A boy's confusing journey through language

My inability to speak a second language is something I am deeply embarrassed about. For someone who prides himself on his cultural adventurousness, I am doing a remarkably poor job with the most important aspect of culture: language. I spend every day speaking with others in my own language and have made little effort to reciprocate the favor. I accredit my lack of lingual competency to four things:

1. Being American: Americans are notoriously bad at learning languages. We have a decent excuse – the whole world speaks our native tongue – but put little focus on languages in school. Just about anyone from my high school could say they took two years of Spanish and don’t remember anything. I stand on my pedestal of three years of Latin while still not remembering anything. 
2. Growing up in a monolingual family. Sorry mom and dad. I know if you had had the option, Bee and I would have been raised as polyglots. However, it wasn’t meant to be and there’s no use in crying over spilled milk.
3. I don’t know what language I should learn: It would be easier to devote my time if I knew where I might live in the future. I’ve avoided making a serious effort at Korean because I know I’ll be gone in two months. If, for instance, I was certain to end in Kathmandu, it would be easy to buy a Nepali textbook (well probably not that easy) and start from there.
4. Personal laziness: At the end of the day, my shortcomings as a linguist are entirely attributable to a lack of commitment from me. Learning a language requires consistent effort over a long period of time – something that I have yet to do. I’ve made meager attempts at Arabic, Danish, and Korean and never followed through.  My latest foray into French will certainly end up in the same garbage pile of neglected languages.

I imagine that voicing my frustrations does not make for the best reading, so rather than wallowing in my self-shame, I figured I’d share some interesting factoids about some of the languages I’ve come into contact with. These details are not remotely comprehensive and may not even be entirely accurate, so take everything with a grain of salt. I’ll go in chronological order.

English:

Obviously, you are at least familiar with English and are in no need of general information. There are, however, aspects of my own language that continue to surprise me and may prove curious to you.

§  English is a language of intonation. Like the tones of Chinese, English intonations can be grammatical. The most obvious example is the difference between open and closed questions. Think of how differently you would say, “Where are your bags?” vs. “Do you have any bags?” Notice the pitch at the end of the second question. The first question requires a falling intonation to be correct while the second requires an ascending one.   

§  There is a specific order for placing adjectives before verbs. Most of the time native speakers don’t have to think about the correct order, but it certainly stands out when adjectives are out of place. It sounds bizarre to say, “The French, tiny, goofy-looking rodeo clown,” instead of “The tiny, goofy-looking, French rodeo clown.” The official order is: Opinion, size, physical quality, shape, age, colour, origin, material, type, and purpose.

§  To finish off with English, here are a few of my favorite sayings and idioms.

o   I’ll give you the nickel tour – To show someone around

o   We’ll cross that bridge when we get there – To address an issue at another time

o   The peanut gallery – A group of idiots that make jokes off to the side

o   What’cha hunting? – A question to determine what someone is looking for

o   6 one way, half a dozen the other –To say that two options are the same

o   5-dollar word ­– A long or fancy word

Arabic:

I took one semester of Arabic in college. For a million dollars, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a full sentence in Arabic, but I still remember a thing or two that Professor Muna taught me.

• The Arabic alphabet does not contain vowels. Instead, vowel diacritics are used above or below letters. Here’s an example of three words that are separated by only vowel markings.

 The land : البر

     Wheat : البُر

     Righteousness : البِر

• Sounds simple enough, right? Well, there’s one problem. In all but the most formal literary writing, vowel markings are not used. Readers of Arabic are expected to use context to determine what word a means without the vowels.
• It is also important to know that Arabic is more a family of languages than a single language. The difference between Levantine Arabic and Tunisian Arabic could be compared to the difference between French and Italian. A lingua-franca does exist in the Arab world, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), but is reserved mostly for writing and formal media.

Danish:

Don’t even ask me why I know anything about Danish.

It’s a language spoken by only around 6 million people, 5 and half of whom live in Denmark. It is extremely similar to the other Scandinavian languages of Norwegian and Swedish and shares an early history with other Germanic languages. English speakers will find that it is structurally and grammatically familiar.

• Danish, like a few other languages, uses a base-20 system for counting. That means what we would call eighty-one (8 tens and 1 ones) translates as enogfirs (1 one and 4x20). It gets even more difficult when dealing with odd tens. Fifty is translated as halvtreds (2.5x20), seventy as halvfjerds (3.5x20), and so on. But if you think that’s complicated, wait until we get to Korean’s two different number systems…
• For lack of interesting tid-bits about the language itself, I’ll give you a tip about Danish. If a Dane ever asks you to say Rød grød med fløde (red porridge with cream), just give up. They are having a laugh. The phrase is used by Danes to demonstrate how Danish is an incomprehensible series of guttural noises that you will never be able to pronounce.

Korean:

Korean is a whole other animal. It developed largely separately from its mother Chinese and uses a unique, designed writing system. Along with Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Cantonese, it’s listed as a class four language for English speakers, meaning it’s among the most difficult to learn. Although I know a few phrases and questions, I have almost no understanding of Korean grammar or structure.

• Korean’s alphabet was invented in the 15^th century by a Joseon dynasty king to be a simple, understandable, and all-encompassing representation of spoken Korean. It is comprised of 40 “letters”, 19 consonants and 21 vowels, that are combined into blocks that serve as syllables.

o   Ex. The letters: ㅂ ㅜ ㄹ (b, u, l/r) combine to make 불 (bul) or

ㄷ ㅏ ㄹ ㄱ (t, a, l/r, k) combine to make 닭 (talk)

• Syllables are then combined to create words.

o   불  bul (fire)      +     고기   go-gi (meat)     =       불고기   bulgogi (roasted meat)

o   컴  keom   +   퓨  pyu   +   터  teo   =    keompyuteo   (computer)

• Korean also incorporates honorifics like no other language. Practially any verb or noun can be changed in a sentence to reflect a different social situation. Whether it’s child to adult, teacher to student, employee to boss, or friend to friend, Koreans are constantly adding and omitting honorifics to fit the situation. That’s why a very common first question in Korea is “how old are you?” I wish I could elaborate on the topic more, but frankly, I understand very little of how the elaborate system works. Here is the common example:

o   안녕하세요 annyeonghaseyo (hello, used in most situations where you don’t know the person or they are a superior/elder)

o   안녕 annyeong (hello, used when meeting or saying goodbye to friends or close acquaintances)

• I teased the Korean number systems earlier, but I’m afraid that I, again, have very little understanding of how or why Korean continue to count the way they do. Here’s the bottom line, Korean uses the traditional “Korean” system for age, people and things, and general counting and a “Chinese” system for phone numbers, measurement, money, and anything above 100 – the “Korean” system only goes to 99. While that already sounds like a nightmare, here’s the kicker: if you want to tell someone the time, you need to use the Chinese numbers for the hour and the Korean numbers for the minutes. I told you Korea is wild…

French:

Finally, the home stretch. French. It may come as a surprise to many of you to see French as the last language on this chronological list. Fortune, or terrible misfortune for that matter, has resulted in me living with 5* French girls during my time in Korea. I could, and certainly will, write a whole post about the subtleties of French reality shows (les marseillais is easily the worst), but that’s for another time. Being constantly surrounded by French at all hours of the day has necessitated that I learn a thing or two about the language.

*Only 3 of them are actually French. 2 are from Morocco but study in France. I’m going to count it as an even 5 though, based on what language dominates our kitchen. Sorry Neama and Ibti!

• Verlan is a feature of French where words are inverted to create slang, a sort of French pig-latin. Typically, the end of the word is shifted to the front, with corrections being made for pronounceability. It is primarily used by kids and young-adults, but words occasionally seep into the greater French vocabulary. I’ve been unable to deduce any greater significance than “it’s cool” from my roommates, so I think each verlan is different in how it’s formed and what it means. Here are a few examples of original words and their verlan:

o   Femme (woman)  à  Meuf

o   C’est parti (let’s go) à  C’est tipar

o   Louche (shady)  à  Chelou

• My final observation of this post is something more akin to body-language than traditional mouth language. For whatever reason, many French speakers have adopted the habit of using the sound “pfft” (made with a quick puff of the lips) instead of the English “I don’t know”. Along with the “ooh la” and the “mhm mhm mhm,” the “pfft” has become part of my everyday vernacular experience. Someone please help me.

Well, I hope you stuck around for that exhausting linguistic voyage. Language is such an exceptional piece of being human, and, although I’ve yet to take the plunge, I am determined to become bilingual at some point in the near future. For now, au revoir, 안녕, farvel, مَع السَلامة, and goodbye!

-JCP