The Language (and travel) Thread

[Carol the Dabbler]

Oh -- cool!  (I'm jealous.  :P  )  So apparently it's a simple case of use it or lose it.

 

[T.o.b.y]

The thing was beautiful. It took up almost an entire wall, and it made the world look like this really wonderful, mysterious place. It made you want to travel.

 

:lol: Typical - I can't remember what countries lie in Eastern Europe and how they are arranged, I can't name their capitol cities or political leaders, but "the world is beautiful" - that message stuck. I feel like Sherlock looking at the sky: "doesn't mean I can't appreciate it". (And that from The Thinking Machine Sherlock Holmes! He's a romantic deep down inside, he really is. It's little things like this and expressions like "tender world" or "every quiver of its beating heart" that give him away).

[Carol the Dabbler]

Many years ago when I was living in Boston, I heard someone say that people from the middle of the US are far more aware of US geography in general than people from either coast are.  I decided to test myself against my roommates (both of whom were from the Boston area).

 

We each took a sheet of blank paper and drew a map of the US showing as many states as possible.  Admittedly that was a small sampling, but danged if it didn't turn out as predicted.  Even though I was never particularly interested in geography and had never lived anywhere except central Indiana and eastern Massachusetts, I was able to draw a reasonably accurate map of the entire country.  Even though my friends' maps showed New England a bit more precisely than mine, they had a great deal of blank area, including most of the middle.

 

[Arcadia]

The middle of the US? Where's that? :p

[Carol the Dabbler]

Oh, you know -- "flyover country."  :P

 

[Arcadia]

Oh, is that what that was? I always slept through that part....

[Van Buren Supernova]

The middle of the US? Where's that? :P

 

Oh, you know -- "flyover country."  :P

Pretty sure it's not between the moon and New York City rite?

 

(Sorry sorry only got a bit of time but instead of being useful I stick my head here, now I will propel myself out with a trebuchet.)

[Arcadia]

Oh, great, now I have that song stuck in my head ....

[Carol the Dabbler]

Serves you right!  :P

[Shadow Dweller]

https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/04/how-the-language-you-speak-changes-your-view-of-the-world/Calling all German-English billinguals, what is your opinion about what this article had suggested? ^^

[J.P.]

This concept is known to me and I have to say, that my experience supports it.

 

In the given example I would see the cause for German speakers being more focused on the goal of the situation might simply come from the usual syntax of sentences. I sadly don't know the theory of grammar and it's terminology very well (I forgot most of it after leaving school), so in this case I will borrow from Mark Twain's hilarious "The Awful German Language":

 

 

The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called "separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one is reiste ab -- which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English:

"The trunks being now ready, he

DE-

after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself,

PARTED

."

 

This is of course an extremal case, but you have to mentally "hold your breath" keeping all the sentence in your mind awaiting the second half of the "separated verb" to reveal the meaning. (my German co-members might disagree on this, but it is a POV of someone to whom this construct was totally new). So I would risk a these that you are trained simply by the syntax to keep your attention at the goal, the direction where the sentence - or a photographed situation - is "going to".

 

Actually I am a supporter of linguistic relativity of Benjamin L Whorf, who declared that language and it's structure defines the perception of reality. I do experience it all the time.

As I learned both English and German not by translating words, but in a more natural way connecting ideas with new words. I'm still not good at translating, and If I had to write a text about the same subject (like this e.g. this post) it would be totally different depending on which language was used. Okay, in the case of English the difference would be mostly due to the limitations of my English.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I have no idea what the gist of the linked article is (synopsis, anyone?), but the Twain quote may have a bearing on the debate over split infinitives in the English language.  I've read that they were originally frowned upon by scholars simply because they do not (indeed CAN not) occur in Latin.  (The scholars were trying to make English respectable, you see.)  Twain basically points out that all sorts of split verbs are considered normal in German.  Since English is a close cousin of German, why shouldn't they be considered just as normal in English?

 

[T.o.b.y]

The two differences I notice the most between English and German are that Germans tend to use more passive verbs and nouns, whereas speaking English, you have more active verbs and use less nouns.

 

I prefer English. I think it is simpler, clearer, more to the point and also more pleasing to the ear.

[J.P.]

...and somehow easier to write... :D

[Caya]

@Carol: tl;dr is that what language you speak influences how you perceive reality.

 

A different example: imagine yourself in a timeline. First mental picture, you as a baby; second, you as a teen; third, you at your current age. The interesting (imho) point is, your timeline probably went from left to right - the baby was the leftmost picture. A Japanese friend of mine, however, had a top-to-bottom timeline, and an Iranian friend's was right-to-left. The direction we write in is usually the direction we imagine time flowing.

[T.o.b.y]

    People self-report that they feel like a different person when using their different languages

 

I guess that's true... My English-speaking self is happier, because it's always been on holiday - only my German persona went to school and now has to work! :lol:

 

 

[J.P.]

Oh, this is what I was always wondering about. What I would like to know: if they see a picture (or a newspaper page) where do they look first. "We" start from the left upper area. Seems logical. I was always drawing with my left hand. But I always start my drawings with left upper corner, which is as inconvenient as writing with left hand.

 

What I think is funny with me, I always imagined a year's timeline as a kind of clock, starting at the bottom, but going counter-clockwise.

 

But back to languages: what still irritates me about English are words like friend, coworker, doctor etc. - and the fact that I don't know if they are male or female. Both Polish and German have male and female versions of those words, so I always expect the gender information from the words themselves while English speakers - as I suppose - look for the information in the context.

 

The flip side is - I like that in both English and German you can write in the first person past tense without revealing your gender. Very useful when you are writing about the male dominated themes. :D

In Polish it would demand some linguistic contortions and wouldn't sound natural. Only present tense is gender-neutral.

[J.P.]

 

    People self-report that they feel like a different person when using their different languages

 

I guess that's true... My English-speaking self is happier, because it's always been on holiday - only my German persona went to school and now has to work! :lol:

 

My English persona is surely dumber. Not enough words for really sophisticated and nuanced thinking.

[Arcadia]

The article was fascinating! Something like that never occurred to me. Also I'm interested in the idea that being bilingual can postpone dementia, and am seriously considering going back to the study of Spanish.....

[Carol the Dabbler]

The direction we write in is usually the direction we imagine time flowing.

 

Hmm, well, at least the direction we use in our time-line diagrams.  Not sure I actually imagine time flowing in any particular physical direction -- forward, maybe, since people say things like "from this time forward."

 

But back to languages: what still irritates me about English are words like friend, coworker, doctor etc. - and the fact that I don't know if they are male or female.

 

That is a good news / bad news situation.  English allows you to talk about an unknown person (or someone whose gender you do not wish to disclose) without jumping through hoops (until you try to use pronouns, of course; then you're stuck with awkward phrases like "he or she").  On the other hand, if you really do want to indicate gender, you can specify it with expressions like "the neighbor lady" or "my girl cousin."  In general, I think English gives you plenty of flexibility, allowing you to specify gender or not, as you prefer.

 

https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/04/how-the-language-you-speak-changes-your-view-of-the-world/Calling all German-English billinguals, what is your opinion about what this article had suggested? ^^

 

Oops -- I somehow assumed that article was written in German.  Note to anyone else who's making that assumption:  It's written in English.  And it's interesting.

 

The article was fascinating! Something like that never occurred to me. Also I'm interested in the idea that being bilingual can postpone dementia, and am seriously considering going back to the study of Spanish.....

 

¡Y yo también!  (Now all I need is a Spanish keyboard....)

[Arcadia]

Bien hecho, senora!

 

I'm sitting here trying to figure out how you made the upside down exclamation point without a Spanish keyboard....

[Carol the Dabbler]

I'm sitting here trying to figure out how you made the upside down exclamation point without a Spanish keyboard....

 

Google, copy, paste.  In other words, I cheat!

 

"También" was easy -- I just Googled it without worrying about the accent mark, and virtually all of the hits had it.  For the upside-down exclamation mark, I just Googled "upside-down exclamation mark," and got lots of hits for that too.

 

A Spanish keyboard would make things go a lot faster (once I learned to use it, and as long as I didn't mind giving up some English-specific things), but I think I've seen a website with a chart of the accent marks and punctuation marks that are unique to each language.  That should work pretty well, plus it's free and wouldn't take away my full English breakfast keyboard.

 

Here's a site that gives several methods -- but just keeping that page up on a tab would enable you to copy anything you might need from the title line.

[T.o.b.y]

But back to languages: what still irritates me about English are words like friend, coworker, doctor etc. - and the fact that I don't know if they are male or female. Both Polish and German have male and female versions of those words, so I always expect the gender information from the words themselves while English speakers - as I suppose - look for the information in the context.

 

:lol: ... while this is one of the very things I love about English. You don't have to go out of your way to be politically correct, you can just talk about "doctors" or "teachers" or "coworkers" and it automatically includes both men an women.

 

I also like that there is only one form of addressing someone (nowadays), "you", instead of this awkward "Sie / Du" nonsense.

 

Now I wonder whether my lack of interest in the information whether my mother's doctor or my cousin's teacher or my husband's coworker is a man or a woman has to do with me being bilingual!

 

[J.P.]

Yeah, the political correctness - you're right about it. And the gender-obviousness - so that's only me? That's fine. :D

[Arcadia]

 

I'm sitting here trying to figure out how you made the upside down exclamation point without a Spanish keyboard....

 

Google, copy, paste.  In other words, I cheat!

 

"También" was easy -- I just Googled it without worrying about the accent mark, and virtually all of the hits had it.  For the upside-down exclamation mark, I just Googled "upside-down exclamation mark," and got lots of hits for that too.

 

A Spanish keyboard would make things go a lot faster (once I learned to use it, and as long as I didn't mind giving up some English-specific things), but I think I've seen a website with a chart of the accent marks and punctuation marks that are unique to each language.  That should work pretty well, plus it's free and wouldn't take away my full English breakfast keyboard.

 

Here's a site that gives several methods -- but just keeping that page up on a tab would enable you to copy anything you might need from the title line.

 

Too much work, I'll stick with English. :p

 

I really should polish up my Spanish speaking skills though, given how many Spanish-speaking people have moved into the area. I always feel a little bad when the best I can manage is "Mi Espanol es muy malo."

 

 And the gender-obviousness - so that's only me?

Afraid so, kid. I love gender-neutral words. That was one of the things I didn't like about Spanish... having to switch from masculine to feminine forms. Urk.