Chairman : Jean-Luc Fournet
During the fighting on the Pacific front in World War II, the Marines used speakers of the Native American Navajo language to exchange secret messages. This code proved impossible for the Japanese army to decipher, and the NavajoCode Talkers played a crucial role, for example, in the Allied victory at Iwo Jima. On the European front, the German code generated by the Enigma machine was deciphered by the group led by Alan Turing in England. Why is this different from the two encryption systems ? Was the group guided by Turing more efficient than its Japanese counterpart ? Or do natural languages represent codes that are more difficult to decipher than the systems invented by encryption experts? If this is the case, a paradox emerges : children learn without difficulty the language presented to them : Navajo as well as English, French or Chinese. How do they decipher such difficult codes ? In my presentation, I'd like to discuss a few " deciphering techniques " that children naturally master to break the language code.
