#deductionistintraining

What good does a different language do in terms of deduction? An interesting question, and one that allows for a great deal of consideration and mulling. Personally, I think deduction is all about understanding the people we encounter in a way they cannot seem to understand us. To delve into their lives and their stories by a simple look or listen. If this is the primary function of deduction, then I would think language learning to be an integral and fundamental part of the practice. I know deduction isn’t typically a rooting, searching type of personal knowledge acquisition practice, but consider, at language learning’s most basic level, the idea that two people can have a conversation in which they communicate things about themselves either directly or through a more linguistic standpoint. In addition, when you get people talking, more of their body language starts to shine through and you get a further sense of who they are and how they work. Finally, at this rudimentary level, language learning can allow us to keep people around for a little while longer so we can observe a bit more about them. In fleeting moments, we may notice something we’re curious about or something we’d like to look into. By conversing with a person in his or her native language, or even a shared one, we allow ourselves the time to look into these points. 

To consider other deduction-based powers of language learning, I must relay a story. Recently, I was spending some time in a large city famous for both its local and tourism sectors. Staying in a hotel or even out and about on the streets, I heard tourists from all around the world speak to one another in their native tongues. I interacted with quite a few who spoke French because I could pick them out, as I know French. Back home, a friend heard something in French and admitted that he couldn’t identify the language being spoken. Language learning, or at least language familiarity, plays a key role in this type of observation. We can learn a lot about a person by hearing the language they speak and inferring what places they, then, could be from. Better yet, within the sphere of languages, being familiar with different accents in the language can further this crusade.