The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis always catches me as something we should investigate more, but unfortunately it’s mired in the broader conflict of cultural relativity, as I learned when my anthro professor tried to disprove it with a convoluted argument from an aboriginal tribes notion of direction. A diversity of languages means a diversity of thought, which maybe you could make the case for more multilingual teams from.
English seems to suck as a language but it has risen to be the lingua franca of our present world system - how much of that is because British and American superpowerdom vs being a good lingua franca is up for debate.
It probably helps that it doesn't require one to memorize 10,000-20,000 individual characters and isn't a multi-tonal language so it also doesn't require excellent hearing discrimination.
Comments
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis always catches me as something we should investigate more, but unfortunately it’s mired in the broader conflict of cultural relativity, as I learned when my anthro professor tried to disprove it with a convoluted argument from an aboriginal tribes notion of direction. A diversity of languages means a diversity of thought, which maybe you could make the case for more multilingual teams from.
English seems to suck as a language but it has risen to be the lingua franca of our present world system - how much of that is because British and American superpowerdom vs being a good lingua franca is up for debate.
It probably helps that it doesn't require one to memorize 10,000-20,000 individual characters and isn't a multi-tonal language so it also doesn't require excellent hearing discrimination.