In keeping with the habit of featuring blogs and websites about memory, I want to highlight Simon Ager's "Omniglot--The Blog". Ager is a fella from England who has learned several languages, including French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese, and is currently studying Czech. In "Writing and Memory," Ager talks about the use of memory in learning a new language. He states that relying on written notes--when learning a new language--proves faulty because it discourages the use of memory when the learner actually uses the learned language in conversation. In having written down notes during the learning process, the brain, Ager believes, dissolves all the recorded information that was studied. Although, I'm not sure if this is quite so because I continue believing that speaking and writing are different psychological processes.
Nevertheless, Ager's posting is salient because it reminded me of the discussion about memory and writing between Socrates and Phaedrus in Plato's Phaedrus. Plato's Socrates recounts the story about Thamus, King of Egypt, and Theuth, "the father of writing" (79). Theuth tells Thaums that writing will make people wiser and sharpen people's memory skills. However, Thamus counters Theuth by stating (in the words of Socrates):
"O most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so." (79-80)
Thamus' words perfectly describe what Ager says in his posting about the injurious nature of writing on the use of memory. However, in Ager's case, we are dealing with the learning of a new language. Those that simply recall information mimic, yet those that use this information through memory, in converting theory into practice, are those that are truly learned and wise. This point emphasizes the often ignored difference between mimicking and truly being learned, between performance and substance. More importantly though is the most ignored factor in all of this conversation--culture.
One cannot ignore the cultural factor when learning a new language. One cannot forget the historical conditions of a particular's culture's use of language. Language cannot just be learned with a sharp memory. Learning another culture's language requires the learning of that culture's history. A sharp memory learns a culture's struggles and their use of language as a means to shape their identity and how power has circulated within that culture. Therefore, cultural memory is so important. So, in becoming a polyglot, aim to become "polycultural". N'est pas?
Hasta la proxima.
h
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