Post by jay (mulatto) on Jun 23, 2005 6:10:23 GMT -5
hallam said:
jay said:
this is mostly conclusions from anecdotal experience (i've known a lot of blacks from senegal to somalia that have picked up english extremely quickly compared to other groups, particularly east asians), i dont know if this is genetic, cultural, or just a case of most black's mother tongue, i think is an IE language (i know many africans can speak other languages like Twi, Somali, Swahilli etc. i don't know how they relate to IE languages though), whereas most east asian's mother tongue is a non-IE language (likewise with the IQ, i don't strongly hold onto those views of smarter and dumber genetically predispositioned races, although i'm open-minded). nevertheless i'd like to hear others opinions on this.
Anecdotal evidence don't mean squat. In my experience Asians learn English just as fast as anyone else sans Hispanics (by which Asians master it much faster it seems probably because Hispanics tend to live among themselves and are therefore, less likely to assimilate culurally and linguistically). Many African countries have English as a primary language or some other IE language. This is a relic of colonialism.
For some empirical, quatitative evidence, just look at the GRE and SAT verbal sections available from ETS (Education and Testing Services, the people who make these tests).
The verbal score of the average Asian is 487 (p. 7) compared to 494 for whites, the highest scoring group on this sub test. The difference of only 7 points is more than easily accounted for by the fact that most Asians who take the verbal GRE (and SAT for that matter) are English as second language students. What is more interesting however, is that the standard deviation of Asian students is >> the whites, 121 vs 103. This would mean that at high scores, such as => 600, Asians are much more represented at those scores than whites relative to their population. At a "perfect" score of 800, you can calculate (assuming for Gausinity) that Asians out number whites roughly 5:1 when both their population of test takers are rendered a non-factor. The same basic pattern can be found on the SATs.
Also, I have read reports that Chinese Americans score markedly higher on the verbal GRE than white Americans.
If you think Asians are good at mastering language, you should go to Hong Kong. They are the most polyglot people I have ever seen. They (the younger generation) are better at English than the average American and they can speak Mandarin and Cantonese and usually, another "difficult" language such as Japanese or German or French or Hakka or Fukien.
i think with asians. you'd have to compensate for them being high skilled immigrants. a good way of doing this is getting the Chinese (mongoloid), and East Indian (non-mongoloid) students. use the East Indian students as the neutral origin calibrating point. and see how well the chinese do compared to that. if the chinese fare better, then they're better than caucasoids at language skills, if they fare worse then they're worse than caucasoids at language skills.
out of the hispanics. which hispanic groups have the most difficultly acquiring English. is it the mexican/central american ones, or the caribbean ones (dominicans, puerto ricans, cubans)?
