Mandarin - brainpower, not brainprowess?

Chinese Takes More ‘Brainpower’

“Speaking Chinese may take more brainpower than speaking English, a study suggests.

Researchers in Britain have found that people who speak Mandarin use both sides of their brain to understand the language.  This compares to English-language speakers who only need to use one side of their brain.”

“There is no doubt that those having had the freedom to determine the meaning of words via their own personally determined intonation might find Mandarin quite difficult to learn.

- ed-infinitum

The questions that occurred to myself when I read the above article was,

• Does ‘brainpower’ in this context equate with creative or critical intelligence?

• Do the rules of the Chinese language which regiment intonation (four sounds determining 4 different meanings of a single word) itself – where other cultures leave intonation to personal feelings – compromise or impose a ceiling, as a consequence, on the creative and critical propensity, promote formulaic thinking, and nurture an all round penchant for tradition as opposed to critical creativity?

• Or, perhaps, is the full potential of the Mandarin language in inciting all-round critically creative vibrancy circumscribed by other cultural factors to the point that the intonational rules of language simply serve to inhibit creative and critical vibrancy?  In other words, Mandarin might hold the dual potential of making a person critical and creative or critically and creatively sedate.

• Does the brainpower that it takes to speak mandarin simultaneously circumscribe a person’s intellectual potential because of the language’s usurpation of an individual’s ability to use her/is own personal feelings to determine intonation – thus, compromising the ‘personal space’ in favour of collectively-applied linguistic rules.

• Does the relatively less ‘brainpower’ that it takes to speak English free the mind to engage in critical thinking?

• Does this degree of regimentation within a language that reduces a whole array of personally-determined intonational possibilities to 4 simple sounds actually compromise critical and creative thinking?

• And does this compromise the metaphorical value and impact of the language?  In other words, since one word can refer to four different phenomena when four different sounds are applied, it may be seen to encourage metaphorical or metaphysical thinking by way of impressing upon us the generic idea that no phenomena is what it seems to be till other factors (‘sound’ in this context) are taken into consideration.

• Does the relatively angularity and harshness of written Chinese characters, along with the intonational rules, actually serve to typify, complement and reinforce the regimentation, ‘rules for its own sake’, ‘tradition for tradition’s sake’ and non-critical character of Chinese culture?

• We could also wonder if the personal freedom, enjoyed in part by 'intonational freedom' experienced by English-speakers, amongst others, might help them to learn Mandarin quicker than 'native' Mandarin speakers are able to pick up English and other languages.  This is assuming intonational freedom does encourage critical thought which in turn enables one to learn anything quiker.

In sum

There is no doubt that those having had the freedom to determine the meaning of words via their own personally determined intonation might find Mandarin quite difficult to learn.  However, once one becomes adept at Mandarin, and the intonation becomes similar to the spoken word in enabling the listener to understand what is being said, does this come at the price of having compromised one’s early access to personally-defined intonation which is one of the primitive inciters of individualism and personal and critical creativity?

china chinese mandarin language linguistics culture sociology psychology sociology malaysia india hong kong singapore taiwan uk science society philosophy