ameba

Languages and barriers thereof

A few days ago I received an e-mail that had an interesting question. The answer became quite a deep-scanning rambling, so I decided to post it here for your amusement:

> I'm wondering, how have you learned English so well?

Well, It's not so easy to say. Fact is, that I have studied English in school since the third grade, that is, when I was 9 years old, but public schools never provide very in-depth education.. more of a "general knowledge" -sort. I've always had a certain adaptation ability to foreign languages, and even at young age, I've been able to comprehend other languages quite fast when listening to conversations. Especially so, if there is a translation available.

Being understood by others is often one of the basic necessities of life. If you can't communicate, it's very hard to convey your wishes to other people and interact with them. Language barriers are often very real obstacles between people. Imagine a Japanese man getting stuck in an elevator with a German man. If neither of them speaks the other's language at all, they would have a very hard time waiting for rescue without possibility of conversation. Being stuck with another person and not being able to communicate is one of the most annoying situations imaginable.

I've always wanted to speak as good English as possible, and I try to enlarge my vocabulary all the time. Many of the words I use would probably seem quaint to most of the people.. with the exception of those who speak pure Oxford English, which is in its whole, quite quaint. Reading books in other languages is good training, and a good dictionary is an irreplacable asset. If you are interested in a language, it's not so difficult to pick up new words and phrases.

I think speaking a language is a form of art, and being eloquent and word-ready never hurt anyone. Thus, I use words and phrases more complicated than most, and feel truly ashamed every time I hear Mika Hkkinen speak "English" in TV.. With no idea whatsoever about correct
pronouciation he should really get himself a good teacher and learn to speak properly. Otherwise, he should have enough common sense to shut up and not make an ass aout of himself. I just hope that his style of speech will not be generalized to be that of all Finns.

Well.. most Finns do speak that way, so maybe it doesn't matter. It just vexes me to hear such rape of language. It's basically the same with finlandssvenka. Swedish is a beautiful language, and it has a very distinctive lilting sound to it, but most Finns, who speak Swedish, use an
awful lot of Finnish words directly inserted to Swedish sentences and as to their pronounciation, *CENSORED*. The language is Swedish, but they speak it like Finnish and it sounds just awful.

Maybe I'm just odd to think that every language should be spoken as correctly as possible.. (And, as a disclaimer: I don't see my English as perfect, far from it. I make mistakes and I do that often. I make typos and misspellings like anybody else, but hey, I'm learning) To be understood is, of course, the most important thing, but for me, it doesn't stop there. I have no objections to dialects or slang, but being able to use complicated sentences in stead of just "Me Tarzan. You Jane. Enough talk, now Zorg kill." is to be treasured. The richness of a language is in nuances and figures of speech, understanding idioms and puns. It makes everything just a lot more fun. Being able to understand wordplay in a movie in a way that could never be translated, or sensing the "hidden" emotions behind carefully selected words in stead of just understanding the litteral meaning of the words, being blind to what lies between the lines.

Everybody should learn more languages. Five is a good number to aim for, seven is even better. Some speak more than nine languages fluently and there is little chance that they would ever get in trouble anywhere in the World for not being able to communicate with others.