s more frequent to read ‘hit’, so when he’s in front of ‘lit’, he’s like “Fuck, that’s not what I was expecting, according to my statistics”. Those “statistics” come from all the reading you’ve done since you have learned how to and how frequent each word was.

Yes, your brain is an expert on statistics without trying. What an asshole.

All of this makes me think that my own sense of what’s frequent in English is largely fucked up by the fact I’m not a native, so some words seems to appear quicker than other while I’m writing this fanfic, depending on my sorta selected view on English. (I mean, I’m way more confronted to very specific topics, like for example series, gaming, gay sex and internet slang, because yeah, I spend time on the internet and that’s what is prominent. Which lead me to moments like this one where fuck and dick are quicker to my mind than duck. Thanks internet)

I wrote at some point “They can’t up” when I was thinking of “They get up”. And when I’m looking at what I had written in this fanfic, I think I have used more often the word “can’t” than “get”. And I know, they’re definitely not orthographic neighbours. Which is why I talked first about the motor reflexes you brain uses when typing fast. But I feel like there’s something about frequence here. And something about phonology I can’t quite pinpoint.

And also because I wanted to talk about those interesting studies while I have a lot of time on my hands.

Anyway, if you want to remember something from that long rambling: -bilingualism is not a bad thing at all; -depending on who you listen to for a definition, you might already be bilingual; -your brain is amazing at frequencies through statistics.

[ceciledegantes]

♡♡♡ for a fabulous friend

[thibautdenise]

NICE

[roughridingrednecks]

Beau and Titone

[tanogabo]

Eos, la romana Aurora – Tanogabo.it

Eos, la vergine divina dalle braccia tinte di rosa e dalle dita che spargono fiori, è la prima a destarsi sul monte Olimpo . Sorella del Sole e della Luna , ogn

Eos, la vergine divina dalle braccia tinte di rosa e dalle dita che spargono fiori, è la prima a destarsi sul monte Olimpo . Sorella del Sole e della Luna , ogn

[swagmongerbasketballdonut]

シチリアのオリーブオイル『Titone』 数々の賞を取った優秀なオリーブオイル 三軒茶屋のイタリア郷土料理店ペペロッソ Ristorante regionale italiano "PEPE ROSSO" https://www.peperosso.co.jp/ Webマガジン 「SHOP ITALIA 」配信しております。 https://shop-italia.jp/author/28 #titone #olio #今井和正 #三茶ランチ #三茶カフェ #三茶飲み #三茶会 #三茶開拓 #三茶ごはん #三茶イタリアン #太子堂イタリアン #世田谷線イタリアン #世田谷パーク #世田谷グルメ #世田谷パブリックシアター #世田谷線 #田園都市線 #渋谷 #池尻 #下北沢 #大澤竜 #ペペロッソ (ペペロッソ 三軒茶屋 イタリアン cucina italiana) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtjG911hPKL/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=19l7hpfezwmdj