When I was young, my system of associations permeated my acquisition of language. I am what is called a synaesthete, at least I think I am. It’s hard to understand what filters through someone’s senses. We used to think that we all see things the same, we thought our senses made an experience real and universal, but it doesn’t. When I see the word September, I experience smells of old classrooms, stuffy from sitting empty over the summer. I see heughs of green, but an old sort of golden green. September is associated with the end of summer to me. Every letter has its own color as well, and some have personalities. Yes, some letters to me are personified, especially in my own hand. This is the reason that I have become so consumed by the idea of language.
When I went to learn French in the Fall of 2018, I found myself delighted by the ease of it all, the pleasantness of learning a new way to say the same thing. It felt incredibly child-like. I could see an apple and point, excitedly recalling the word for it, pomme. I could see a potato and say pomme de terre which means apple of the earth. What a beautiful word for such an ugly vegetable, and yet it taught me about the culture, the way a society saw something simple, something which might have otherwise been seen as a universal. One language comes short at understanding the human condition, but each language added to that only brought more of humanity into the light of understanding. We integrate history, geography, isolation, and assimilations of whole nations. We see our world being born by its language.
"There is something so casual and also deliberate about a language hundreds of years in the making; like a polished river stone. "
It is no wonder that I am going to study linguistics. Linguistics is the discipline tasked with understanding everything concerning language. It is much more complicated than being a polyglot. One can study how words become what they do, or the sounds that make up the words, or even the order in which the words are arranged. With this, we can teach computers how to understand natural language, and we can invent better ways to teach ourselves how to speak in foreign tongues. Nothing in language is done without reason. When I started learning other languages, that’s what came into my mind. There is something so casual and also deliberate about a language hundreds of years in the making; like a polished river stone. It is an impossibly useful too for us to interact with our society. That’s why I think everyone should dedicate themselves to learning at least one language aside from their native.
I think we must learn many languages to be efficient human beings. Frankly, it’s also rude to sit thinking that you can get by perfectly unscathed with your one language. It is like thinking you know something complete when you’ve read only one book on it. The notion is ridiculous. So I will write my blog on the uses of language, and why we should know multiple languages. It will take the form of why I specifically want to study multiple languages.
I always found it beautiful how in the area in which I grew up, people spoke many languages. I could walk down the street and hear people speaking French, Korean, and Spanish all in one outing. It has also bothered me how people will say to someone to learn English because we are in America, which, by the way, has no official language. That is lazy, one-sided, and self-centered. It baffles me that people can even think that way, but to think that this is my culture? No. I will not accept it.
When I was thirteen I went to war with my father about which language I would learn in high school. I wanted to learn French, he wanted me to learn Spanish. I am ultimately going to learn both, but I do not understand his ignorance. From learning French, I understand more Spanish, I also understand more Italian. He told me that French would be useless to me, but that is to say that all Romance languages are useless to me. So I later moved to learn German, which he also said would be useless to me. I think of his arguments now as null and void. No language is useless, every language is a means to communicate. Anything to further help us communicate is useful to us. Him saying a language is useless is like someone attempting to tell me that art is useless, but without art, we would not have expressed any societal self-awareness. Really that’s the crux of it, to say that a language, or art for that matter, is useless, is to essentially tout one’s own lack of self-awareness, under the assumption of correctness, or wisdom. What even is that?
"Saying a language is useless is like someone attempting to tell me that art is useless, but without art, we would not have expressed any societal self-awareness."
Many languages have words that don’t cross over, that describe experiences that are unique to that culture. German is full of these words, and I will find myself a student of the language forever because I am a student of life and every experience that life serves me. If we don’t have a word to describe the experience, does it mean that we are incapable of having this experience? Of course not, but it does mean that we must invent a language for it! That is a space of creation, a lawless place as there are no rules; there is yet no standard. Richard Siken wrote a beautiful poem called The Language of Birds in which he writes, “Who gets to measure the distance between experience and its representation? Who controls the lines of inquiry? We do. Anyone can.” In this, he is talking about painting, but really he is talking about language and therefore talking about the human condition. The Thomas Theorem states that if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences. This is an oddly inspiring sociological idea that says that we create our own reality, which we certainly do through language. Words come about because there is a necessity for them.
Did I finish French or German in high school? No. I am continuing the acquisition of these languages in college in preparation for transfer to a university. French was what again got me so involved in linguistics. I learned it because of the poetry, because of Rimbaud’s sad flavor, or his burning embers. I learned it because I wanted to cross the borders of social imagination. I wanted to understand this poet as though he were my friend, the way that Ginsberg had come to understand Whitman, and I had come to understand Ginsberg. I wanted to learn to speak the words that had moved my soul. Perhaps that is why language is so important to us, as Rimbaud once said, “I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star ... And I dance.” In short, language is what connects us.
Comments