Topics Language

Question I've encountered people who think that the complex grammar of German or French, or the complicated writing system of Chinese or Japanese, make speakers of those languages more intelligent, on average, than speakers of "simplistic" English. Do such claims make any sense?

Accepted:
March 15, 2011

Comments

To the best of my knowledge and on the basis of what I know about linguistics, since the grammar--or, to use a technical term, 'syntax'--of a language is largely a matter of tacit or unconscious knowledge shared by all competent speakers of a language, who obviously may differ greatly in intelligence (whatever metric one uses to measure intelligence), it doesn't seem to me that it makes much sense to claim that the mere fact of knowing a more 'complicated' language reflects on the intelligence of the one who knows that language.

Well said. And, as an empirical matter, there is no evidence whatsoever that it is any more difficult for children to learn Chinese or German than it is for them to learn English or Spanish.