"language is a historical learning tool", this is so beautiful and so true!
I absolutely relate to injecting my native language with English. I speak 5 fluently, so I strongly feel how speaking German/French a lot changed my way of thinking in Ukrainian; it's in the word order, in ton of emails, especially in my writing. It's like recreating my personality through each new language.
But what I find most valuable is these language-specific terms which cannot be translated. It's like "siesta" in Spanish - a whole cultural concept, which is intrinsic to Spanish lifestyle, but has no analogies in English. We can fully understand such cultural gems only if we understand the people who speak this language. I have so many Ukrainian-only words and idioms which I used to descriptively interpret for English-speaking friends. But lately I discovered value in sticking to the original word - I just try to explain why it's so integral to Ukrainian POV. That's my little step to help foreigners understand Ukrainians on a deeper level ))
You bring up a great point about how language changes our thinking. Apart from the different languages we speak that do that, it even goes for within one language. Saying things like 'should' for example and even saying 'I' and 'me' reinforce certain identity ideas, not necessarily truths. Fully agree on the interesting non-translatable words that mirror cultural concepts. Would you have an example of an untranslatable term from Ukrainian (that is intrinsic to the lifestyle)? That's an interesting idea of why you would 'stick to' the original word. Part of the essay that I took out (for compression/shiny dime reasons ;) was about how there are some groups (in Holland) that are 'defending' the Dutch language from this 'Anglofying'. My point there was the opposite, but with your reasoning I can totally see the value in sticking to some words.
Ahaha, I'm quite guilty of English-dropping myself, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Feels quite natural for me to intertwine languages, just like for you )
For Ukrainian-specific terms, we have 2 words for "love": "liubyty" means "to love" in a broad sense, and "kokhaty" means "to love romantically/intimately". This distinction is very deeply ingrained in our literature and social relationships. E.g. we use "liubyty" to say things like "I love my family/my job", but we use "kokhaty" to describe any romantic passion and tragic love stories (we say "I love X" with the 2nd word only about our romantic partner). As I was learning Germanic languages, I always lacked different versions of "love" to describe how I feel about different people 😅. Having 2 "loves" is such an intrinsic thing for Ukrainian world building. It's both in the language and in our human connections )
I'm a Spanish speaker and music fan myself! So I loved this quote:
"Engaging in other languages, in my case English and Spanish, it becomes clear that I don’t just learn to translate words or sentences, but become familiar with an entire people, their ideas, and their way of living. The language represents the people speaking it and it shows."
Very cool. Sounds like a great school, I didn't retain anything from language teachings from my school period. I don't really speak it, but do listen to it a lot :)
I have been thinking about this essay since I read it the first time. My auntie taught me how to sew recently. I was knee-deep into starting to write online, and so when I was spoke about correcting mistakes, I would say 'editing'. After a week of sewing I referred to correcting mistakes as 'unpicking' - even for my writing.
I was writing a proposal just now and I replaced the word 'unstuck', with 'solutioning', because little subcultures of language exists everywhere, if you take time to notice.
You highlight an interesting point, the intermingling of multiple fields or jargons. I have the same with writing and video-editing (which I used to do a lot of). In Dutch, video-editing is called 'monteren' (akin to mount in English), and I use that word for editing my writing sometime to this day. Like the term 'subcultures of languages' you coin here :)
There probably will, it will mainly be technical stuff and specific jargon. Just like with any specialist field, there will be terms for specific things that don't exist outside of it. A few that come to mind: I use 'Cutting Room Floor' for bits I cut out of my writing, 'the cutting edge' is a famous one, but even 'timeline' could be considered to come out of video editing I suspect.
"language is a historical learning tool", this is so beautiful and so true!
I absolutely relate to injecting my native language with English. I speak 5 fluently, so I strongly feel how speaking German/French a lot changed my way of thinking in Ukrainian; it's in the word order, in ton of emails, especially in my writing. It's like recreating my personality through each new language.
But what I find most valuable is these language-specific terms which cannot be translated. It's like "siesta" in Spanish - a whole cultural concept, which is intrinsic to Spanish lifestyle, but has no analogies in English. We can fully understand such cultural gems only if we understand the people who speak this language. I have so many Ukrainian-only words and idioms which I used to descriptively interpret for English-speaking friends. But lately I discovered value in sticking to the original word - I just try to explain why it's so integral to Ukrainian POV. That's my little step to help foreigners understand Ukrainians on a deeper level ))
You bring up a great point about how language changes our thinking. Apart from the different languages we speak that do that, it even goes for within one language. Saying things like 'should' for example and even saying 'I' and 'me' reinforce certain identity ideas, not necessarily truths. Fully agree on the interesting non-translatable words that mirror cultural concepts. Would you have an example of an untranslatable term from Ukrainian (that is intrinsic to the lifestyle)? That's an interesting idea of why you would 'stick to' the original word. Part of the essay that I took out (for compression/shiny dime reasons ;) was about how there are some groups (in Holland) that are 'defending' the Dutch language from this 'Anglofying'. My point there was the opposite, but with your reasoning I can totally see the value in sticking to some words.
Ahaha, I'm quite guilty of English-dropping myself, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Feels quite natural for me to intertwine languages, just like for you )
For Ukrainian-specific terms, we have 2 words for "love": "liubyty" means "to love" in a broad sense, and "kokhaty" means "to love romantically/intimately". This distinction is very deeply ingrained in our literature and social relationships. E.g. we use "liubyty" to say things like "I love my family/my job", but we use "kokhaty" to describe any romantic passion and tragic love stories (we say "I love X" with the 2nd word only about our romantic partner). As I was learning Germanic languages, I always lacked different versions of "love" to describe how I feel about different people 😅. Having 2 "loves" is such an intrinsic thing for Ukrainian world building. It's both in the language and in our human connections )
Love the example ;) One that comes to mind for Dutch is the word 'gezellig' with means something in between cozy and camaraderie.
Good one ). Germans have that too, but never ever use it lol. We need more "gezellig" in cold European societies!
Haha. Yes!
Really cool piece here about language Rik.
I'm a Spanish speaker and music fan myself! So I loved this quote:
"Engaging in other languages, in my case English and Spanish, it becomes clear that I don’t just learn to translate words or sentences, but become familiar with an entire people, their ideas, and their way of living. The language represents the people speaking it and it shows."
Awesome Baxter thanks! Native Spanish or later in life? Also, any Spanish bands/music you recommend?
Nope I learned through school and travel to Spain! What about you? I love Enrique Iglesias, Nek, and Fito y Fitipaldis!
Very cool. Sounds like a great school, I didn't retain anything from language teachings from my school period. I don't really speak it, but do listen to it a lot :)
I have been thinking about this essay since I read it the first time. My auntie taught me how to sew recently. I was knee-deep into starting to write online, and so when I was spoke about correcting mistakes, I would say 'editing'. After a week of sewing I referred to correcting mistakes as 'unpicking' - even for my writing.
I was writing a proposal just now and I replaced the word 'unstuck', with 'solutioning', because little subcultures of language exists everywhere, if you take time to notice.
You highlight an interesting point, the intermingling of multiple fields or jargons. I have the same with writing and video-editing (which I used to do a lot of). In Dutch, video-editing is called 'monteren' (akin to mount in English), and I use that word for editing my writing sometime to this day. Like the term 'subcultures of languages' you coin here :)
Interesting, like mounting art, in different flavors. Do you know of any other video-editing terms that only exist in that subculture?
There probably will, it will mainly be technical stuff and specific jargon. Just like with any specialist field, there will be terms for specific things that don't exist outside of it. A few that come to mind: I use 'Cutting Room Floor' for bits I cut out of my writing, 'the cutting edge' is a famous one, but even 'timeline' could be considered to come out of video editing I suspect.
'Cutting Room Floor' is so vivid. I guess terms have stories, too.