Here is a reference to an interesting article from Newsweek on how languages we speak shape our thoughts: http://www.newsweek.com/id/205985. It summarizes the research of a Stanford University psychologist who showed that our perception of the world depends on the grammar, vocabulary and other aspects of the languages we speak. I recommend this article as an illuminating and entertaining reading - it is quite short, too.
This observation has an interesting corollary, too. It means that there is another level of untranslatability between languages apart from the level of cultural allusions and references.
An obvious conclusion then is that there is a practical value in learning foreign languages for this nation. Americans are terribly ignorant of foreign languages compared to people of other countries - developed and otherwise. I have on many occasions felt that Americans think there is a globe of America, and then there is a big void which is the outer world. I think we largely live with the assumption that if they want to trade/have business/communicate with us, they will bother to learn our language. And they do. But by learning our language, they also gain a window into our mind, our mentality while keeping their true identity closed from us. We are clearly putting ourselves at a strategic disadvantage.
Besides, American lack of foreign language command is a source of embarrassment, even in the highest echelons of power. Remember a recent meeting between our Secretary of State Clinton and her Russian counterpart Sergei Larvov during which she gave him a symbolic red button which SHE THOUGHT said "Reset"? This was a double whammy, because the button said it in Latin letters (Russians do have their own alphabet, thank you very much, and if you want to be considerate, just write a Russian word in Russian letters), but it also used the wrong translation, and in fact meant "Overcharge" button. Sergei Lavrov was able to explain it in very good English on the spot to our embarrassed highest diplomat, and he was also able to offer her the correct translation. Mr. Lavrov is able to go on the US national TV and conduct in interview entirely in English. When Putin comes to Germany, he conducts a press conference there without an interpreter.
Can we imagine this situation in reverse? A Russian Foreign Minister (equivalent of Secretary of State) meeting with Hillary Clinton, giving her a red button which has a wrong English word on it written in Russian letters, and her explaining to him in perfect Russian of what and why it should have said? Just think why even such suggestion seems so odd and feels so wrong. It shouldn't!
I think Obama has issued a very timely call for his fellow Americans to learn a foreign language. If we want to adequately position ourselves in this newly globalized economy, we need to be able to truly communicate across cultures, and read the "foreign mind" of our partners.
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Listen, lady, why dontcha cut Hillary some slack, huh? She talks American pretty durned good.
ReplyDeleteAs for the article, at first I thought that it was going to suggest how metaphors and idioms that have become cliché in any given language do not so much shape as restrict one’s expression. The masculine/feminine hypothesis seems rather juvenile, though, and what would it mean for a language with a neutral gender? If “death” in some language were neuter, would it then tend to be represented in art by a hermaphrodite? (The article uses “tend”; an exhaustive study of all art from a particular language group would have to be conducted to test this hypothesis.) Attributing the aborigines’ pronounced navigational skill to their language is ludicrous. It is much more reasonable to assume that they know their way around anywhere better than anybody because they had to develop in that fashion in order to survive. Their language didn’t grant them this skill; their language developed so that they could express it. Boroditsky’s last point (about “…how we construct our ideas of causality…”) must mean that Spanish and Japanese make lousy scientists. I remember a university dean making a similar point about women a few years ago and being justly and roundly rebuked.
For now, I’m sticking to time-tested phrenology.
I thought that article was very interesting. As a person who speaks two languages fluently, I can see how this will happen and how in order to truly be fluent, you need to get a "feel" for the language. No amount of grammer books or book learning will achieve the bi-lingual effect, you need to experience the culture and feel the day to day living to be bi-lingual.
ReplyDeleteThis article also malso makes sense of my desire to learn German, as I tend to be more precise and number driven and that is what I associate with Germans. For a long time I puzzled over this, because I don't really have much of a desire to travel to Germany and don't care that much about their history, but their language definitely has a special pull for me, which French for example (learning which would make sense for me given my upbringning) or Spanish (learning which would make sense from the pure practical reasons) never had.