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Are we all a bunch of wusses? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5907 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes  | Message 81 of 151 19 December 2008 at 11:26am | IP Logged | |||||
What he wrote would make learning *any* foreign language superfluous. Edited by JuanM on 19 December 2008 at 11:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| stephen_g Groupie Canada Joined 6337 days ago 44 posts - 84 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Italian | Message 82 of 151 19 December 2008 at 11:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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One doesn't realize just how much he or she is missing out on until he or she begins to study a language which they've previously engaged with through translation alone. I speak through experience as a student of Religious Studies and a raging Indophile. The deeper underlying meaning doesn't always make it through translation - commentaries are often necessary in order to explain the presence of a single word, and these simply don't exist when one is watching a subtitled Bollywood movie or listening to a fast paced conversation between two native speakers.
To address Maya's earlier point about exotic cultures... One would be foolish to claim that the differences between the cultures of Spain and Finland, for example, are minor and of no consequence. On the other hand, one must realize that underlying the differences between European cultures, there is a general worldview which most share in common. The worldviews of China and India are completely different. These countries have an intellectual history which was entirely distinct prior to colonialism. The foundation of their understanding of the world is drastically different. As a student of religious studies, I must point out that the underlying philosophy behind religion in South and East Asia is probably the most potent indicator of this. I do not dispute the fact that one can get around in India and thoroughly engage with the locals using English alone. If one wants to truly immerse oneself in the culture and build a deeper understanding of the people, however, learning a local language does more than anything else possibly can. Language is the most powerful vehicle of culture. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5907 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 83 of 151 19 December 2008 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
In all honesty, although well-written Spanish can be quite beautiful, and while there is a lot of enjoyable literature in it -including one of a handful of truly universal classics-, if it weren't my native tongue, learning Spanish would not be a priority for me. Edited by JuanM on 19 December 2008 at 12:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6951 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 84 of 151 19 December 2008 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
That was covered by the "one doesn't have to study it" part of the statement. :) Edited by frenkeld on 19 December 2008 at 4:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6951 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 85 of 151 19 December 2008 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
English in India isn't quite the same as English elsewhere. On the one hand, the number of people who know it well does not appear very large in percentage terms, my guess is that it is considerably below the numbers in Nordic countries. On the other hand, among those that do know it well, some know it very well, almost like a secondary native language. So, an Indian writer may write and publish fiction in English, which seems to be less common among the Scandinavians and the Dutch, where English is otherwise widely studied and known. It is easy to see why - some parents put their kids through private schools where all the subjects are taught in English, with Hindi and/or the local language taught as just another class. The medium of instruction in many top institutions of higher eductation is English. My own, necessarily extremely limited, observations in India were that many people will use Hindi, or another local language, as the preferred language for speaking, while using English, if they know it, for reading and written communication. In my parents-in-law's house, I was rather surprised not to see a single book in Hindi on the bookshelves. When I asked my father-in-law about that, after a long search he sheepishly extracted one book of poetry that was buried in a closet, and my in-laws are not any sort of "upper crust" - in fact, my mother-in-law speaks only a small bit of hesitant English. Yet, all the newspapers they get are in English, and she reads them every day. They mostly speak Hindi or Punjabi at the dinner table, even my wife's (and the yet younger) generation that know English well. Despite all that, I am told that the larget circulation newspaper in India is in Hindi, not in English. So, where does that leave someone interested in India. For a one-time or a few casual visits, you will certainly not have a 100-percent experience without the local language(s), but English will generally suffice. You may run into situations where people barely speak it, if at all, but generally you will be able to get around and do a decent amount of socializing with the middle and upper middle class Indians. You can still choose to learn some amount of Hindi if it is your general habit to try to learn the local language for any trip, but it is a matter of choice, not absolute necessity. For more prolonged visits, my own impression is that you will find it more and more limiting not to know the local language, more so, as has been already pointed out, if you want to gain true insight into the culture. English certainly has a presence in India, but it is not a native language in that land. I am almost under the impression that someone who didn't feel the need for a local language is a very communicative "world traveler" type who, if it came to that, would find a way to experience an exotic foreign land with the most minimal linguistic tools at his or her disposal. Not all of us are like that. Edited by frenkeld on 19 December 2008 at 4:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6673 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 86 of 151 19 December 2008 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
A point seldom made in such discussions is that there is also something lost due to your imperfect comprehension of the language. What is lost in translation are usually the subtleties, such as puns, ambiguities, slight differences in meaning. And you really need to be very advanced to understand those in the original text. So although I speak and read Spanish fluently, I wouldn't dare to say that I get much more out of a novel in Spanish than out of a good German translation. Of course, this regards only prose. In poetry, there is so much lost in translation, that I actually don't bother to read it translated (with some rare exceptions such as Friedrich Rückert's Rumi translations or August Schlegel's translations of Shakespeare's works. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6455 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 87 of 151 19 December 2008 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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French and German open doors or at least let you have a good peek into many cultures through numerous translations. Hindi, Arabic and Chinese simply do not. They do however each open a door into one marvellous culture. Edited by reineke on 19 December 2008 at 4:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6455 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 88 of 151 21 December 2008 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with everything above. However, not everyone places the same value on building a deep understanding of other cultures. Appreciation is a different ball game. Exploring distant cultures is a nice thought, I have not seen anyone suggest a good way to go about it. The price to pay is simply unacceptable - for most interested, "reasonable" people. The amount of time required is such that learning a few European languages becomes trivial. In addition, languages like German and French are great resources for textbooks, grammars etc. for some very exotic languages. They are very practical - I suppose that's why so many people study them. What goes for Westerners also applies to other cultures. Why should we beat ourselves over the head over this? Are we somehow more enlightened and therefore under some special obligation to spend the rest of our lives trying to fully comprehend other cultures? I would call that pretty wussy. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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