Ceci n'est pas une endive - Tag - English

How Speaking Too Many Languages Is Limiting

notafish — Sun, 05 May 2013 09:08:00 +0200

I know, by saying this - that speaking too many languages is limiting- I probably go against years and hours and sweat tears of very dubious as well as very serious research that say the contrary. As a matter of fact, if you go about googling the advantages of speaking many languages, the number of results is around 123 million results (yes, millions). So who the heck do I think I am to say the contrary?

Well, here goes. I've always liked writing. I've written as long as I can remember, which probably dates back to my absolutely quiet and boring adolescence. We're talking a few decades here. However, ever since I've moved to Germany, I've stopped writing. Not completely, I will take the occasional napkin or more fashionable Facebook status to spit out a few well thought-out words that are spinning round in my mind. But on average, I have not written in the past eight years nearly a quarter as much as I have in the 20 odd years before that. Why? Not sure. But today I came to the realisation that this whole "I speak so many languages it's so cool" thing might be the core of the problem.

My thing about writing is that I usually write for someone. Not always someone in particular, but as I jot words down on a piece of paper, a name will pop out, and then maybe another, people past or present, who I'm thinking might find my words funny, moving, stupid or great, whatever. These people usually never get to read those words, but they are still the targets of my words. The problem starts when these people don't speak the language I'm writing in. Mind you, I write in English or French most of the time, and German comes a far third, so it's not that many languages. But still. That's three languages, and not all of my friends or acquaintances, or people I want to talk to actually speak all of those three languages. Some might speak one, others two, a few do speak the three, some even speak only very little of those to start with (that would be some of my Italian and Spanish speaking friends). So of course every time I write, I feel limited in who I can talk to.

Take this blog. Lately I've written in German, because it makes sense to write about Germany in German, and because frankly, it's often easier than to have to translate what I'm living on a day to day basis. But it's frustrating. Because as much as Germans might be interested in what I have to say about them, I'm also quite sure that my French speaking friends are interested in what I have to say about Germany. And I've caught myself numerous times citing my blogposts to someone as an example of what I think/do/feel and realizing that the blogpost i'm talking about is written in a language they do not speak.

Truth is, I am one person. No matter what language I speak. So if you know me in one language, you know me, and not just some part of me. And while I find that speaking three languages somewhat correctly and understanding two more quite well has sharpened my thinking process (the more languages you speak, the more accurate words you find to say exactly what you want to say), it also has limited my will and freedom of expression. I want to say things, but I'd like to say them in all the languages I speak AT ONCE. Not have to translate, but just write things as they come and they'd be automagically translated (and make sense, as opposed to simple machine translation) in all the languages I'd like to see them translated to. Unfortunately, we're not there yet, so I'm frustrated and I don't write.

But I have made a decision. I don't care any more. I am just going to write. If it's in a language you understand, good for you. If it's not, I am sorry, you'll either have to pass, or use bad machine translation. I need to write more, it's all cluttered in my many language head these days, I need to sort things out and writing is my way out.

Empathy, Culture and the Words You Use

notafish — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:02:00 +0200

Je suis une empathique. De base, de tout coeur et jusqu'au bout de mes orteils. Pourtant, j'ai beaucoup de mal avec certaines personnes, notamment issues de la culture nord-américaine, qui abusent de mots teintés d'empathie et leur font perdre leur force. Je me suis trouvée dans plusieurs situations de communication où l'utilisation d'un discours empathique m'a fait me poser la question de savoir si la personne qui l'émettait n'était pas en train d'essayer de m'endormir à coup de positif et bons sentiments, une situation où l'utilisation de mots qui ont leur origine dans les sentiments n'étaient pas "ressentis" mais "pensés".

In the many scales that exist about characterizing one's personality, be it Myers Briggs or Process Com, i inevitably fall under the "empathic" or "feeling" type. I guess no matter how many of these tests I'd take, this will always be the main streak in my character. I feel first, thought and reason come second. I value too, but that's for another blogpost. It is both the bane of my existence, and a strength I've learned to use in communication with others.

I've lived in the United States for two years. And there is one thing that I really haven't managed to this day to understand, or rather, to come to terms with, it's what I would characterize as superficial empathy. I observed North Americans quite a bit, and in my observations, I often came across people who use and overuse a tone, or words, which want themselves to be empathic, but which simply don't touch me. The use, or rather overuse, of "I love", "I like", "you are great" and other positive sounding wording just does not sound right to my empathic ears.

I think there are two different occasions in which this bothers me.

First, with people I don't know. I came with the idea of this blogpost while reading a blog where the blogger answered most comments (which I think is good) by praising the person who commented, their thoughts and thanking them. The thanking I find great, I think we never thank enough. The praising however, after the first three comments, struck me as a fake calculated tactic to make people "feel good". Except just reading those answers made me feel uncomfortable. Too much love spoils the love, I would say. To some extent, reading these comments in a row made me feel as if the author was putting everyone on the same level. If I'm being great, somehow, in my mind's eye, it must be because I am to some extent "better" than others. Maybe I have the wrong scale here, but I want to feel special. Not part of a chain-letter type answer to my commentary which puts me on a par with everyone else. Praising is good too, don't get me wrong. I also find we don't praise enough. But I guess I have a limit. It's a bit like eating caviar everyday. After a while, you don't realize that it's a special thing anymore. North Americans, I find, do that a lot (again, this is a generalization and not all North Americans, but it is a trend I have noticed there and in no other country I have visited or lived in). And frankly there comes a time I don't believe this appreciation any more. To me, it end up being a fake varnish of appreciation, which might work for a while, but ends up losing all kind of reality. Mind you, I suppose if you read just the one comment addressed to you, you'd probably feel good. But reading all of them in a row made me pause. If I wrote a comment there, and the author praised it, I would not really feel as if their words were sincere. I sincerely believe this is a very cultural thing, maybe because the French are rather stingy with praise, I don't know.

Second, with people I know. I guess here the clash comes between what I have come to know of the person, and what their words are trying to say. Example: a colleague I worked with, whom I know for a fact has absolutely no empathy whatsoever in everyday life, or in their job, but who acts in public as if they were the most empathic people in the world, appealing in their external communication to understanding, loving each other and other empathic whatnots. I guess that's even worse than the first. Again, I've only experienced this with North Americans (or could-be North Americans), and in English. I find it extremely disturbing (and here I mean it in a very physical way) to read someone's words with the knowledge that they can't possibily be "feeling" any of those words. They might "think" those words, but they don't "feel" them. And "thinking" words of love and empathy just does not cut it. Empathy comes with the heart, not with the brain. It can't be a surface thing, like a heart milk on a coffee. For the overly feeling person I am, it ends up looking like a scary propaganda tactic designed to blind people as to what the real deal is all about. It's a bit like sugar coating the bitter cake to make it taste better. Again, it's fake. And often, unfortunately, makes me miss the point of their words and try and find the catch. Which definitely isn't a good way of taking in an attempt at communicating, I guess.

I wonder if I'm the only one reading those people and feeling the same way. So I ask you, have you come across people whose words of love and empathy you could just not relate to? Do you feel/think it might have to do with culture and/or language?

Lara604, Latte Heart 2 , March 24, 2009, on Flickr, CC-BY-SA 2.0

Of intended puns and other language barriers

notafish — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:27:00 +0100

L'humour est la chose la plus difficile à traduire dans un contexte interculturel. Souvent celui-ci s'inscrit dans un contexte hautement culturel et fait référence à des choses qu'une personne ayant grandi/vécu dans un autre pays ne peut comprendre. Le plus difficile à faire dans une langue qui n'est pas la sienne sont les jeux de mots, qui souvent sont pris comme des fautes de grammaire plutôt que de l'humour.

I've just read a very true blogpost about how humour just does not cross borders very well. Borders of language, but mostly, intercultural boders. I guess we're all shaped by whatever environment we evolve in, and humour usually resides in that environment. Humour appeals to things we have experienced, TV shows, books, movies, pop culture in its greater acceptance, family history, you name it. As such, it takes quite a bit of knowing the other to make sure that the joke you're about to make will come across as such. Humour is difficult to translate and difficult to understand when you're living in another country or speaking another language.

What I find hardest however, is how difficult it is to make puns in a language that is not your native language. Not so much because you cannot (as in "you're not able to"), but because the pun presupposes a mastery of the language that people aren't ready to grant you. After all, I'm a French speaking English, or German, so people know that English or German aren't my first language, and they'll be somewhat hermetic to my trying to play with the language that is theirs.

Of course, there are unintended puns. One of the most embarassing moment of my learning-languages life was while trying to make a quiche in the USA (yes, quiche is the one thing I export everywhere I live ;)). I was at the very beginning of my living there, and was looking for grated cheese (Gruyère, to be exact). Which, for the record, simply did not exist in New Mexico. So here I am, talking with my English teacher, and telling her I need eggs, bacon bits and... raped cheese. Yeah. Raped. The thing is, the word for grated in French is "rapé". And since so many English words come from French, I took a stab at it. Wrong stab, it seems. Raped has somewhat of a different meaning than the one I was expecting. That's how you learn, mind you, I'll never forget my English teacher's look, and never ever forget how to say "grated" in English.

But here is another story. There is a phrase in English that goes "I don't give a flying fu*k". Pardon my French. I've always found it funny. And one day I "punned" it, and said "I don't give a fu**ing fly". The first time I said it, I can't remember who it was, but the English speaker that was there said, just a bit embarassed to be correcting me: "Hmm, the proper way to say this is actually "I don't give a flying fu**". Crap. I was trying to be funny here, but because I am not a native speaker, they thought I had not gotten that right and was making a mistake. That episode taught me two things:

- No matter how well you master a language, people do remember that you're not a native speaker. This would probably have been considered funny if uttered by a native speaker.
- A language that you learn is hard to use in a way that isn't conventional.

A bit sad actually, I probably could be quite funny in English, if they'd let me ;). And I realize that my confidence in how well I speak a language can be measured with how funny I try to be. I'm even starting to make jokes in German now! (and they don't come across :P).

Vorauseilender Gehorsam

notafish — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:36:00 +0200

While reading one of the blogs I follow from afar on the "intercultural" scene, I stumbled upon the concet of "vorauseilender Gehorsam" (obedience before the order), an interesting concept which the commenter on the blog thought could be an explanation for the rise in English words within other languages. The idea being that people obey soe "unknown boss" that expects them to strew their conversations with English words to be fashionable, because it is the thing to do.

Ne crisez pas, ce billet est en français, seul le titre est en allemand. Je me baladais sur l'un des blogs "interculturels" que je lis de temps en temps (je suis une piètre lectrice de blogs, mais c'est une autre histoire) et suis tombée sur ce billet qui fait écho à mes billets précédents sur la difficulté (ou le bonheur) de parler plusieurs langues.

Le phénomène de Vorausleidender Gehorsam (obéissance avant l'ordre), tel qu'expliqué par Matthias sur le billet de Caroline est un concept que je ne connaissais pas et que je trouve particulièrement intéressant. Je ne suis pas certaine qu'il s'applique à l'exemple donné par Caroline, qui me semble plutôt relever du "which language says it best". En l'occurrence, le contexte (conversation avec un américain) appelle le mot le plus proche du sens que l'on veut dire, facilité par le fait que l'on sait que la personne à qui l'on parle comprendra ce mot de toutes façons. Il suffit d'écouter les conversations de personnes à la langue maternelle commune mais vivant dans un pays étranger pour voir se profiler nombre des ces "localisations" sauvages. Combien de fois ai-je parlé du Finanzamt à un français d'Allemagne, parce que le Trésor Public est un concept franco-français...

En revanche, cette idée de "vorauseilender Gehorsam" me paraît intéressante pour expliquer la "montée" des mots anglais dans les autres langues. On peut imaginer que le "chef" désincarné dans le contexte actuel est le phénomène de mode. Il est de bon ton de truffer son vocabulaire de mots anglais, pour montrer qu'on est "in" (à la page !), même si on les utilise parfois à tort et à travers. Les allemands sont très forts pour ça, entre le Handy (cell phone) et le Beamer (projector) qui s'ils ont des consonnances anglophones, ne sont pas de vrais mots de la langue anglaise. Je me suis surprise parlant d'un beamer à des anglophones qui me regardaient dun air étrange. Bref, que ce soit la mode, le net ou tout autre "chef" qui nous pousse à mélanger les langues et les genres, je trouve ce concept développé par Matthias très intéressant.

Truly multilingual

notafish — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:35:00 +0200

Our neighbours are what one would call a really truly multilingual family. The mother is Swedish, the father is Italian. Together they speak English. The kids speak Swedish with their mother, Italian with their father. They lived the first years of their life in Switzerland, which means the children speak "Swiss German" (believe me, it's as far from German as Chinese from English) , They now live in Germany, so everyone is learning "High German" (Hochdeutsch, the "clean" German), and the kids are in an international school where English is the primary language, practicing the English they've picked up from their parents. In short, you have 3 kids aged 8, 6 and 3 who understand and speak 4 languages, 4 languages that their parents don't even all master.

Apart from the amazing-ness of it, I found it to be truly encouraging, to see that kids that young could simply pick up all those languages and feel at ease in any of them. We had coffee one afternoon and the kids indifferently spoke German or English with us, while conversing with their parents in Italian and Swedish.

I can't wait to ask my daughter questions about what it is like to learn more than one language at once. Although I now speak and understand four foreign languages myself, albeit at different levels, I learned them once my French was already there, meaning that gender, concepts and thought structure were already shaped in my mother tongue. I am especially interested in trying to understand what it feels like having different words for a same "thing" especially when those words convey different impressions or feelings, such as different genders for example. It'll be interesting, for sure.

The bilingual challenge

notafish — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:24:00 +0100

I have written about the interesting differences in cultural perception of the same objects, or rather of the same words. I have always been fascinated by the easiness with which I navigate from one language to another, namely French and English. And I am equally fascinated by the difficulty I have to do the same thing with German, which could probably be tagged as my third language.

Here I am for example, sitting in the waiting room of a German doctor, writing in English, while understanding the radio in the background in German, and recalling to write this note the words I have just read in French. I am reading a book about bilingualism "Le défi des enfants bilingues", to try and understand what Tuinkel will have to go through with a French mother and a German father. I am just at the beginning, but there is one image the author recalled which really lit my understanding of what bilingualism could be all about.

The first part of the book tries and defines bilingualism, to come to the conclusion that there are probably as many bilingiulisms as there are bilingual people. In short, it is very difficult to pinpoint when exactly someone can be considered "bilingual". It is also very difficult to actually compare the degrees to which one person masters two languages. Mainly because this measure can only realistically be taken against that of monolingualism, ie. a state where the person who learns a language uses it at every single opportunity; whereas a bilingual person probably makes use of their two languages in different circumstances (at home for one, at school for the other, on holidays for one, at work for the other etc.).

Abdelilah-Bauer recalls an example given by François Grosjean in his book Bilinguisme et biculturalisme, essai de définition. I am paraphrasing:

It would probably never come to the athlete's mind to compare the performances of a hurdles runner to those of a 100m sprinter or those of a high jump athlete. In short, although the hurdles performance actually takes from both sprinter and high jumper, noone would say that a hurdle runner is a bad sprinter, or a bad high jumper. Bilingualism can thus be measured as a different set of skills which, if it fishes in different pools, constitutes a discipline of its own, independant of monolingualism.

I found the image very interesting, because it somehow broke one of the ideas I've always had at the back of my mind, while finding it really weird, ie. that languages coexist as separate pools from which I fish from. In short, thinking that my brain has some kind of switch that goes from one language to the other and that switching on one language, I switch off the other(s). At the same time, the situation I described above and the difficulty I have had to translate the illustration of the hurdle guy definitely proves that all the languages I speak are always there for the taking.

I'll share more of my thoughts about this book which I find extremely interesting as I get along.