[PN] Literacy in East Asian Languages (6 September 2004)

[waoe at mail.goo.ne.jp]

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* References

Languages train brains differently
CNN.com, 3 September 2004
"Reading English-style alphabets and Chinese characters 
use very different parts of the brain. [Bearing on the
difficulty of becoming bilingual between such languages:]
Once a person learns to read they tend to use the same 
circuitry regardless of the second language and its alphabet."
[Japanese also uses the Chinese characters, and other 
orthographies. Korean, which sounds somewhat similar 
to Japanese, has changed to a simpler and more logical 
system of characters. While some Westerners pick up 
speaking an East Asian language, few other than 
specialists master reading and especially writing.
This writer finds Japanese handwriting increasing
laborious after relying so much on word processing
where just knowing the pronunciation and 
recognizing the right characters will do. 
Studying French phrases for a trip to Paris, 
then M6.8 and M7.3 earthquakes here yesterday, 
evening, so this morning I'm bushed :) - Ed.]
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/09/02/chinese.language.ap/index.html

* Periodical articles

Amy Goodman Questions John McCain on the 
Smear Tactics of Karl Rove & George Bush
Democracy Now, 3 September 2004 [video]
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/03/1457251

The Faith that Supports U.S. Violence:
Comparative Reflections on the Arrogance of Empire
by Herbert P. Bix, Japan Focus, 3 September 2004
[Professor of history and sociology at SUNY Binghamton,
author of _Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan_,
which won the Pulitzer Prize.]
"the idea of the 'redeemer nation' through which God operates is 
also the foundation of the notion of continuous warfare between 'good' 
and 'evil' people. Virtually every politician who exploits the religious 
emotions of people in the U.S. for the purpose of waging war draws 
on these ideas and images, embodied in religious and secular texts. ...
Economic greed, racial superiority, the blind ambition of leaders, and
their desire to dominate other lands and peoples remained their own 
justifications for killing, but invariably the civil religion concealed 
these baser motives. ... The administration had created a phony Iraq 
'threat,' then used its millenarian creed in order to justify fighting 
an immoral, illegal war to eliminate it. The major newspaper and 
broadcast media, more anxious to serve the state rather than the 
public, eagerly went along, highlighting the lies that the Bush 
administration wanted emphasized. Many citizens, conditioned to 
imagine themselves part of the 'redeemer nation,' supported 
'Operation Iraqi Freedom' as part of a 'war on terror.' ... entire 
organizational subcultures within the White House, Pentagon, 
CIA, and Justice Department have become mired in criminality. 
... the American state has been guilty of massive, repeated 
violations of customary international law, treaty law, and 
federal statute. [After WW2] Had Americans paid closer 
attention to the phenomenon of religiously-grounded nationalist 
ideology, and what happens to nations that act on the premise 
that they are chosen people, morally superior to others, they 
might have found the Japanese experience instructive [Hitler
had also appealed to Christianity similar to Bush's words]. [Bush 
era] millenarianism is the historic expression of a resurgent U.S. 
imperialism asserting its Puritan and Evangelical Christian roots"
http://www.japanfocus.org/149.html

Collegially, Steve McCarty
Professor, Osaka Jogakuin College, Japan
Online library: http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/epublist.html
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