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 

It's all relative

In February 2011, students started telling me they thought English was a "really difficult language to learn" and that German was "much easier". Comparing languages based on their perceived degree of difficulty for the learner is clearly a subjective and relative concept. In his fascinating book Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages, on page 108, author Guy Deutscher makes the point that the relative difficulty of learning a given foreign language crucially depends on the mother tongue of the learner concerned. Most people would rightly assume that learning Italian is easy if your mother tongue is French, for example. But German and English also have many similarities. So in a bid to enthuse my disillusioned students, and thinking back to my 14-year-old self discovering similarities between the two languages; I designed a fun lesson on cognates – words used in different languages that derive from the same form.

So without going into the High German consonant shift (also called the second sound shift) or the first sound shift (also called Grimm's Law, after the linguist and editor of fairy tales Jacob Grimm), charts available online show that English and German are full of cognates. The most obvious of these are the ones whose spelling is essentially intact in both languages: hand (German: die Hand), finger (German: der Finger), ball (German: der Ball), salt (das Salz), pepper (der Pfeffer), light (German: das Licht). The list goes on and on but you get the general idea.

Now, my reason for drawing attention to the similarities was to show that in lots of ways, by sharing many of the same words, functions and ideas; many languages are not as different from each other as they seem. So you can imagine my delight at reading this morning that researchers in New Zealand looking into cognates – using analyses more commonly employed in evolutionary biology – have discovered that the origins of English, along with those of other languages in the Indo-European family of languages (comprising around 449 of the world's languages), were first present around 5000 years ago. The use of a family-tree theory about language is not new. The technique was first conceived by German linguist August Schleicher in 1853. Though having applied it in this new way using 207 cognate words, the team at the University of Auckland now believe that this Indo-European family is rooted in the Anatolian region of what is now Turkey, and as a result is actually around 8000 years old.

From a sociolinguistic perspective, we are aware that language is subjected to many different influences such as loan words from other languages, semantic shifts and cultural change. However, this new research suggests that cognates can be seen as 'linguistic DNA', such that cognates describing key concepts in the physical or natural world (such as body parts) are much more resistant to change over time. As a result, they may prove to be more reliable indicators of a language's origin. 

The price of being posh

This week I read that the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch had apparently been complaining that he was only ever offered 'posh' roles on account of his background and private education. The origin of the word posh is unknown. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the attractive folk etymology that it is an acronym of 'port out, starboard home' – supposedly indicating the more expensive, preferred cabins on a ship travelling east – popularised for people of mine and Cumberbatch's generation in the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Several dictionary definitions do, however, record the word as pertaining to the upper class.

And there it is, the dirtiest word in the English language: class. So the journalists were queuing up to analyse whether or not we have a problem with 'posh-bashing' and inverted snobbery. Cumberbatch got to Harrow on a scholarship after attending a fee-paying preparatory school. I mean, he's one of us, isn't he? He's just like all the other Benedicts we know. If it really is all so unfair on the poor chap, Hannah Betts of The Guardian thinks that maybe he should move to America because it's 'classless'. So classless, in fact, that US audiences can't get enough of class-conscious English dramas like Downton Abbey (described by Cumberbatch himself as "atrocious"), Gosford Park, as well as anything with even the faintest whiff of the House of Windsor.

But while exploiting and bemoaning Britain's class divisions is something of a national sport, I'd say that we're all missing the point focussing on upper class pretensions when the real issue is one's accent and what an albatross it can be. Let's face it, if Hugh Grant didn't play up his accent in every role, we'd finally recognise just what a fantastic actor he is, wouldn't we? But we should also take note from Stephen Fry, a man who seems to be universally liked but who clearly recognises the advantages of his own accent:

"My vocal cords are made of tweed. I give off an air of Oxford donnishness and old BBC wirelesses."

In my first term at university in 1994, in one memorable seminar we were required to take part in a demonstration of a classic sociolinguistic experiment. We listened to a variety of UK accents and were asked to make judgements about the ages, statuses and backgrounds of the speakers of each accent. Having completed this exercise (called the matched-guise test), we were forced to confront our own prejudices when it was revealed that all the accents had in fact been recorded by the same actor.

So I can't help thinking that maybe if Benedict Cumberbatch were similarly able to demonstrate his versatility as an actor, and take on a role that was out of character and required a different accent (i.e. not his own); perhaps he could eventually avoid the kind of typecasting he currently finds so unfair. Numerous surveys of the most prestigious, preferred and pilloried UK accents have been conducted over the years. So if RP's days really are numbered, then surely actors from all backgrounds should be getting their tongues round an array of regional varieties as a means of guaranteeing a range of different roles in the future.

Dedication, that's what you need

When I was 16 and struggling with Maths at school, I had private tuition for eight weeks prior to the final exam. I worked hard and passed the exam with a B grade. But more than any vital life-skills of decoding simultaneous quadratic equations or working out how high a window cleaner's ladder extended up the outside wall of a house, it was the Latin aphorism that the tutor – a retired headmaster – had displayed in calligraphic letters in his study that stayed with me:

Meret qui laborat (He is deserving who is industrious).

Now as a teacher myself, I recently taught two students – both aged 16 – for a year on a course to prepare them for the Cambridge First Certificate exam in English. They both also passed their exam with very good B grades. The course wasn't a breeze, and the two of them had to work hard over many months. One of them is now beginning an apprenticeship to become a watchmaker. I'm sure he'll be excellent at it.  

All of this set me thinking about how we measure success. It seems to me that in the UK over the last 15 years or so, from an educational perspective, people have been preoccupied with quantifying achievement. Former UK prime minister Tony Blair famously wanted 50% of young people to go to university. This policy has proven to be a damaging experiment in social engineering which, in our tougher economic times, is confirmed by the lack of appropriate career opportunities for thousands of graduates. Secondly, tuition fees, debt and the resulting market in tertiary education really are causing many young people to consider whether a degree is worth it. Factor in the recent worrying stories concerning vocational training and employment schemes and you might begin to wonder who actually cares about young people and their potential.

Yet over the past fortnight, we have marvelled at people's potential and achievement in London. Some media outlets have looked into the backgrounds and/or education of Team GB athletes (55% of them are currently at university or are graduates). Others prefer to draw up a medals table of the UK further education and higher education institutions attended by athletes. I could understand if people were using such statistics to highlight potential problems concerning the equality of opportunity for athletes, though in the case of the medals table at least, this doesn't appear to be the motivation.

So what about the medalists from more modest backgrounds? Jade Jones is 19 years old. Is her Olympic gold medal worth less because she left school at 16 to take up taekwondo full time? Is 20-year-old Laura Trott less deserving of her two Olympic golds because she also left school (a specialist sports college) and seemingly went straight into cycling? We need to focus more on people's individual achievements rather than where they came from. For me, the lasting legacy of London 2012 is simply that in spite of their backgrounds, in sport or elsewhere, young people can achieve anything if they have the support of their families, friends and communities – and if they have the desire and determination to succeed.

Fish on a Friday

Today I've been wrestling with another of life's great linguistic mysteries. No, it's not the question of why 'valuable' and 'invaluable' are often misused to mean the same thing in English (you can usually put a price on the former, though not on the latter). Nor am I jumping on the pedantic bandwagon of asking whether former athlete Denise Lewis understands what the word 'literally' means. My question is simply this:

What's the difference between a prawn and a shrimp?   

The link above leads to a rather informative, if confusing picture of how we go about naming things (onomasiology). The source goes into some detail about their biological differences and respective habitats. How great would it be if things were always named based on their respective size? In a game of linguistic Top Trumps®, no-one would ever want the shrimp card. And the translator's nightmare comes when we read that the two terms are often used interchangeably. Depending on your preferred dictionary, throw in the fact that both terms can be translated in German as either die Krevette or die Garnele and we have one crazy cocktail – and that's just for starters!

We also learn that British English favours 'prawn', while American English favours 'shrimp' and its associated forms (e.g. 'black tiger shrimp'). This surely proves conclusively that size isn't everything. The choice between different Englishes in translations is usually determined by the client. Though clients often stipulate British English while also specifying that a number of American English conventions be used. Zzz...

In this particular case, however, information online about the specific product made the final decision for me – the shrimp won. On some occasions, I do highlight potential misnomers for different audiences reading a text. But since trade, the Internet and the movement of people have all gone global, and people may or may not be writing text in their native language for monolingual speakers; errors and/or gradually accepted changes in meaning – especially in web content – will become increasingly frequent. We just have to try and keep up!

Enjoy the silence

In case you haven't noticed, a 116-year-old event began in my home country last Friday. And unlike comedian Stewart Lee, because I don't stand to make any money from it in any way, I believe I'm allowed to name the event. Obviously I'm talking about the London 2012 Olympic Games. It kicked off with an incredible opening ceremony – a social event where a group of us eventually managed to spot a mutual friend strutting her stuff with the 7500 other volunteers on the night. As a result of this creative spectacle, the armchair cynic in me has been unexpectedly silenced. Ever since, I've come to largely overlook the widely reported empty stadia, security concerns and ticket chaos; and focus instead on a different truth: the simple fact that an army of athletes and others have gone to superhuman lengths to stage this festival of sport for our viewing pleasure.

Regrettably, certain UK media outlets and politicians apparently believe the opening ceremony was left-wing propaganda – which is utterly ludicrous. Following their logic, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the event had been created to rival Riefenstahl. Of course, these critics stop short of saying what cultural or historical aspects they would have preferred: perhaps a reminder of one newspaper's apparent support for Oswald Mosley and his fellow fascists in 1930s Europe; or how prior to 1833, the British Empire had been built on the back of slavery? The commentators' intended party-political point is non-existent. The opening ceremony was simply one man's vision to reflect the positive aspects of a nation's history and to recognise the diverse factors and events that constitute its current multicultural identity. Deny that and you denigrate the vital contribution of the country's population.

However, the wider issue, carrying on from my previous post about swearing, concerns a gradual shift towards people publicly saying what was previously unspeakable. It doesn't seem to matter whether you're a politician, polemicist or prominent sports star; people seem suddenly prepared to abuse the Internet to peddle bigotry to the masses. Perhaps the ability to post messages instantly from a mobile phone encourages people to broadcast the kind of ugly opinions they would previously have shared with their friends or kept to themselves. What is clear is that sometimes, as my favourite Depeche Mode lyric goes, "words are very unnecessary; they can only do harm".

The naked truth about swearing

In the UK, it is not a criminal offence to be naked in public. An offence is only committed when an onlooker lodges an official complaint if they themselves are shocked and offended. The complaint can only be pursued if it can be proven that the person stripped off with the intention of offending others. Following recent high-profile events involving public figures, I would argue that the UK has a similarly relativist attitude towards swearing.

Swearing is readily – though not exclusively – invoked to express anger, negative emotions or outrage. Psychologist Steven Pinker expertly outlines the physiology of swearing and identifies the various reasons why we do it, though I'm more interested in the social perceptions of swearing. For example, if we believe that swearing is more prevalent now than in some nebulous era in the past, we might conclude that people today are angry about everything all the time.

Allow me to take the Swiss German usage of the word Hure (whore) as an example. This word appears to have been universally accepted as an intensifier, such that if gut means good, hure gut means very good. The intensifier is used with both positive and negative adjectives. As youth language remains the breeding ground of linguistic creativity, at some point in the past, young people must have recontextualised this word as an intensifier, and it has since been adopted to a greater or lesser extent by other sections of the population. This situation will prevail until such time as the signifier becomes too clichéd, loses its power in this new context and is replaced by a new word fulfilling the same function.

I sense a shift in public attitudes towards weaker notions of acceptability and appropriateness in this area, accelerated by social media and online activities. Firstly, without the bygone cultural and linguistic bottleneck of a few TV channels and a radio, we now encounter a much larger amount of unfiltered material likely to offend. Secondly, the Internet allows us to date and retrieve everything. We can be repeatedly offended regardless of whether we heard the utterance in context at the time or not. To construct a lazy, apocalyptic picture of profanity, I could display links here to Kenneth Tynan's famous utterance in 1963, the Sex Pistols' contrived outbursts in 1976 or Elton John's breakfast-show blunder on BBC Radio 2 on 28 January 2011. If we ignore the circumstances and the communicative intentions of individual instances of swearing, we are condemned to make emotive yet unfounded accusations with reference to the inferior speech styles of 'other', more lexically challenged people.

In reality, language – including swear words and youth language – displays our inexhaustible capacity to recontextualise existing words and invent new ones to accurately reflect concepts. But with such a relative concept as swearing, in public as well as private life, caution is advised. Unless we know that our intentions will not be misinterpreted, we should be acutely aware that the instantaneous yet permanent nature of modern media means that the boundaries between private and public are blurred. Similarly, what used to be 'tomorrow's chip paper' is now a web link passed between millions of strangers indefinitely. There is also no such thing as the watershed anymore. So if you're in public life and you're seen as a role-model in any way – you'll mind your language at all times. Little brother is watching!