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RE: INCREASE YOUR IQ BY LEARNING A LANGUAGE
Nice. I speak Brazilian Portuguese fluently, and a tiny, tiny bit of a few other languages (Spanish, French, Russian, and Hebrew in descending order).
I agree, there are some insights that are built-in to other languages! In Brazilian Portuguese, the word for "jungle" is the same as the word for "kill" (the conjugated "I kill"). Thus, built into the language is that the jungle is a dangerous place.
In addition, the words for "floor" and "ground" are the same word. This shows that as language began, they lived in houses without floors.
Aw man, I'm jealous! :-D
I love the sound of Brazilian Portuguese and I could happily listen to random conversations in the language, all day long. :-) After I have got more profficient (I won't say mastered!) in Chinese, I will move onto Brazilian Portuguese.
I know Spanish will help me, however I also know there are lots of similar words in Spanish that mean completely different things in Portuguese.
It is this kind of etymology of language that completely fascinates me; I am seeing similar examples in Mandarin and I feel it really helps me understand how to structure the language.
For instance; 'er' is the word for two and 'chi' ten, so chi'er is 12 (ten and two) and er chi is 20 (two tens). Also the word for cat is 'mao' which when said sounds a lot like miaow.
Hopefully we can talk some more on the subject and you can give me some hints and tips for learning that beautiful language.
Cg