Ceci n'est pas une endive - Tag - language

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).

Madame und Monsieur kann man auf Deutsch nicht ansprechen

notafish — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:46:00 +0100

En allemand, on ne peut utiliser "Madame" ou "Monsieur" sans nom qui suit, ce qui rend l'apostrophe de personnes inconnues extrèmement difficile. On ne peut appeler un serveur dans un restaurant par exemple qu'en lui disant "pardon !" ou "Excusez-moi", ou un truc du genre, sauf si on connaît son nom, auquel cas on peut l'appeler "Herr Schmidt!" par exemple. Bref, un manque dans la langue allemande.

Ich stand in der Schlange vom Supermarkt, und eine Frau hat versucht, Zigaretten aus dem Automat zu holen. Sie hat bei alle Kassen probiert, und irgendwie keine Zigaretten bekommen (gut für die Gesundheit, aber nicht so gut für die Stimmung) und ist dann zu ihrer Kassenschlange wieder gegangen. Bis plötzlich, eine gute 3 minuten spät, eine Packung fiehl vom Automat, 3 Kassen weiter. Und da waren wir, alle die das gesehen hatten, und wollten die Frau rufen, sodass sie ihre Zigaretten nehmen konnte. Aber... wie ruft man jemanden auf Deutsch? Es geht hier um jemanden, den wir nicht kannten, weder von Name oder sonstwie. Also hier waren wir, die Kassiererin, ich, und ein Paar andere Leute, und "Hey!" "Hallo!" "Entschuldigung!" gerufen haben, um die Aufmerksamkeit dieser Frau zu wecken. Bis ich "Madame !" gerufen habe, in der Hoffnung zu mindest dass alle Frauen in der Schlange sich angesprochen fühlen. Hat mittlerweil funktionniert (man kann nicht sagen, ob das die "Madame" war) und sie hat uns endlich gehört und ihre Zigaretten bekommen.

Das bringt mir zu diesem sehr traurige Mangel der deutschen Sprache. Man kann kein allgemein "Madame" oder "Monsieur" benutzen. Wenn man in Frankreich in ein Geschäft rein geht, wird man sagen: "Bonjour Madame" oder "Bonjour Monsieur". In Deutschland reicht "guten Tag". Wenn aber ihr eur Bäcker kennt, dann vielleicht "Guten Tag Herr Hees", aber ohne Name, geht Herr oder Frau gar nicht. Man kann nicht rein tretten und einfach "Guten Tag Herr", oder "Guten Tag Frau" sagen. Beim grüßen ist das halb so wild, aber sobald es um jemanden anzusprechen geht, wird das schwieriger. Einen Kellner, eine Frau im Supermarkt, Irgendjemanden, der auf der Straße was verloren hat, wen auch immer. Auf Deutsch bleiben wir mit "Hey!, Ho!, Ha!, Entschuldigung, Du da!, Du in dem roten Mantel!" oder so, und niemand fühlt sich wirklich angesprochen. Ich finde das sehr bedauerlich. Ich meine, wir können nicht alle Namen kennen, und ehrlich gesagt, sogar wenn die Kassiererin ihren Name auf einem Schild hat, finde ich es fast ein Bisschen informell sie gleich mit "Frau Schmidt" anzusprechen, wenn ich sie nie vorher gesehen habe.

Ich vermisse sehr Madame und Monsieur, die eine gewisse Höfflichkeit ansprechen, und es viel leichter machen, unbekannte Leute anzusprechen. Aber vielleicht kennt ihr ein Trick, das diesen Mangel erfüllen kann?

Of Language and Thought: Gender Awareness

notafish — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 10:08:00 +0200

Partant d'un article du New York Times sur la question essentielle de savoir si la langue que nous parlons décide de nos pensées, quelques considérations sur la langue en général et en particulier l'utilisation de différents genres pour les mêmes choses, notamment en français et allemand.

In an article titled "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?", Guy Deutscher tackles how our mother tongue may or may not shape our thoughts. The state of research as he presents it shows how language affect our relation to the world. Deutscher speaks about gender, space, color and even reality and how those are affected by the language we speak. The article is highly interesting, you should read it. As I have already written about in other posts on this blog, the subject is one that I am constantly thinking about.

In my experience, the most mysterious thing about how language affects the way we think still resides in the use of gender. Deutscher gives extensive examples of how languages differ in how they affect a gender to things. I speak at least three languages which have a completely different approach to gender.

French has two genders for things: masculine and feminine. German has three: masculine, feminine and neutral. English has one: neutral. How do you reconcile all of this in the way you look a the world? As far as I am concerned, learning English wasn't too much of a problem. Neutral does not exist in French, so having to say "it" for everything didn't really bother me. I kept thinking the differences in gender while speaking the "it". The moon is feminine, the sun is masculine, both ofthem can be referred as "it", and basta. But German introduced a whole new way of looking at things. What happens is that many words are of the opposite gender. The sun is a she and the moon a he, which is extremely confusing. And then comes neutral, which in the end, does not really make sense to me. I could understand it in English because it is used across the spectrum, but in German, the neutral seems to be totally random. I mean, a "young girl" (Mädchen) is neutral, go figure.

My way of dealing with this is interesting. There are words for which I don't care. A table is feminine in French, masculine in German, but frankly, that does not keep me awake at night. However, there are some other words I really have trouble with. Sun and moon are of those. But things like the world (feminine in German, masculine in French), or even worse, a letter (feminine in French, masculine in German) I just can't grasp. Or rather, I can't imagine them having another gender than the French one (mother tongue). I realize that with time that I simply put gender aside in German when it clashes too much with my conceptual world in French. This means that when I talk about a letter (der Brief) in German, I do use the masculine, but in my head, it's still a "she".

What I find fascinating today is looking at my daughter growing up learning both French and German at the same time. Her use of gender for things is still a bit off, but I suppose her grasp of the feminity or masculinity of things will be radically different from mine or that of her father, since she'll have learned both at the same time and without one or the other taking prevalence (or will they?). I am curious whether for her, gender for things, in the end, will have the same meaning. Will it be a she-moon? a he-sun? Both or neither? I can't wait for her to be old enough to actually answer this question.

Animals Too Speak Foreign Languages

notafish — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:17:00 +0200

Les onomatopées utilisées pour les cris d'animaux sont très différentes d'une langue à l'autre. Entre le "cocorico" français, le "cocka doodle doo" anglais et le kikiriki français, je me demande comment notre fille va apprendre à faire parler les animaux.

Seriously. They do. There is something fantastic about bringing up a child in two languages, it is that you discover things about your own languages that you never really thought about.

When a child learns to speak, one of the first thing you do, is teach them the noises that animals make. I guess all parents have gone through this ordeal of making themselves ridiculous while imitating a dog, a cow or God knows what animal, instead of plainly saying "this is a dog", you'll go "this is a dog, wow wow".

Well, here comes the problem. As stated in this blogpost, German animals make different noises than English speaking ones. And to top it all, French ones say things differently as well. So how does a child make the difference? I mean, which are the true animal languages? Take the rooster for example. It goes Cocka doodle doo in English, Kikiriki in German, and Cocorico in French. Mind you, seeing that the rooster is one of the French national symbols (granted, due to a funny etymology history), I'm tempted to say that we (the French) know better what it really says^[1] Same for the frog (we are the ones eating frog legs, after all), which goes ribbit in English, kwock in German and coââ - coââ in French. Frankly, the English speaking frogs are strange, and I am pretty sure they can't understand the French or German ones, which seem to speak neighbour languages.

All in all, I find it interesting that such things as onomatopea are so different from one language to another. You'd think that with a few quirks, due to existing sounds in one or the other languages, animal talk would be transcribed in approaching ways. After all, it is just a matter of listening and reproducing. But no, that's not the way it works. I'm wondering how our daughter will handle those differences. Maybe her rooster will say something like Cocoriki?

Notes

[1] Image to prove my point: Coq gaulois from the statue of the Girondins, Place des Quinconces in Bordeaux © Jean-Marie DAVID Dinkley, CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Which Language Says it Best?

notafish — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:14:00 +0200

Quand on apprend une langue étrangère dans le pays où elle est parlée, on apprend souvent des mots dans leur contexte étranger. Du coup, il devient extrêmement difficile de les traduire dans sa langue maternelle. C'est aussi le cas dans l'autre sens, de sa langue maternelle vers la langue étrangère. Certains mots n'ont simplement pas de traduction qui revête toutes les nuances d'un mot dans une autre langue. Quelques exemples.

A few days ago, I wrote about the extended meaning of words, and how some words in a language we learn take on a wider meaning because we have an approaching word in our own language. This made me think about the words that one learns in a foreign language which just don't have a satisfying translation.

Speaking another language is a difficult endeavour, but it is also a very rewarding one. However, while learning the language in the country it is spoken is probably the best way to learn it, rather than at school, it brings on whole new set of challenges in speaking your mother tongue.

There is a whole context to learning a new word, which we probably forget because we were too young when we learned words, or too engrossed in learning to remember the circumstances in which we learned them. My theory goes though, that you don't know a word fully until you have tried to translate it.

How many times have I come across words that just "say it best" in another language than the one I am speaking at the time?

Let me try a few examples.

Wilderness. Wilderness is a word I learned at the foot of the rockies, in the middle of nowhere. In the wilderness. But when I came back to France and had to translate it, I just couldn't. There is so much to the word that it takes at least a full French sentence to even come close to it. The wild, the fauna, the flora, the outdoors, what do I know. It's a concept that simply does not really exist in French. I noticed that for example, the translation of Jack London's White Fang in French used the Wild in English, because there is simply no French word that carries the same meaning.

Mensch. Mensch is a German word which means something like human being. But not really. Or rather, more than that. It's a human being which carries the whole of Humanity (notice the capital H) with it. A concept that neither French nor English really have.

N'importe quoi. N'importe quoi means "anything", but it also means "silly things" or "silly words". N'importe quoi is used as an interjection in French, which would mean something like 'nonsense". But it's also used in conjunction with the verb 'make'. you can "make n'importe quoi" but you can't make nonsense. Again, untranslatable.

I find it absolutely fantastic to be able to have an array of vocabulary that goes beyond one's mother tongue. It is also highly frustrating, to know of words, and the concept behind them, and not be able to translate them accurately in the language you are speaking at a moment M. It's a bit like looking at the world with a magnifying glass and seeing things which you can't show other people because you can't give them that magnifying glass.

There are probably thousands of other examples, which I simply can't think of right now, but I'll try to keep a list. I'd be interested to hear what words you have stumbled upon and which you have not been able to translate in one or the other language you speak.

Pourquoi les français ne parlent pas de langues étrangères

notafish — Mon, 25 May 2009 13:54:00 +0200

A few months after writing my blog post Why The French Don't Speak Any Other Language, I read Jean-Benoît's Nadeau Les Français aussi ont un accent. Jean-Benoît Nadeau is French Canadian and lived two years in France to study the French. And he seemed to come to a conclusion similar to mine concerning why the French don't speak any other language, ie. that the mastery of the language is a very important thing for the French and unless they speak a foreign language perfectly, they just won't speak.

Il y a de cela quelques mois, j'ai commis un billet tentant d'expliquer pourquoi les français ne parlent pas de langues étrangères. Ma théorie est que le français est une langue qui supporte difficilement d'être mal parlée, parce qu'elle en devient difficile à comprendre.

Les français ont une réputation qui les précède de gens ne sachant pas parler les langues étrangères et surtout pas l'anglais. Et ce malgré un système scolaire qui met l'accent sur les langues étrangères dès la sixième (que l'on atteint à environ 11-12 ans) et pendant au moins cinq années si l'on passe son bac. Il y a quelques semaines, j'ai lu l'ouvrage de Jean-Benoît Nadeau Les Français aussi ont un accent, qui relate ses deux années en France. Il y aborde rapidement la question du blinguisme et le fait en ces termes :

J'ai ma petite théorie pour expliquer pourquoi on dit que les Français sont moins bilingues que les autres Européens. D'abord, je crois que c'est faux : je suis même convaincu que les Français ont toujours été aussi bilingues que les autres. Problème : le niveau de bilinguisme d'un peuple ne se mesure pas, objectivement. Toutes les études ne peuvent mesurer que ce que les gens pensent d'eux-mêmes. À la question : "Parlez-vous une autre langue ?" un Français aura tendance à répondre non, sauf s'il la parle bien, tout simplement parce que la maîtrise parfaite de la langue est fondamentale pour lui.^[1]

Je suis évidemment d'accord avec cette analyse. Je pense que les Français ont tout simplement un complexe d'infériorité lorsqu'il s'agit de parler une langue étrangère, notamment parce que dans la société française, la maîtrise de la langue (française) est un signe de distinction sociale et d'éucation. Du coup, le Français parlant mal une langue étrangère (ou pensant qu'il la parle mal), aura tendance à ne pas s'aventurer hors de la langue qu'il maîtrise.

En tant que Française parlant tous les jours une langue étrangère, c'est un état d'esprit que je connais bien. Bien que ma maîtrise de l'allemand soit bonne, elle est loin d'être parfaite et cela donne lieu à de nombreuses frustrations, probablement exacerbées par le fait que je suis française.

Notes

[1] Les Français aussi ont un accent, Jean-Benoît Nadeau, Petite Bibliothèque Payot, p. 243

The Extended Meanings of Words

notafish — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:43:00 +0200

Les mots sont parfois plus parlants dans une langue que dans une autre et disent plus que leur simple définition. Mais ceci est souvent dû au fait que l'on ne peut apprendre une langue sans teinter certains mots avec ceux que l'on connaît déjà. Certains mots prennent ainsi dans notre esprit un sens élargi par rapport à leur défnition de base. Le mot embarazada en espagnol évoque l'embarras pour un français, alors qu'il veut dire "être enceinte", probablement sans aucune arrière pensée. De même le mot groß en allemand, qui veut dire grand mais que j'utilise rarement parce que j'ai toujours l'impression de qualifier quelqu'un de gros alors qu'il est simplement grand.

I was in Bordeaux a week ago, talking with a friend of mine, who loves lists. She makes lists about different funny things, but one that struck me, and which I might actually start on my own, was her list of words that "fit" in a language, better than in another, or that, on the contrary, just don't fit at all. She speaks Italian, Spanish, English and French (she's a native French speaker) and so we toyed with a few words and argued about them.

She started with a word I didn't know, the word for pollution in Italian. The word is inquinamento. To her, that word was much stronger than the French (or English for that matter) pollution. It has this kind of sticky ring to it, which evokes something crawling under your skin. I looked up the etymology of it, which refers to "stink" (puzzare) and "putrefaction" (putrefazione) in its indo-European roots. I must say that although I do not fully grasp the word, I can relate to the feeling by hearing it.

We then went on to the Spanish for pregnant, which is embarazada. I have to say that this is one of the most common faux-amis (false friends) for French speakers (I guess it works in English too). You find yourself embarrassed and end up ... pregnant, by using the wrong words. My friend thought the use of the word could be seen as a good illustration of women's condition in society, ie. they feel embarrassed (not at ease) because they're pregnant. Looking up the etymology brings interesting things. The Spanish word as well as the French word ''embarrasser'' seem to be derived from the same root, but have evolved differently. Embarazo in Spanish is really pregnancy, that's all. The interesting thing here is that one language actually taints the other, I suppose that Spanish speakers don't ever think of embarrassment when they use the word embarazada.

I found this to be the most interesting example. Because we speak another language, which may or may not share roots with the language we learn, some words simply take on much more (or many more) meaning(s) than they really have. Looking back, I realise it is simply impossible not to taint some of the words with those you already know. Which sometimes means that you have trouble using a perfectly harmless word because it just rings different bells in your own language. One good example in my everyday life is the word groß (pronounced gross and which means tall). In French, gros means fat. So it's always really strange for me to tell someone they are tall, because I always have second thoughts about the fact that I might just have called them fat. I guess that works in English too... Calling someone gross is not exactly very nice!

I don't spreche Deutsch, merci beaucoup

notafish — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:16:00 +0200

Well, actually, I do speak German, but I hate it (If I dared, I'd write the hate bold in font size 40 and with four exclamation marks) when a website speaks to me in German. I mean, my language preferences are clear in Firefox, there's even only French and English so why a website should speak to me in German is beyond me.

Well, I know why. I live in Germany. But as Stephanie Booth explains very well in her "Waiting for the Babel Fish" presentation, which I attended in Reboot a long time ago, there are some things that are very wrong in how the internet brings about multinlingualism.

And that starts (or ends?) with websites speaking to me in German. It is, for example, the case for MySpace.com, which bases the site's interface language on the IP address (ie. the geographical location of the user). But there is nothing worse than to go from a French blog or a French email to a page which speaks German without real reason. Not to mention that having Hano's page all in German when their music is a tribute to the French language is kind of... a heresy.

I can understand, and I can even accept, that ads altogether speak to me in German. Well, it's not like I'm gonna click on them or anything, but basing ads on the IP address is mostly a good call. Mostly, because many of these ads are for online stuff, which I would be much more receptive to in a language I am willing to read at the top of my head. German is too much work.

This said, it is actually quite interesting to note when it bothers me and when it doesn't. I hate it that sites give me a default German interface, but for some of the sites I use, my user preferences are set to give me a German interface (Xing for example). So what I really hate is not so much the German in itself, but the lack of rhyme or reason for a specific linguistic environment. And the rupture which comes with switching from a language I am not in the mood for (read: my brain is not ready for).

For the record, on the contrary to what Stephanie says in her presentation, it seems Google speaks to me in French, with a very nice "Google Suisse" logo, which changes to "Google Switzerland" when I change my browser's preferences. Google's got it right.

Bottom line is, thereis still much work to be done to make sure that the internet really speaks to all.

Lack of Words Sinked Ship

notafish — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:49:00 +0200

I came across a Reuters story about Henry the VIII's ship the Mary Rose while browsing Intercultural Communication and Translation News.

The idea that a ship could sink because the crew could not understand the orders that would have saved their life is quite an interesting metaphor for the world we live in. Looking back on the failures I have experienced in the companies or organisations I have worked with and for, I realize that many of them were induced or sometimes even deepened by a failure in communication.

Whether it was because the protagonists had different values, spoke different languages or came from different cultures, I realize that misundertanding has sometimes a great impact on our ability to survive a crisis. And often is it just that, something about survival.

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 language before the language

notafish — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:49:00 +0100

I am still reading the book about bilingualism and before I write a more detailled review about it, I wanted to share my last experiences in terms of communication and languages. As you may know, or not, we had a baby. Emma was born a few weeks ago and I must say that the greatest challenge her father and I have been facing since she was born is not so much the short nights (although those are real), as it is understanding her.

At first, a baby's language is binary. Either she cries, or she doesn't. After a few weeks, there are some notions in between, but it is really not that different. The challenge thus resides in understanding the cries. Why on earth is she crying? Is it hunger? Pain? A way to communicate? Fear? Trying to practice her singing? Well, it can be all of those and more. Her cries can mean a number of things, all different. How many times in the course of the past weeks have we looked at her right in the eye and asked What exactly are you trying to tell us here?. A million times already, I believe. And she does not answer. At least not in so many words.

So we have been forced to develop a finer understanding of her language. Mind you, it is interesting to note that babies don't "cry", as in they don't really go with the tears and such. They cry, as in 'shout' or yell, or "express themselves loudly.".The actual tear part comes up seldomly and it's rather the result of intense crying than a part of the crying altogether. This is the first clue as to why the baby is crying. If she sheds tears, it is usually pretty serious. As such, it comes with stomach aches for example, or terrible hunger.

With time, here are the clues we've been able to gather, the signs we're looking for to decode her language.

The length of the cries: is it a steady cry? then she's probably hungry. A more intermittent cry? Then she's probably uncomfortable (gas, diapers need to be changed...)
The intensity of the cries. Is it really loud? Then she means business. Rather a puppy-like yapping? Then she's warning you that this might get more serious.
The color of her skin and her breathing. Is she getting really red as she cries, and holds her breath? Then she's frustrated and unhappy. Keeping her milk-like complexion? Then she's rather asking for some conversation (I swear, babies sometimes ask you to talk with them).
Observe body language. If she folds and unfolds her legs, she might be experiencing digestion problems. If she's sucking her thumb like crazy, she's probably hungry.

All in all, with a little practice, I would say one learns to decipher most of the baby's needs by observing and listening closely. It is, if nothing else, a great exercise in observation and taking into account other things than just words, something we probably should be doing in our everyday life more often, so as to make sure we understand not only the words, but also the environment surrounding them. Looking at people's body language, analyzing the tone of their voice, understanding whether they are anxious, angry or happy probably goes a long way to help us understand what they are really saying. A lesson in communication. And she's 2 months old!

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.