At the school where I currently teach, there's a bright, ambitious lad who is as keen on engines as he is on English. He often asks for my opinion on aspects of English life. He's a huge fan of the TV show Top Gear and, specifically, Jeremy Clarkson himself. Though I do not share his fascination with the man, I'm happy that my student has found a topic – or a vehicle, if you will – through which to express himself and his likes and dislikes in a language that is not his own. I'm even happier that while the BBC may broadcast Clarkson's shows over here; the presenter's opinions that are not voiced on an international platform seem less likely to be discovered by eager 14-year-olds in Switzerland.
We all know that Clarkson has been in trouble over language in the past, and has been threatened with the sack by the BBC. But I doubt that his latest comments will lead to that. He's reported to have taken aim at the Welsh language, this time; calling it a “maypole around which a bunch of hotheads can get all nationalistic”. Some people in England seem to like to denigrate things they have little or no knowledge or experience of. So spouting rubbish about their neighbour is just lazy and boring. Welsh is significantly older than English, and English itself is a historical mix of many languages – as we know. Under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, Welsh is also the only language that is de jure official in any part of the UK. English is merely the de facto official language. But why should such facts get in the way of a celebrity's right to rant in exchange for money?
How exactly the UN might even begin to implement his wider call to abolish some languages is anyone's guess. What an utterly ludicrous proposition! Could a multilingual version of the Welsh Not be introduced at UN level to punish people for using their native languages? Would all foreign loan words used in English also be banned (including 'penguin' – from Welsh – and words with Latin roots)?
Alternatively, Clarkson could concede that the UK's policy of foreign language learning being optional at GCSE level since 2004 is appalling. It does not justify the rejection of a multilingual world – full of cultures, histories, traditions and personal experiences that differ from his own. Respecting that diversity means engaging with it, whilst also recognising that imperialistic attitudes are one component in the constructed 'otherness' that allows resentment, fear and hate to thrive. So when I read such depressing diatribes with increasing frequency and I factor in the populist rise in anti-EU and anti-immigration sentiment, I wonder if the UK I left some four years ago has become a state of blissful ignorance during my absence.
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Friday, 14 November 2014
Tuesday, 27 May 2014
Celebrity deuce
We've all seen the wristbands, haven't we – the discreet, often neon-coloured bands emblazoned with the initials 'W.W.J.D.'? I was told that they enabled Christians to question their own behaviour at key moments and do the right thing by asking: "What Would Jesus Do?". If that helps them to make the right choice, then so be it. But when I first saw the bands at university, I personally disliked them as an outward sign of inner piety because my faith is my business. For me, it is not just another commodity to advertise, or a means of dividing the potential sheep from the free-thinkers.
I was reminded of this today as I read an article that could have added a new twist on the acronym had it been given the title:
W.W.J.D. – What was Jesus' dialect?
In the end, the BBC went with Who, What, Why: What language would Jesus have spoken?
and Reuters preferred Pope, Netanyahu spar over Jesus' native language. It depressed me that a hugely significant visit undertaken in the spirit of global spiritual tolerance could be trivialised by focussing on the comparatively inconsequential detail of the tongue Christ spoke in.
We believe that he read Hebrew, the educated language of scripture. He may also have had some knowledge of Greek; though he spoke to his poorer – presumably less well educated – followers in their own language, which was Aramaic. I am no statesman, nor do I lead millions of followers of a world religion. But I could have given the right answer to the question. This is because when I was 15, I was taught in Religious Studies at school that when he was crucified, Jesus reportedly cried out the words "Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani" (Mark, 15:34) – Greek words that are transliterations of the Hebrew and Aramaic words meaning: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
It would appear that both the Israeli prime minister and the Pope were right in their responses. So if the media are seeking to portray this brief exchange as two famous people intent on point-scoring rather than the pursuit of peace and mutual respect; then neither party has the advantage. It's what readers in the UK might call 'celebrity deuce'.
I was reminded of this today as I read an article that could have added a new twist on the acronym had it been given the title:
W.W.J.D. – What was Jesus' dialect?
In the end, the BBC went with Who, What, Why: What language would Jesus have spoken?
and Reuters preferred Pope, Netanyahu spar over Jesus' native language. It depressed me that a hugely significant visit undertaken in the spirit of global spiritual tolerance could be trivialised by focussing on the comparatively inconsequential detail of the tongue Christ spoke in.
We believe that he read Hebrew, the educated language of scripture. He may also have had some knowledge of Greek; though he spoke to his poorer – presumably less well educated – followers in their own language, which was Aramaic. I am no statesman, nor do I lead millions of followers of a world religion. But I could have given the right answer to the question. This is because when I was 15, I was taught in Religious Studies at school that when he was crucified, Jesus reportedly cried out the words "Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani" (Mark, 15:34) – Greek words that are transliterations of the Hebrew and Aramaic words meaning: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
It would appear that both the Israeli prime minister and the Pope were right in their responses. So if the media are seeking to portray this brief exchange as two famous people intent on point-scoring rather than the pursuit of peace and mutual respect; then neither party has the advantage. It's what readers in the UK might call 'celebrity deuce'.
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Mind your language
Recently at school, we have been contemplating the following questions:
1) What is language?
2) What do I know about language?
By means of a mind map on the board, my colleague and I collected interesting interpretations and responses. Yesterday students put their views down on paper. Very often, we encourage them to follow the principle of écriture automatique (automatic writing). I was first introduced to this concept as part of my French course at university. Automatic writing is one of several forms of Surrealist automatism, conceived by Surrealism founder André Breton and others in the early 20th century. The subconscious is important in Surrealism, and one attractive way to explore it through écriture automatique involved people jotting down their random thoughts just before they dropped off to sleep.
Similarly, pupils and students are used to jotting down their unrefined thoughts as a means of exploring their personal motivations – as am I. Whilst I am fully aware that my response was coloured by an excellent book by David Bellos and his attempt to define translation; my response reads as follows:
Language is a mutually understandable communication tool, enabling speakers and language learners to express themselves and make themselves understood in different times and spaces for a certain purpose. But language and meaning are not the same thing. This is because meaning is yet another collaboratively constructed repository, which is in a constant state of change, redefinition and reconstitution defined by a given purpose.
I know how one goes about learning a language; how one might best learn a second language (a non-mother tongue). I also have ideas for language teaching, though I also know that teaching and learning are two separate worlds. Language learning involves forming a network of connections in the brain of the speaker. This is why each person learns in their own way. When we learn and use language, individuals are subconsciously looking for any connection that is reflected in our own lives – which thus creates very personal perceptions and meanings. Were this not the case, then surely we would, for example, all find the same jokes funny; we would all have the same writing style, the same speech style and we would all experience identical compliments and swearwords with the same degree of intensity. In short, we would not each be able to construct our own idiolect.
The second question above sought to elicit 'rules' that had been acquired and could be recalled. A few did surface – related to spelling, grammar or vocabulary. However, the free nature of the exercise meant that we remained preoccupied with philosophical issues, which is no bad thing. Language rules and quirks are necessarily linked to a given language pair (e.g. German and English) or language group – rather than to language learning per se. Still, écriture automatique and the other forms of expression that the school advocates provide learners with the freedom to explore their own learning in ways that were rarely, if ever, made available to me as a learner.
1) What is language?
2) What do I know about language?
By means of a mind map on the board, my colleague and I collected interesting interpretations and responses. Yesterday students put their views down on paper. Very often, we encourage them to follow the principle of écriture automatique (automatic writing). I was first introduced to this concept as part of my French course at university. Automatic writing is one of several forms of Surrealist automatism, conceived by Surrealism founder André Breton and others in the early 20th century. The subconscious is important in Surrealism, and one attractive way to explore it through écriture automatique involved people jotting down their random thoughts just before they dropped off to sleep.
Similarly, pupils and students are used to jotting down their unrefined thoughts as a means of exploring their personal motivations – as am I. Whilst I am fully aware that my response was coloured by an excellent book by David Bellos and his attempt to define translation; my response reads as follows:
Language is a mutually understandable communication tool, enabling speakers and language learners to express themselves and make themselves understood in different times and spaces for a certain purpose. But language and meaning are not the same thing. This is because meaning is yet another collaboratively constructed repository, which is in a constant state of change, redefinition and reconstitution defined by a given purpose.
I know how one goes about learning a language; how one might best learn a second language (a non-mother tongue). I also have ideas for language teaching, though I also know that teaching and learning are two separate worlds. Language learning involves forming a network of connections in the brain of the speaker. This is why each person learns in their own way. When we learn and use language, individuals are subconsciously looking for any connection that is reflected in our own lives – which thus creates very personal perceptions and meanings. Were this not the case, then surely we would, for example, all find the same jokes funny; we would all have the same writing style, the same speech style and we would all experience identical compliments and swearwords with the same degree of intensity. In short, we would not each be able to construct our own idiolect.
The second question above sought to elicit 'rules' that had been acquired and could be recalled. A few did surface – related to spelling, grammar or vocabulary. However, the free nature of the exercise meant that we remained preoccupied with philosophical issues, which is no bad thing. Language rules and quirks are necessarily linked to a given language pair (e.g. German and English) or language group – rather than to language learning per se. Still, écriture automatique and the other forms of expression that the school advocates provide learners with the freedom to explore their own learning in ways that were rarely, if ever, made available to me as a learner.
Saturday, 1 September 2012
So enchanted by how clever we are
I've just finished Guy Deutscher's brilliant book Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages. The book was meticulously researched and well argued, and it fired my imagination in so many ways. Deutscher examined whether language affects thought. On this evidence, the answer is complex. He looked at the relationship between language, colour and culture; words used to describe spatial relationships (right, left, behind, in front of vs. the cardinal directions of north, south, east and west in other languages and cultures); gendered languages and how generalising the perceptions of a given mother tongue as universals for all languages has been a major flaw in enthusiastic yet erroneous research in the past. Hence this book charts the haphazard progression of research per se, which in turn reminded me of these song lyrics:
We light the deepest ocean
Send photographs of Mars
We're so enchanted by how clever we are
Julian Lennon – 'Saltwater' (1991)
Our knowledge of language and science barely scratches the surface of what lies undiscovered and what remains for us to get wrong. Occasionally even Deutscher's own examples to illustrate his points seemed questionable. Recalling his daughter's ability to recognise that the sky is blue, at the ripe old age of four, she declared that the black night sky was 'blue' (Deutscher, 2011:72). The lack of even a name for the colour blue in some languages led the author to ask his daughter to describe the appearance of an object/concept (the sky) that is not always the same colour. In my view, we see the sky as 'blue' because most of the time, we want it to be so. Grey skies, white snowy skies, red or orange sunsets or black nights cannot compete with a bright blue sky on a sunny day. Yet towards the end of the book we find this (ibid:249):
"It has been shown, for example, that long-term memory and object recognition play an important role in the perception of colour."
So depending on one's individual experiences, is it possible that a child's inability to correctly identify the colour of an object or concept merely demonstrates their underdeveloped long-term memory? Is it conceivable that by the age of four, the images and descriptions of the different skies I mentioned above have not yet been committed to memory for future recall at specific times or during certain seasons? If so, the relative rarity of a blue sky might account for a child's alternative description, drawing on a different memory of the sky.
My second query concerns Deutscher's investigation into the extent to which different languages' descriptions of an event provoke different perceptions of that event (ibid:140). Taking the example of 'It rains', he tells us how the action of falling and the object (droplets) are wrapped up in one verbal concept. In his mother tongue (Hebrew), these two concepts are kept apart. Despite different renderings in different languages, one's perception of the actual event is unchanged. And to confirm his central thesis that languages only differ in what they habitually compel their speakers to say, 'It rains', to my English eyes and ears, requires additional information in a way that other languages do not. This is because the grammar of English, unlike many other languages, compels speakers to use one of two ways to express an action in the present tense:
1.It rains.
(Simple present, used to describe a habitual action in the present)
e.g. It rains somewhere and at some time – and we need to know – every day.)
2. It is raining.
(Present continuous form, used to describe the action occurring at the time the statement is made)
e.g. At the time of writing, droplets are falling from the sky. If no further information concerning the location of the action is provided, we logically assume that it is occurring in the immediate vicinity of the person making the statement.)
'It rains.' on its own withholds the identity or location of the unfortunate souls subjected to a daily soaking! Deutscher keeps grammar and perception separate. Our understanding of the actual precipitation itself is not altered in either example, though I would argue that the events and our perception of them are significantly different, coloured by differing degrees of immediacy – and the resultant temporal or geographical data required in English.
So after all that, I would highly recommend this book. It will leave you asking questions and will change the way you think about languages in general, the empirical veracity of research, as well as the capacity of your own language to adequately reflect thought.
Source: Deutscher, Guy, (2011) 'Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages', Arrow, ISBN: 978-0-09-950557-0
We light the deepest ocean
Send photographs of Mars
We're so enchanted by how clever we are
Julian Lennon – 'Saltwater' (1991)
Our knowledge of language and science barely scratches the surface of what lies undiscovered and what remains for us to get wrong. Occasionally even Deutscher's own examples to illustrate his points seemed questionable. Recalling his daughter's ability to recognise that the sky is blue, at the ripe old age of four, she declared that the black night sky was 'blue' (Deutscher, 2011:72). The lack of even a name for the colour blue in some languages led the author to ask his daughter to describe the appearance of an object/concept (the sky) that is not always the same colour. In my view, we see the sky as 'blue' because most of the time, we want it to be so. Grey skies, white snowy skies, red or orange sunsets or black nights cannot compete with a bright blue sky on a sunny day. Yet towards the end of the book we find this (ibid:249):
"It has been shown, for example, that long-term memory and object recognition play an important role in the perception of colour."
So depending on one's individual experiences, is it possible that a child's inability to correctly identify the colour of an object or concept merely demonstrates their underdeveloped long-term memory? Is it conceivable that by the age of four, the images and descriptions of the different skies I mentioned above have not yet been committed to memory for future recall at specific times or during certain seasons? If so, the relative rarity of a blue sky might account for a child's alternative description, drawing on a different memory of the sky.
My second query concerns Deutscher's investigation into the extent to which different languages' descriptions of an event provoke different perceptions of that event (ibid:140). Taking the example of 'It rains', he tells us how the action of falling and the object (droplets) are wrapped up in one verbal concept. In his mother tongue (Hebrew), these two concepts are kept apart. Despite different renderings in different languages, one's perception of the actual event is unchanged. And to confirm his central thesis that languages only differ in what they habitually compel their speakers to say, 'It rains', to my English eyes and ears, requires additional information in a way that other languages do not. This is because the grammar of English, unlike many other languages, compels speakers to use one of two ways to express an action in the present tense:
1.It rains.
(Simple present, used to describe a habitual action in the present)
e.g. It rains somewhere and at some time – and we need to know – every day.)
2. It is raining.
(Present continuous form, used to describe the action occurring at the time the statement is made)
e.g. At the time of writing, droplets are falling from the sky. If no further information concerning the location of the action is provided, we logically assume that it is occurring in the immediate vicinity of the person making the statement.)
'It rains.' on its own withholds the identity or location of the unfortunate souls subjected to a daily soaking! Deutscher keeps grammar and perception separate. Our understanding of the actual precipitation itself is not altered in either example, though I would argue that the events and our perception of them are significantly different, coloured by differing degrees of immediacy – and the resultant temporal or geographical data required in English.
So after all that, I would highly recommend this book. It will leave you asking questions and will change the way you think about languages in general, the empirical veracity of research, as well as the capacity of your own language to adequately reflect thought.
Source: Deutscher, Guy, (2011) 'Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages', Arrow, ISBN: 978-0-09-950557-0
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