It happened kinda gradually, but the more I've been exposed to different languages (in a context other than a classroom) the more my fascination grew with the concept.
Being around so many people speaking so many differnt languages is an experience. Everytime I hear someone speaking Chinese or one of the 22 languages that are ripe in India, I wonder how what appears like merely weird sounds conveys thoughts and ideas to people who know the key to decipher those sounds. The sounds feel so foreign to the untrained ear that they are not even reproducible. And everytime I speak in Arabic around non Arabic people I know I'm reciprocating.
And I came to know that reproducing phonetics from a foreign language is hard not only because of vocal restrictions or lack of (vocal) training. I would try with English speaking people to pronounce the h (7ah) in Ahmed and when they fail I just used to assume that they can't because of lack of training to their vocal cords.
The day then came when I tried to learn a chinese word. My chinese friend would pronounce the word, and I say what I think is a faithful reproduction of it. He answers "No, that's not it. Say chinese_word_here". I could swear I was pronouncing exactly what I heard, but he can hear a difference. Turns out it has to do with training the ear too (or maybe the auditory part of the brain to be exact). It's as if the brain gets the signals from the ear but tries to approximate them to the nearest known pattern and that's what you actually end up "hearing". These are all my totally made up assumptions and ideas, no significant research on my part have gone into the matter. So take my "conclusions" with a grain or two of salt.
The other thing that I noted about the subject is how most bilingual people would mix and match both languages in everyday usage. I do it a lot with Arabic and English. Sometimes what I have to say just flows in one language or the other. Trials to translate are usually either time and effort consuming or altogether futile.
Anybody who speaks another language fluently other than his mother tongue knows that the key to mastering a language is learning how to "think" in that language. Translation almost never works word for word with the obvious, and famous, proof of the statement "Open God wrote his book on in-in in a night egg"
Is language just a way of expression? A tool for communication? Or does it have to do with how our brains think? Is mastering multiple languages likely to give your mind a tool or a way for exploring more ideas or constructs? If we always think in a language will more languages translate to more creativity?
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6 comments:
I can understand what you mean. I study the Russian language presently and it is even more difficult for me to read. I do not even understand my father's native American tongue. But I can speak to you in this langauge and be understood! Just so that you know, English is not my native tongue!
A Seattleite neighbour stumbling on my blog by accident. A pleasant surprise :)
The whole topic is mind boggling actually. Can we really think in a language neutral fashion? Try to close your eyes and think about something, anything. The moment you're aware you are contemplating an idea you instantly find yourself using a language in your mind.
I remember when you asked me to speak in Arabic during a whole conversation, and I couldn’t do it. And without intentionally doing it, I had to slip in some English words, or else just take forever to try and get a sentence all together in Arabic. And I felt like whatever I said, just didn’t make any sense.
When you asked me why, I said: I just can’t do it, I have to translate what I want to say in my mind from English to Arabic before I speak. Also a lot of times when people speak to me In Arabic and it’s a serious convo. I find myself translating what’s said in English, and then I respond back in English!
And no matter how much effort I put into using the true Egyptian language/accent -according to people- it’s never right lol.
(My cousin always tells me: “khalas ba2eety americaneya, 7atta el 3araby beta3ek feeh el accent el American, mat7awleesh… :s)
What you said about learning to think in the language makes a whole lot of sense :)
Also, one thing that just boggles me in the Arabic language, is the “masculine and feminine” heya we howa, and “ di we dah” . a lot of times I just don’t care or for that matter don’t know if “table, ceiling, bed, or a glass” and a lot of other words, would be feminine or masculine !
And, when I speak in Arabic, I get comments like: “la2, el kelma di mo2anath” or for other words “mozakar”. Where as in the English language, we just use “IT”.
Why does it have to be so complicated?! lol
I think that using masculine/feminine in a language makes it more expressive .
I definitely think it's an unnecessary complication. Adds nothing to the meaning if a door is a male/female :s
Nice blog,
I came across similar questions and interesting facts when I was doing my Speech recognition and natural language processing masters.
One of the things I realize when I listen to a foreign language is there are no stops between words. It makes me think how humans decode this continuous stream into separable words. What even makes me wonder more is illiterate people cannot separate words from each other in sentence they hear or say in their native language. I have an Algerian friend, born in France, never received Arabic education but speaks Algerian slang, and he can’t list the words he says in Algerian Slang.
A really cool book that discusses language from a linguistic point of view is Steven Pinker's "The language Instinct". It’s my bed time reading right now. He explains in a simple manner how language might be represented in the human mind, how babies might be learning it and differences and similarities between world languages. He's a supporter of Chomsky's theories that there is a universal mental grammar from which all languages derive.
What's also amazing is that a nation which landed on the moon, has not yet made a machine that understands or even transcribes speech. Pinker says that in the computer world, simple things become complicated and complicated things become simple. He means that simple things in the human world like listening and talking are complicated for computers, while repetitive addition is quite hard for a human brain but easy for a processor.
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