Saturday, November 05, 2005

Wrongest ideas I've heard about language here in Switzerland

5. "German is a very difficult language": It's hard to learn any language, but truth is that for English speakers it's one of the easiest. Maybe it's harder for my francophone friends, but still, let's consider languages like Chinese or Russian before we start talking "very difficult."

4. "It will be easier for you to learn an African 'dialect' than French since they are much simpler": Yeah. OK. First of all, French is hard, but it's one of the very easiest languages for anglophones to learn since we share so much of the same vocabulary. Second of all, African speech varieties deserve every bit as much to be called "languages"; I detest the perjorative use of the word "dialect." Thirdly, African languages are quite different from European languages, which will make them difficult for me to learn. They often use tone (like Asian languages) which is not something I'm familiar with at all and they have sounds which which can be hard to pronounce.

3. "If you speak the language Berber you can pronounce correctly any sound in any language": I tried to explain to this misinformed Algerian man that this is not linguistically plausible, but he simply "proved" his point by making me repeat Berber words, telling me I did it incorrectly, and thus concluding that if only I spoke that language I would be able to pronounce anything. This has got to be ethnocentrality at its best.

2. "Americans don't know how to learn foreign languages or they're just too self-centered to care": As a linguist and a language-lover, I will be the first to declare that American monolingualism is a shame. However, I can defend it just the same. First point: all the Europeans I know have learned other European languages; I haven't met anyone fluent in Chinese or Arabic. I think it's highly probable that if every state in the US spoke a different language, as is the case among the European countries, that Americans would be about the business of learning to speak Californian, Texan, New Yorkian, etc. We simply don't have the same opportunities and the same needs for speaking other languages.

Second point: We lack some of the main motivations for learning language. Globally, financial gain is one of the main motivators. Swiss francophones learn German because in Switzerland you need it to get a job. Latin American indigenous people learn Spanish because that's the language of power. Around the world people are starting to study Chinese because of that country's newfound economic importance. In the US, however, most people don't need another language in order to make money. Even in international business English is the common language.

Which brings up another motivator we are lacking--the need to communicate. Americans simply don't find themselves in frustrating situations where they can't communicate because a) practically everyone in the US speaks English and b) around the globe enormous quantities of people now speak at least some English. When Americans do confront situations where they can't communicate in English I find that their desire to learn another language increases--for example, many people at church are passionate about learning Spanish because of mission trips they've gone on.

My third point of defense for American monolingualism is that it is a stereotype. Stereotypes are indeed based on morsels of truth but not the whole truth. The truth is that there are Americans who speak more than one language and there are many more who at least have the desire to. In sum: I feel monolingual Americans are more victims of the circumstances rather than self-centered bigots who refuse to reach out to others.

1. "There are more songs in English because it's an easier language to put music to": Linguistically, I actually don't know if this is true or not, since it does seem that certain kinds of languages fit better with certain kinds of music. But this seems like a strange way to describe the proliferation of English songs considering there's pretty much more of everything in English these days.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Do these sermons come in MP3 format? ;-)

Reg. #5... are anglophones the standard? "Very difficult" is a subjective term. Might German possibly be very difficult for a MT Mandarin Chinese speaker? Or, seemingly more likely, could the speaker be using themselves as the grammatical reference, as opposed to the language as reference? (in which case they might find Russian incredibly hard :)

Is "Chinese" a language?

Linguistica said...

Yeah, yeah. John, I knew those details wouldn't get past you! Yes, (if any of my other readers care) my point was that the difficulty of a language depends on what language you speak to start with (ie: for me to learn French is loads easier than it is for my Chinese friend). For a French speaker to learn German is still going from one Indo-European language to another, from one language using the roman alphabet to another. This is relatively simple compared to the leap to Mandarin or Russian or Arabic or whatever. The people here think, however, that German must be one of the most complex languages in the world, not realizing that it's far easier for them than most others they could choose.

Missy said...

Funny you should be talking about all of this cause I had an interesting conversation with a friend a few days ago about learning languages and how it would be much more difficult to learn Arabic than German or French or Spanish...I'll have to refer him to your site to defend some of my arguments! Ha!

Jeanne said...

Russian is a beautiful language. I've been given the opportunity to learn it while living in Ukraine. Spanish and French came very easy. Now, I've forgotten it all in the last 4 1/2 years of Russian and now Ukrainian. God bless you in your travels and adventures!!!
Where would Nepali fit in the degrees of difficulty in an American learning another language? (My sister is in Nepal serving the Lord.)

Linguistica said...

Well, I actually spent a summer learning Nepali a few years back, but I'm not an expert. But thankfully one of my faithful readers is--John, would you care to answer this question?! Generally, the more different a language is from one's mother tongue or from any other language the person speaks, the harder that language is. Off the top of my head I'd say that Nepali is quite different and therefore quite difficult. I'll try to find some sort of official list of language difficulty for English speakers. Thanks for the comment!

Anonymous said...

I think Nepali would, generally speaking, be easier for a mother-tongue English speaker than Standard Arabic but more difficult than French or Spanish. The verb conjugations & retroflexed stops are probably the most challenging parts for us. In a conversation the verb root will stay the same, but will be said differently according to tense & person (similar to English there), but also differs according to respect shown to that person (whether they're older/more respected, similar age/familiar, or much younger/trying to insult someone that's not younger). So even when the verb & tense is the same, you still have to learn 8 different ways to say it according to person & respect - & get it right so that you don't offend someone! That part is really challenging!

Retroflexed stops are when you say a "t" or "d" by flipping your tongue way back to touch the middle of the top of your mouth. Words can be different based on whether you said the "t" with your tongue behind your teeth or way behind your teeth! :)

Another challenge of Nepali for mother-tongue English speakers is that the verb is last in the sentence instead of in the middle, e.g. subject-object-verb in sentence order instead of the English subject-verb-object.

In the bigger picture Nepali is classified as Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Northern zone, Eastern Pahari, Nepali. English is classified as Indo-European, Germanic, West, English. So, WAY back there (at Indo-European), English is related to Nepali! But there's a lot we don't share. Standard Arabic doesn't even share that much, as it's Afro-Asiatic, Semitic, Central, South, Arabic!

One of the ways I've heard that Nepali can be easier than French is that Nepali people are VERY patient & encouraging - even when you make mistakes! This makes language learning much easier & more fun! I'm sure there are French-speaking individuals that are that way, but they aren't known for it as a culture.

OK, that's probably WAY more than you really wanted to know about Nepali! But it's tough to not share so much when you know & love so many Nepali people & have worked so hard to get those darn verb conjugations right! :)

Where's the line between a comment & a blog? :)

Anonymous said...

PS: Nepali is much easier for Japanese & Korean speakers than it is for us!

Jeanne said...

Thanks for your comments! It'll help me as I travel there that they ARE patient :) And I pray everything doesn't come out in Russian, hehe. Hmmm, easier for Korean speakers... my sisters flat-mate is Korean and just CAN'T get Nepali.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Jessica, for valiently defending our country so eloquently as always and for the humor too. There is, by the way, a scale developed by the US government for its foreign service workers that groups some major world languages into 4 groups according to how hard they are to learn for an English speaker. I've seen it before, but can't remember where. All I can remember is that Arabic and Mandarin are in the 4th (hardest) group and Thai (my current language) is in the 3rd.
Congratulations on your French study completion!
Erin

Anonymous said...

Hi Jessica,

You don't know me from Adam, so I'm sorry to do this. But I am preparing a presentation for my class on Jean Piaget, and I have NO CLUE how to pronounce "Neuchatel." Can you help me? Actually, do you know if there is a web site anywhere where I could hear pronunciations?

THANKS!

Linguistica said...

Hi there! No problem: Neuchatel (meaning "New Castle") is pronounced something like new-sha-tell. Sorry I don't do video blogging, or I'd just pronounce it for you! Have fun with your presentation,

Jessica

PS: When you don't know how to pronounce something, just say it loudly and with confidence and everyone will think you know what you're talking about (little tip I learned from my poetry prof)

Anonymous said...

Thank you for responding, Jessica. I can at least pronounce "Neuchatel" with confidence now ;-) By the way, I like your site!

Thanks again!