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Home > Archive > Chess politics > October 2005 > How being Ambidextrous led Sam to be able to speak more than Ten Languages
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How being Ambidextrous led Sam to be able to speak more than Ten Languages
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| Sam Sloan 2005-10-21, 7:32 pm |
| How being Ambidextrous led Sam to be able to speak more than Ten
Languages
On Thu, 20 Oct 2005 23:58:03 -0400, Taylor <taylor.taylor@gmail.com>
wrote:
quote:
>Mike Murray wrote:
>
>
>Yeah... yeah, you'd pretty much have the world on a string if one were
>ambidextrous.
I just did a bit of research and I guess that it is correct to say
that I am ambidextrous, not nearly ambidextrous. I write with my right
hand but do other things, such as play chess, equally well with either
hand. In school, I could always win at arm-wrestling with my left hand
against boys who were much stronger than me because my left arm was
equally strong if not stronger than my right. When I carry a suitcase
or some other heavy object, I almost always carry it with my left arm.
In 10th Grade in high school I broke my right arm while trying to do a
high jump in gym class. During the weeks it took for my right arm to
mend, I wrote my school reports with my left hand. It was difficult
and frustrating but I could manage to do it.
I am not sure exactly how ambidexterity is defined.
Being ambidextrous has helped me in some ways but has made other tasks
more difficult. For example, I can read upside down and backwards just
as easily as I can read right side up. It has happened when I am
somebody's office I can read the reports on his desk even though I am
on the other side of the desk. On one occasion, this helped me
understand what was going on in one of my child custody cases.
However, there are very serious disadvantages to being ambidextrous
which, in my opinion, outweigh the advantages.
When I was a child, I could not play baseball with the other kids
because my right arm was so weak that I could not throw the ball very
far.
When driving, if somebody tells me to turn right or turn left I have
to think for a moment and figure out which way is right and which way
is left. Other people know this automatically. It takes me at least a
second or two to figure out which way he wants me to turn.
The biggest problem is that ambidextrous people have difficulty
learning language skills. I was a slow talker, a slow reader and even
slow at math, which is surprising because I am now adept at these
fields. In high school I was always the worst student in language
class. I took three years of high school Latin. I always passed with
the minimum passing grade, which was 75, even though I studied
tremendously hard. The dumbest kid in other subjects was better than
me in this.
In college at the university of California at Berkeley, I was required
to take a language course each semester until I completed three
semesters of one language. First I tried German. I barely passed with
a D minus in spite of studying all the time. When I tried to go on
with second semester German, I realized after less than a week that I
was far behind the other students and would have no chance to pass, so
I dropped out and took Russian instead. My teacher in Russian was a
cute young girl named Olga Raevsky who I have just learned from an
Internet search is still there and is now a distinguished scholar in
Russian language and literature. It is no fault of hers that I was too
dense to learn much and I got a D minus in Russian as well, in spite
of studying day and night. After the course was over, Miss Raevsky
explained that I had really failed the class, but she had given me a D
minus out of sympathy, recognizing that I had attended every lecture
and had been constantly in the language lab listening to tapes and
studying hard.
So, I switched to Latin which I had taken in high school and got a D
minus in that too.
Someone told me that at Harvard university there was a requirement
that you must complete two years of a foreign language, but that this
requirement can be waived if you can prove that you are ambidextrous.
Apparently, all ambidextrous people have difficulty learning
languages. This made me feel a bit better.
I asked if the university of California at Berkeley had such a rule,
but they did not.
Finally, I decided that it would be impossible for me to pass three
consecutive semesters of any language at the university of California
at Berkeley, so I decided that the only solution was to go to a
country where some other language was spoken. This led me to attend
the National Autonomous university of Mexico in Mexico City in the
Fall Semester, 1965. I crossed the border by bus into Mexico knowing
only two words of Spanish, si and no. I came back a semi-fluent
speaker of Spanish. I spend my months in Mexico playing five minute
chess for money against a chess master known as El Pollero who spoke
no English. Both my Spanish and my chess improved as a result.
That still did not give me my three required semesters of a foreign
language, so in the summer of 1967 I took a class in Intensive Spanish
at the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies in Monterey, California,
which I passed and that gave me 24 college credits of Spanish. In 1983
I lived for one year in Central America and now I live in a Spanish
speaking city known as The Bronx, where I speak Spanish every day.
I found out that I am very bad at learning a language in a classroom
setting but very good at learning a language when traveling in a
country where that language is spoken. My knowledge of German and
Russian has proven useful when traveling around Germany or Russia,
even though I got a D minus in those classes. Along the way, I have
picked up some other languages as well, including Icelandic,
Hungarian, Farsi, Pashtu, Khowar, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and
Uyghur, but do not try to test me in Icelandic or Hungarian as I have
forgotten almost everything I ever knew of those languages. Also, I do
not claim to be able to speak Urdu or Hindi, but I have a big
vocabulary in those languages and can get around in those countries.
So, in conclusion I feel that I became a speaker of more than ten
languages as a way to over-compensate the difficulty I have in
learning a language because of being ambidextrous (and also to be able
to get the girls who speak those other languages).
Sam Sloan
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| Mike Murray 2005-10-21, 7:32 pm |
| On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 13:59:15 GMT, sloan@ishipress.com (Sam Sloan)
wrote:
quote:
>How being Ambidextrous led Sam to be able to speak more than Ten
>Languages
quote:
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>I just did a bit of research and I guess that it is correct to say
>that I am ambidextrous, not nearly ambidextrous.
Are you dyslexic ?
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| Sam Sloan 2005-10-21, 7:32 pm |
| On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:14:00 -0700, Mike Murray
<mikemurray@despammed.com> wrote:
quote:
>On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 13:59:15 GMT, sloan@ishipress.com (Sam Sloan)
>wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Are you dyslexic ?
No. I am not dyslexic. Nothing like that. Once I get over the initial
hurdle, I can read and write very well.
I realize that it seems difficult to understand that being
ambidextrous causes difficulty in learning to speak, read and write
and in learning a foreign language as well, and frankly I do not
understand why this is true myself, but this is a well known
phenomenon.
For example, any time my mother mentioned to a professional
psychologist that I was a slow talker, the psychologist would
immediately ask my mother about my handedness. My mother replied that
it took me a long time to decide whether I would be right handed or
left handed.
Right now, my baby Sandra has the same problem. She is way behind the
other kids her age in talking, but she is obviously bright and ahead
in other areas. So, thinking about this yesterday caused me to start
looking to see whether she uses her right hand or her left hand more.
So far, it seems about equal. She is right now scratching her head
with her left hand. She sucks her thumb with her left hand. She picks
up things with either hand. There is not enough data to reach a
conclusion, but I feel that it is likely that she will turn out to be
ambidextrous. Time will tell.
Sam Sloan
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| Chess One 2005-10-21, 7:32 pm |
|
"Mike Murray" <mikemurray@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:6a1il1d6audhj29pcops3fqva6u7l9nt61@4ax.com...
quote:
>
>
> Are you dyslexic ?
that's one opinion, on the other hand...
and shouldn't that be lysdexic? i always thought that would be a good name
for a rock star, liz dexik
phil
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| Still nothing else to do then to talk about youself, Sam?
"Sam Sloan" <sloan@ishipress.com> schreef in bericht
news:43590a43.279764078@ca.news.verio.net...
quote:
> On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:14:00 -0700, Mike Murray
> <mikemurray@despammed.com> wrote:
>
>
> No. I am not dyslexic. Nothing like that. Once I get over the initial
> hurdle, I can read and write very well.
>
> I realize that it seems difficult to understand that being
> ambidextrous causes difficulty in learning to speak, read and write
> and in learning a foreign language as well, and frankly I do not
> understand why this is true myself, but this is a well known
> phenomenon.
>
> For example, any time my mother mentioned to a professional
> psychologist that I was a slow talker, the psychologist would
> immediately ask my mother about my handedness. My mother replied that
> it took me a long time to decide whether I would be right handed or
> left handed.
>
> Right now, my baby Sandra has the same problem. She is way behind the
> other kids her age in talking, but she is obviously bright and ahead
> in other areas. So, thinking about this yesterday caused me to start
> looking to see whether she uses her right hand or her left hand more.
> So far, it seems about equal. She is right now scratching her head
> with her left hand. She sucks her thumb with her left hand. She picks
> up things with either hand. There is not enough data to reach a
> conclusion, but I feel that it is likely that she will turn out to be
> ambidextrous. Time will tell.
>
> Sam Sloan
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Ruud wrote:
quote:
>Still nothing else to do then to talk about youself, Sam?
Crossposting to multiple groups because that's where the Sam Sloan
post you replied to happened to be is like shitting in your pants
because that's where your XXXXXXX happened to be.
Just because Sam spams newsgroups where his posts are off-topic
doesn't mean that you have to imitate his bad behavior.
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