Democracy doesn’t ensure your voice is heard but drowned out by the herd.

> there are sound associations in Arabic that only make sense to Arabic speakers

Like words and their connotations? Yeah, I wouldn't describe those as something special and "greater" than the meaning of a word.

It's worth noting also that people always underestimate how much active work a child goes through in learning a language. They are under constant tutelage for years by family members who correct their pronunciation and language usage. They go to school where they have to dedicate hours on spelling, grammar, etc. And they have to use the language constantly in service of learning other things. Proficiency doesn't just appear from exposure.

As an adult learning a second language you generally won't have anywhere close to the same level of language exposure or learning support.

It’s more than English. Other languages have similar associations with Kiki and boba. It sounds like this person is saying that there are sound associations in Arabic that only make sense to Arabic speakers

It isn't synesthesia; we just use words like sharp and flat to describe sounds so it's only natural to project that meaning onto a word that sounds sharp or flat.

Yes because we associate the sharp abrupt sounds in kiki to a sharp object because we use words like sharp and flat to describe sounds. That isn't "the shape of the sounds hold[ing] a meaning that is greater than the definition of the word itself?".

That's just recognizing there are different sounds.

Synesthesia.

I've always thought Arabic sounded beautiful. English is a very matter-of-fact language, just like German (and they're both Germanic) but you can see their reflection on the more stoic and serious, sometimes cynical and sarcastic, tones of English and German speakers.

The romantic languages all have a fun, bubbly, and colorful bounciness to them.

And then Arabic is just so elegant and, like you said, vivid-sounding. There's also a wisdom and warmth to it. I don't know a lick of it, really, but maybe one day.

Look it up, studies have been done to show that English speakers find the word kiki to be a sharper object and boba to be more rounded objects

This might be generally true, but is not always true. I, for one, have a condition where I cannot filter sounds. I cannot focus on any particular sound unless it is significantly louder than all surrounding sounds. No matter how hard I try, if you speak to me as a train goes by, I will not be able to understand what you are saying if my life depended on it. I have been through many tests and have been told it is an issue with the way my brain processes sound, not my ears themselves. As such I absolutely need subtitles to understand most movies.

As a side effect, I am easily able to differentiate even the most subtle differences in language. Although I am aware that most people cannot. It has given me an edge in language learning and have learned 3 languages as an adult. 2 of which I speak at near native level fluency and am constantly mistaken as a native speaker due to my near perfect accent. Still working on the 3rd. It takes practice and time, but I can imitate the exact pronunciation unlike many other language learners.

I'm sure there's plenty of other people like me out there who can also tell the subtle nuanced differences between similar sounds, even long into their adulthood.

>Yet I wouldn't say the same for democracy, which is only useful to the extent it is able to produce those goods.

True on its face, but what is the alternative to democracy that produces better results?

I argue that not even 1 has political authority. Popular support can't make an unjust law just.

Very good work.

Not interest groups themselves, but laws that only serve as interest group protection. My theory of natural law argues that reason is the only justifiable restriction on freedom. These reasons create moral principles and those moral principles applied to social facts create just laws. To the extent laws are arbitrary, they are unjust laws.

The example I provide is the trade restriction in Williamson v. Lee Optical. Basically, since courts have recognized rights in the social sphere (as shown by equal protection and substantive due process rulings) similar rights should be recognized in the economic sphere to strike down laws that lack a rational basis.

That sounds like nonsense given you can attribute any meaning onto a word; it's just a symbol. It's one thing to say a language is beautiful or evocative but the idea that a sound can gain special meaning a word cannot seems silly.

>I find there are even few people who can speak their own mother tongue fluently

Then you don't know what "fluently" means.

Pretending that Americans are rubes and the rest of the world sophisticated doesn't make you look like a discerning sophisticate.

It make you look like a rube.

The forms of legitimacy broadly are:

1. I have a lot of popular support
2. I have a lot of thugs with weapons and fear factor
3. I have divine authority.

2 is extremely flimsy and 3, once no longer taken seriously, is just 2. And 3 is no longer taken seriously today, worldwide.

So if popular legitimacy is needed, counting votes is a good way to do it.

You mean speaking with enthusiasm? Unfortunately even if I knew any Arabic languages I’d still sound monotonous.

I think concluding with things like "interest groups are bad" (to simply dramatically) is a little lackluster, seeing as most people would agree with that anyway. What more extreme things are implied by the ideas the article tries to support?

Yeah, absolutely it does. A huge part of additional language teaching is learning exactly how those differences manifest and what teachers can do to best navigate those challenges and differences. But it is undoubtedly, 100 percent possible for someone to learn a language well past the "critical period".

My understanding is that you can obviously learn a language after a certain age, but that learning happens differently later in life than in early childhood

Great summary of an even better newsletter. I agree with many of these points and also can’t help but point out the small scale that democracy operates in.

When a party is elected to a government, they are concerned about the welfare and wellbeing of profitable citizenry. They are also typically concerned with combatting issues with high media visibility, profitable outcomes, short term fixes, rather than a focus on ethical issues (systemic racism, gender pay gap, the high rates of burnout and workplace incivilities, wealth inequalities) as they are within the system, governments can do little about problems which stem from a politically democratic systemic level.

Most attempts in modern democracies to create fundamental changes in harm reduction or improving systemic issues fail dismally (improving wealth inequalities, gender inequalities, corruption etc) as the problem resides as a systemic level rather than finding a panacea with policies that could be overturned with the next change of government.

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried” - Winston Churchill

OP's article was about what it means to "know" a language, not what it means to be competent in a language, so of course my comment was about the effects of language on cognition. The only point my original comment made is that childhood language acquisition (no matter how many languages that may involve) and language learning later in life are qualitatively different. I'm not sure why that's controversial or harmful