7/27/2019 Do You Speak Foreign

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Do you speak foreign?

If each language reflects a different way of thinking, we should do more to save dying

tonguesand learn a new one ourselves

Language is a great liberator. Besides empowering us to articulate our thoughts, it can also

shape the way we think, according to the latest research.

To illustrate: some languages lack a clear distinction between nouns and verbs. Others

count differentlythey may have a plural form meaning "of unexpected number" or a dual

form. Other languages possess no past tense. Certain languages capture in a single word

what others can only do in a longer phrase. Examples include "bling" in English or thebizarre "rawa-dawa" in Mundari, which apparently means "the sensation of suddenly

realising you can do something reprehensible and no one is there to witness it".

One implication of this emerging line of research is that each language offers a uniquewindow on the world and, so, each time a language dies as is occurring increasinglyfrequently a unique perspective perishes with it. That goes some way to explaining why

so many societies exert efforts to preserve their languages against the onslaught of

globalisation, and why language itself can be an issue for conflict, as demonstrated in

places such as Belgium and Canada.

Another implication is that learning more than one language provides you with different

ways of seeing or interacting with the world, a benefit that is often overlooked inmonolingual societies such as the UK. For example, the multilingualism of Britain's new

deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg in addition to his multicultural background may

partly explain his greater openness to Europe and the outside world. Of course, this has alsobeen used as a stick with which to beat him by those who feel threatened by anything

vaguely foreign.

In my own experience, I notice a number of both obvious and subtle ways in which

language colours my outlook. Take humour. In English, the ambiguity and multiple

meanings of the ubiquitous phrasal verb the bane of foreign learners of the language make it an ideal tool for making jokes and suggestive innuendo. In Arabic, which does not

really have phrasal verbs, humour often hinges on the language's dependence on the three-

letter roots from which most words can be derived, paving the way for clever wordplays.

More importantly, by reflecting the cultures in which they evolved, languages are the key to

gaining first-hand access to a society's people, way of thought, literature, ideas, values,

history and traditions although more understanding does not always imply greatersympathy or communication. On a personal level, I feel that my English-Arabic

bilingualism has enabled me to gain a bicultural or even multicultural perspective that

would have been difficult to acquire otherwise.

For me, Arabic and English were largely fortunate accidents of upbringing. Moving to

Belgium has rammed home to me the increased difficulty of acquiring a language with age.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627621.000-language-lessons-you-are-what-you-speak.html?full=truehttp://books.google.be/books?id=VBvD52-QKcAC&pg=RA1-PA325&lpg=RA1-PA325&dq=Straits+Salish+noun+verb&source=bl&ots=YBbkbJ3NwK&sig=NhSSSWcn_bxyJCQXZLFYTvGpgvY&hl=en&ei=pbgETJmjJo-M4ga59vTLDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Straits%20Salish%20noun%20verb&f=falsehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiowa_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_%28grammatical_number%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_%28grammatical_number%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_tensehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundari_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_languagehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1266826/The-United-Nations-Nick-Clegg.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verbhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verbhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1266826/The-United-Nations-Nick-Clegg.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundari_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_tensehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_%28grammatical_number%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_%28grammatical_number%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiowa_languagehttp://books.google.be/books?id=VBvD52-QKcAC&pg=RA1-PA325&lpg=RA1-PA325&dq=Straits+Salish+noun+verb&source=bl&ots=YBbkbJ3NwK&sig=NhSSSWcn_bxyJCQXZLFYTvGpgvY&hl=en&ei=pbgETJmjJo-M4ga59vTLDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Straits%20Salish%20noun%20verb&f=falsehttp://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627621.000-language-lessons-you-are-what-you-speak.html?full=true

7/27/2019 Do You Speak Foreign

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Although my Dutch has reached a high level of competence, I still make mistakes and my

accent will never sound native. And I'm not alone. One of the masters of English writing,

Joseph Conrad, never lost his thick Polish accent.

Although my bilingualism was eye-catching in Egypt and the UK, here, in Belgium,

speaking three and a bit languages hardly raises an eyebrow. I am in constant awe atpolyglots such as my wife who can communicate effortlessly in half a dozen languages and

even understand related languages they don't know.

Naturally, we want to pass on the gift of language to our son, not only to enable him to deal

with both sides of his family and integrate into his native cultures, but also to help him

become a global citizen who is at home in the world.

Given that childhood acquisition is far easier and more effective than adult learning, we've

decided to start early. Although our six-month-old hasn't learnt to speak yet, we are already

working on raising him trilingually by exposing him to his mother tongue (Dutch), hisfather tongue (Arabic) and his family tongue (English).

This may sound horrifying, but is it any more difficult than learning just one? Acquiring a

language for a baby, as I am learning, is a task of mind-boggling proportions: the infant

must learn to distinguish meaningful sounds from superfluous noise, identify syllables and

then words, crack the code of meaning, and gradually acquire the skill to combine wordsinto sentences and longer texts.

But children have an innate ability to do this and learning two or three languages isalmost as much child's play as learning one, most linguists agree, as long as the child is

exposed to the languages constantly and consistently and in a natural fashion. There is also

mounting evidence that bi- or multilingualism helps boost a child's cognitive abilities,academic performance and career prospects in later life.

Naturally, not everyone is fortunate enough to be immersed in another language from anearly age so as to reach or approach native speaker levels. But even imperfect knowledge of

a language acquired in adulthood is useful and interesting.

As Friedrich Nietzsche once put it:"One who speaks a foreign language just a little takes

more pleasure in it than one who speaks it well. Enjoyment belongs to those who know

things halfway."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conradhttp://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8msch10.txthttp://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8msch10.txthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad