So there’s an infantile argument some people are proudly erecting that English is just a language and not a measure of intellect.
Of course this is flawed or fallacious on many levels—for a person to be able to brilliantly learn, understand and command a foreign language, that person must have a good dose of intellect in place.
Mark Zuckerberg speaks Chinese fluently, it’s just a language but who would want to argue that Zuckerberg is not intelligent and this “brain” disposition did not contribute to how easy he learnt Chinese or how brilliantly he has been able to master a foreign language?
How do we measure intellect in this world? To some, intellect is an abstract thing, which can only be felt or detected by evaluating certain things—the qualities of intellect, including language, ideas, critical thinking prowess and many others…
You cannot meet a person and by just looking at the person’s face, be able to magically deduce whether the person is intelligent or not. I am sure Bishop Obinim may claim to have a celestial skill in doing this but that’s reasonably stupid.
The way a person speaks, the words he uses and their placements should give you a plausible indication of the beauty of his state of mind, the in-depth of his knowledge.
And if the person’s first language is not English but is able to hold good command of something that takes a lot of effort, skills and “intelligence” to learn, then the prima facie evidence of intellect here is ‘English.”
So English (language) is not the only measure of intellect, but it’s one of the factors we hold in consensus when seeking to determine how intelligent a person is…
I once met a young girl on a plane, she was a Russian writer that had studied and mastered 8 foreign languages—with just this information, I knew she was intelligent and when we delved into Politics, Art (Movies), Religion, Philosophy, Law and others, she proved me right.
Why did I think she was intelligent? Because you have to be smart, with a good brain to be able to learn any language, especially foreign ones perfectly.
Since we cannot look at people’s face and determine how dumb or intelligent they are, we employ reasonable factors to ascertain where people reside on the spectrum of smartness—and one of these factors is language skills or language brilliance.
Those mounting the English is not a measure of intellect arguments should cut the crap! What then is the measure?
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