Last week in my Italian class, we got to talking about the death penalty. It was pretty funny, the bunch of us struggling with complex sentences with all kinds of conditional tenses and so on, while trying to find the words to argue about capital punishment. It's a fun class and there's always plenty to laugh about, but it reminded me how frustrating it is not being able to make yourself understood. We take language for granted, at least when we all speak the same one. We can scream and yell at each other and completely disagree with what's being said, but at least we understand it. And we articulate our opinions without even thinking about it.
It also reminded me of this linguist I heard on the radio, talking about Eastern and Western languages. He said that in Western languages, it's the responsibility of the speaker to make himself understood. In Eastern languages, it's up to the listener to interpret what's been said to him. In the West it's all about specificity; in the East it's all about context. They're not so concerned with getting the details nailed down. It makes it pretty easy to get out of just about anything, it would seem.
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3 comments:
I know that when my sister would send home letters from Germany, she would add some phrases in German. I was clueless as to what she was talking about. But yet for some reason, I can read Norwegian. O_O Not in its exact form but I can pick out certain phrases and understand whats being said.
I admire you for trying to learn a new language. I was terrible at it back in high school, and I am sure it would be worse now. Plus foreign languages sound ghastly when combined with a southern accent!
I think you're right, fermi. I used to have a neighbor in New Jersey who was from Tennessee. She and her husband had lived in Mexico for several years before they moved in down the block. She spoke fluent Spanish with a southern accent and it did sound pretty funny.
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