Communica-T

Este es el texto que presenté para el concurso Leopoldo Costa. Es una reflexión sobre una cita de Goethe: “Quien no conoce lenguas extranjeras, nada sabe de la suya propia” (Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen). Este texto obtuvo el primer premio del concurso Leopoldo Costa 2008 (DG SCIC). Tengo pendiente traducirlo al español, pero por ahora, si os interesa, le podéis echar un vistazo al texto en inglés:

Languages have contributed greatly to my life and development as a person. When I started learning English, my first foreign language, something changed inside of me. I felt differently about learning that new subject at school, as if a door to an unknown room had opened just before my eyes. That was when I was about twelve years old. From then onwards, my life has been marked by the magical world of words and sounds. Actually, I was never conscious about how much fun it was to learn and speak new languages, but as I grew up I realised that the more languages I knew the more I wanted to know a new one. In a way, it has become an addiction. In my case, I think it all comes from the need to communicate. I do not like the idea of not understanding something that is said in front of me. If I find the speakers and what they have to say interesting, I become highly motivated to learn their language so that I’ll be able to communicate with them by myself.

 Languages have offered me many new possibilities and windows to different worlds. I consider that learning foreign languages can make you a more flexible person, as accepting a foreign language is accepting another worldview. Language is closely intertwined with the cultural worldview of a person, and furthermore, of a people. Language has to do with people, with the way they live, the places they inhabit, the books they write, the dances they dance, the songs they sing, the food they eat, the way they work, the way the relate amongst themselves and, above all, what their priorities are. The latter can be seen directly in the semantics of a certain language. We all know the famous example of Eskimos having around forty words for different qualities, forms and types of snow. This shows us that other people in the world may call a thing in different terms because they think about it in a different way.

Some people might have difficulties in accepting a new language due to the fact that other languages have some features that their mother tongue does not. In fact, this might put some people off from learning a foreign language. One is likely to be disturbed by certain difficulties of a foreign language and to claim that those linguistic features are superfluous and do not add anything to the discourse. “Nature does not have gender. So, why should we refer to it as ‘la nature’?” That is what a friend of mine (a Turkish native speaker) claimed a few years ago in Brussels when sharing his adventures in learning a language with grammatical gender, French. As Turkish is a genderless language, introducing gender into a concept such as nature (his nature) did not seem logical to my friend at all.  We could think that a “gendered” nature is not something we could imagine as being “real”. Having said that, we could answer that there is neither such a thing as “real” nor one nature. As a matter of fact, there are as many natures as languages referring to this concept. Similarly, there is not one truth only, but as many truths as voices standing for it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous aphorism describes very well the limitations of having only one language: “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” We should therefore realise that a certain language may find certain features (such as gender) essential for the worldview of its speakers. As Orville Boyd Jenkins puts it, “each culture’s worldview is self-contained and adequate in the sense that it provides a coherent view of reality as perceived and experienced by the cultural group under consideration and this is reflected in language”.  The discovery of a new reality and a new world is what makes learning other languages a great treasure.

This could maybe convince a few people to, at least, try to learn a second language and, thus, open up to a new world; or maybe not. There is nothing to lose; on the contrary, there is quite a lot to gain, as languages offer you a wide colour palette. Learning a foreign language gives one some insight into how its speakers experience themselves and their world. In this way, they offer windows into the soul of other cultures, as well as expanding one’s realm of experience. But that is not all. The most curious thing about this is that the journey towards foreign languages makes us return to our own language with a new insight, offering us new aspects about our own language and the possibility to see our own language in a different light. 

This brings us to the point of departure: one of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Maxims and Reflections”: “Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen”, translated into English as “He who doesn’t know foreign languages, doesn’t know his own.” This refers to the great cultural value of learning a foreign language, which helps acquire a better understanding of our own language. Foreign languages help you to discover new, previously unknown things about your own language and culture. This is because when we are delving deep into another language, another insight, understanding and way of viewing the world, we feel like holding up a mirror to our own language. This awakens us to our own language, thus offering us another dimension to our self-knowledge. One needs to question his or her language and culture in order to find out how one feels about the world he or she is starting to understand, by comparing it to a different one. This turns out even more obvious when teaching your mother tongue to non-native speakers, since you become aware of how students have to adapt and think in terms of that new language they are learning. The foreign language teacher takes that journey with his or her students. In fact, foreign language students tend to find the lack of logic and curious aspects of their foreign language, in a way a native speaker never would.

 When one is immersed in his or her mother tongue and not in touch with foreign languages, it is very hard to be aware of your own language, as one has nothing to compare it with. Consider the idiom, “like a fish out of water” to illustrate this situation. This is the image: A fish is swimming in water. At some point, the fish is taken out of its natural environment (water) and has to adapt and live out of it. Once the fish overcomes this new situation and starts adapting to what it previously considered a hostile environment, the fish looks at the water from outside realising that it never understood what water was while it was swimming. But now, from outside the fish knows what water is and can become part of the two (or more) different environments.

 To some extent, this situation could illustrate the one that linguistic mediators have to go through. Being responsible for linking different worlds and enabling communication among different parties, translators and interpreters have to jump from one world to the other, keeping their multiple identities intact. The popular saying “when you acquire a second language, you acquire a second soul” could support the idea that multilingualism provides you with multiple identities.

 But this is not only a matter of signifier (sound image) and signified (concept). We have to take into account the physical aspect as well. Language does not only consist of words; sounds are a very important part of it. Language is a motor skill and, when we start learning a language, we first need to master the physics. We have to learn how to articulate the new language and how to make it part of ourselves, so that it doesn’t feel funny. This is analogous to riding a bicycle or mastering a physical sport. Our tongue, lips, throat and the other speech apparatus have to get used to new positions as well as sequences of positions.

 Furthermore, the meaning and nuances within a certain language lead its speakers (both native and foreign speakers) to mark their bodies with the psychological characteristics of that language. In this way, sounds shape the character of the language. Sounds can exaggerate, as a caricature does, the peculiar elements of a language, thus obtaining the quality of Italianness,” “Frenchness,” “Spanishness,” “Chineseness,” etc. Intonation of a specific language can sound to the foreigner as complaining, moaning, elation, playfulness, etc. depending on the different intonation, voice pitch, etc. Body language should also be taken into account here. These elements have to be physically incorporated by the foreign learner. Thus the human body becomes another entry door into a different worldview, which can be mournful, playful, bright, etc. In this way, languages give one the opportunity to act out different parts of oneself, as an actor does when playing different roles.

 Accepting the “character” of a language with all its physical features is like accepting the character of a colleague, a friend or a loved one; it is an act of tolerance. There are always aspects that we do not like about them, but at the end of the day we have to accept them in order to be able to move on. Thus, we eventually accept a language’s “whole package”. Furthermore, learning a language, or even just the will to do so, is an act of love. In a way, it is a declaration of love of “otherness” and diversity.

Por Ruth León Pinilla
Texto ganador del premio Leopoldo Costa Prize 2008, organizado por la Dirección General de Interpretación de la Comisión Europea (Bruselas).