What Does Language Mean to You?

[Seth]

I'm not really interested in the culture that is connected to a language so I would rather like one language that everyone speaks. As a native speaker I don't have problems with German but I understand how difficult it is to learn (especially after I tortured myself with latin) and it just sounds awful in comparison with other languages like English or Japanese.

It was pretty easy to learn English because of the lack of cases and the fact that you just have to learn it to enjoy games and the web to its fullest so I have good grades in it at school. But then I made the terrible decision to choose Spanish as another language and it got my worst subject of all so I have quite some dislike in languages now.

[Clephas]

For me, the process of learning Japanese dramatically altered my personality.  I was originally a more withdrawn (even on the net) guy who always used a female alter-ego and refused to entertain the idea that other people's arguments might be correct if they contradicted my own (this was more than a decade ago, incidentally).  However, as I learned Japanese and absorbed aspects of the culture through studying their history, watching anime, and playing their games, I changed bit by bit.  What really changed me though, was fansubbing.  When I began translating, I began to internalize the language even more, frequently spending hours on end thinking in pure, unadulterated Japanese (often without consciously realizing it).  Language both forms the basis of a culture and grows with it.  Language is both the structure on which our understanding of the world is built and it is also shaped by the demands of that world.  As such, we will often find ourselves influenced a great deal merely by what language we think in and experience the most. 

 

To be honest, I'm a better person when I'm thinking in Japanese, and I can think more objectively in that language.  Part of that is because of the existence of keigo, the formal version of everyday speech, used as a form of respect  and toward strangers.  keigo lets you take a step aside from yourself and see the world from a different, less personal, perspective if you let it.  I find it easier to empathize with others in Japanese, and I also find that I can think more kindly of people than I would otherwise.  At the same time, I am now capable of teamwork on occasion (something that would have been impossible for my younger self).  I can consider not only what my own role is, but how I can make it easier for others to perform their roles while performing my own.  This kind of thinking would have been unnatural for me, only five or six years ago.  Rather than it coming naturally to me, it now takes effort for me to cut myself loose from 'social thinking', a fact that sometimes leaves me feeling bemused at how much I've changed.

 

Whether that is a good thing is something I'm unsure of.  Being socially-minded isn't an advantage in the US.  Our society rewards selfish behavior better than it does cooperative behavior, a result of our political culture.  However, since I like myself better when I'm thinking in Japanese, I'm more or less satisfied with the changes in myself.

[OriginalRen]

When I began translating, I began to internalize the language even more, frequently spending hours on end thinking in pure, unadulterated Japanese (often without consciously realizing it).  Language both forms the basis of a culture and grows with it.

 

This. It's always what I try to encourage to all language learners. Being able to establish a thought in the target language and think like a native speaker is what makes learning languages amazing. When I write French or Italian essays for work related matters, I always think in the target language respectively, whereas when a person learns a language for the first time, they always strive to go back to the L1 (native tongue) in order to compare and contrast how one can translate. Once you can start thinking and acting in the L2 (target language), you find it much more rewarding.

 

It's also a question of fluency versus accuracy. Being fluent doesn't mean being native, and I think that's where some language learners struggle. I am glad to see you (at least from what I was reading in your post) understand that. You think better in another language, and this is one of the reasons I love language so much.

[Guest hairybumslapper]

A means to communicate.

[Guest loppez]

A means to communicate.

this.

 

i don't care about things like "thinking like a native speaker" or another's culture. it comes naturally when you talk to native speakers.

i like thinking my way, not japanese or any other asian way. it's unnatural and "plastic".you can show your intention using different words but you can't express your emotions well enough. it's like everybody has a mask. always. it doesn't suit my slavic temper. 

[Tay]

This is a cool topic. Shameless bump while doing the move.

[Andreas]

Indeed, this is a cool topic.

 

I can currently speak English, German, and Japanese as foreign languages.

English is a mandatory language in Norway from the 3th grade(8 years old) to  the second year of high school(17 years old). Everyone in the country can speak it.

 

I chose German during the first year of middle school(13 years old) and studied it for the three years of middle school. I am currently proceeding in studying it in high school. IMO it is a hard language with a lot of useless grammar. And then there is the gender system to conjugate words. I had a lot of trouble with that, as Norwegian also has it, but German has completly different genders on the words.

 

I have studied Japanese for one year; basically since I first started watching anime. Just this winter I took the first exam level(What you are supposed to know after 2-3 years of normal classes) in written and oral Japanese. I was surprised at how easy it is to learn a language when you are motivated. In just one year I could speak Japanese at the same level as I could German.

 

I am planning to take Russian classes starting this fall, and continue with German and Japanese. I am planning to take the level two Japanese exam(what you would know after 5-6 years) this spring(and I will probably fail horribly). 

I would become a language teacher if I actually could talk to people...  , but I'm currently not able to have normal conversations with people I don't consider friends, so that idea is out of the question.

 

A great influence in that I love languages is due to the fact that I work part-time at a hardware store, and sometimes there come German people and try to express what they want in English, and I can just cut them off and speak German to them. There are also a lot of German tourists in the summer, and it is fun talking to them in their native language.

Hopefully, I am able to communicate with the even greater number of Russian tourists soon.

[Clephas]

I should clarify one of my views on language... I'm a believer that language, human nature, and culture are intimately linked.  When one learns a language to the degree in which they might be considered 'fluent', they also absorb a portion of the values hidden in the structure of that language.  To be blunt, in my mind, the biggest hurdle for an American English speaker in learning Japanese is to grasp the collectivist consciousness that lies at the base of that language.  The structured, highly stratified culture of Japan is embedded in every aspect of the formal and 'conversational' language (setting aside slang).  For America, where we all love the pretense of natural equality, social stratification does not lie at the base of the spoken language, at least not in a way that is easily recognizable.  This is actually a barrier for learning just about any other language for an American.  While it is less problematic for European languages, with Asian languages in particular, it is sometimes a seemingly overwhelming hurdle that you don't even realize is there.

 

When I learned Spanish as a middle-schooler (I dropped the language later), I had little or no difficulties with the language... but that is mostly because there has been mutual influence between the languages for centuries.  While there are many, in fact innumerable, cultural differences between Spanish-speakers and English speakers, the two cultures have existed in relatively close proximity for so long that some fundamental values have gone back and forth between them, despite the fundamental arrogance of us Anglos. 

 

Culture influences language, people influence language, and the structure of language forms how we think.  There is no escaping the influence of language.  Any language you learn with near-completeness is going to alter how you see the world.  There is no avoiding it.  In fact, it is something that shouldn't be avoided.  However, you should also be conscious of how it has affected you.  Occasionally look back on what changes learning other languages made in the way you see the world.  This can sometimes bring about an illusion of personal isolation, but I have come to see the broadening of horizons inherent in learning a new language to be incredibly valuable to understanding others in general. 

 

I'm an arrogant bastard by nature.  I know this, but I didn't really understand it until I learned Japanese and realized just how arrogant I was.  I'm not capable of not being arrogant.  This is my biggest flaw and something I have to deal with on a daily basis.  Since Japanese is a language where humility is encouraged, I found I was able to both understand better and soften that part of my nature when I was thinking in Japanese regularly.   However, this is just my conclusion from personal experience.  I don't necessarily think all people will gain the same epiphany from absorbing a language, nor do I believe that I have somehow discovered a divine truth that no one else grasps.  If anything, this is a concept that is very well known to sociologists and linguistic scholars.  That is the nature of an epiphany... just because it is new to you, doesn't meant it is new to everyone, lol.

[suikashoujo]

I started studying foreign languages when I was in first grade. I wanted to take French because of a book series I used to be obsessed with, but classes for it were too expensive at the time, so my parents signed me up for German classes instead. I only did those for a couple of years, though, and at this point, I can't remember a single thing I learned there.

But first grade was also the year that my school started its mandatory Spanish classes, that lasted all the way until 8th grade. Despite going through 7 years of lessons, though, we really never got past what I eventually learned was Spanish 1.

When I went onto high school, I had the option of either starting in French 1 or German 1, but decided to continue on in Spanish because I had the opportunity to jump directly into Spanish 2. I took Spanish classes through my Junior year, but quit for my senior year because the only class left was AP Spanish, and I didn't really care enough about the class (or get good enough grades in it) to go to that level.

I still wouldn't consider myself anywhere near fluent after all that, though: I go to a school that's made up of about 50% Mexican Americans, so I'm exposed to conversational Spanish on a daily basis. And honestly, one of the things about language learning that both fascinates and frustrates me is the difference between what the textbooks teach you and what you actually hear in real life. I mean, by the time I left Spanish 4 I could read (with a lot of in-class assistance, to be fair) a novel written entirely in Spanish, but I couldn't figure out anything my classmates were saying. I guess that's an example of how language constantly evolves with the people who speak it, sure, but it does get a bit frustrating when nothing you're learning in class is very applicable in real life.

Anyways, when I get to college next year, I plan to take at least a few Japanese classes, because even though I've picked up a bit from what I've been able study in my free time, I think that taking a class would help me focus more. I feel like one of the reasons I never really got good at speaking Spanish was because, to be blunt, I wasn't actually all that interested in learning it. But I'm hoping that I can stay motivated when I try learning Japanese.

One of my goals is to learn Italian and travel to Italy somewhere down the line too, but I haven't even started looking into that yet, so it could be a while before that happens.

[Zakamutt]

Practically everyone that's not at geezer-level here understands English decently and can at least hold somewhat of a conversation, but my relation to it goes much deeper. I got early exposure to the language as my parents spoke it around me sometimes (they're decent, especially my dad, but certainly not at my level.) I cruised through English lessons almost effortlessly compared to my peers thanks to the level of immersion possible on the Internet combined with reading books fully in English at an early age (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was taking ages to come out in Swedish.) Not to mention playing this Settlers II demo to death...

 

It got to the point where I was annoyed at people who couldn't speak English, the master language and lingua franca of the Internet. I suppose the only part separating me from weeaboo level was (and is?) not caring much for England or America as actual countries. These days, I very rarely think in Swedish (I actually tried to think exclusively in Swedish yesterday for a while, and it was very difficult to keep it up), and I don't speak it all that much at home either.

 

When speaking English, I am much more confident than when I use my native language. I have a good command of Swedish as well, but when using English, I can maintain much more of a distance to my emotions. Using Swedish makes me feel extremely vulnerable.

 

This isn't necessarily a good thing - speaking English is a crutch which helps me overcome my social phobia, but I can't really use it offline in most circles (and even then, it can be obnoxious).

 

I've lost most of the French I learnt in school (not much, really), though I can read very basic texts due to immersion from being in France a lot during holidays. I don't actually speak it there, though, so on that point I'm terrible. Ah well, I have Japanese to learn...

[Yeah Way]

To me, language is just something that enables one to communicate ideas to others, or even sort them out in one's own head! 

I do hear phrases like "music is a language", and I feel like I can finally appreciate what that means. If you can determine a meaning from what you're experiencing, then what you're experiencing might as well be considered a language.

 

I too am passionate about language, though my experience with it had started off pretty badly. Every Irish child starts learning Irish at at most 5 years old. (3 in my case) It was, of course, basic stuff; but I quickly decided that I wanted none of it. It just wasn't right. I and the rest of my class had to learn a language we'd never needed and never would need to speak outside of school for perhaps 13 years. How unfair! It was probably because of this attitude that I struggled with the subject, though that changed when I was around 10. At about that stage, the school's nationalist-brainwashing techniques began to take hold; and I felt that it was my duty to learn Irish. My marks went up and I began my star-pupil phase of Irish which lasted until I was 15, well into my Junior Cert.

 

But I need to rewind a bit before carrying on. In 5th class (Age 11), our school starts to teach French as well. I hated French. It was totally unphonetic; the sound didn't appeal to me; and there was no nationalist motivation, like Irish. It seemed to me that I just didn't like learning languages.

 

Then secondary school came along. I had to choose between German, French, and Spanish. With French out of the question, I chose German, because it had been advertised as "easy for English-speakers". However, this wasn't meant to be. German didn't get enough people to make a full class in my year, so the school dropped it. I was plopped into French. Saying "fuck that", I managed to escape, switch into Spanish, and quickly fall in love. Spanish was just perfect. Everything spelt 100% phonetically, and full of words almost identical to English. Just what my ignorant 13-year-old self needed. 

 

Over the next few years, I grew up. My outlook on just about everything changed, just like any teenager. I started to "teach myself" Japanese at 13, but began in earnest at 15. Japanese was not nearly as daunting for me as it probably does be for most native English-speakers. Growing up with Irish had desensitised me to foreign linguistics. Japanese has s lot of appeal to me. It sounds attractive. It's phonetic inventory is ridiculously scarce and easy to master. It's grammar and syntax are just so quirky, tonnes of fun to play with, and can be super-personalised. I personally enjoy speaking "Kansai-ben".

 

To continue, I fell out with Irish at 15. To put it simply, I woke up. At the start of this schoolyear, my last, I "dropped" in school to sit the Ordinary Level Leaving Cert exam. Basically, I'm now sitting at the back of  a class full of people who either share my view of the sad situation our educational system is in, or those who "would love to be able to speak it". AKA still brainwashed, but too lazy. 

 

To give an idea of the Irish learning experience, I'd just like to quote one  man on the topic: "There are inflections for the inflections of the inflections." Irish received a 4.5/5 for difficulty on this article: http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-languages-to-learn/

 

I also found my passion for English during secondary school. The complex history. Its international origins and international nature. Its absolute mess of a spelling system. It's beautiful! My History project for the Leaving Cert is about English, and working on it has been one of the most engaging things I've ever done. I've decided that I want to teach English in Japan! I want to devote my life to making my beautiful native language more accessible to those not lucky enough to be born into it. 

 

To finish this huge post, I'd just like to say that I've started studying Esperanto; and am currently writing a Japanese speech for a contest, under the given title, "My Dream". Having been touched by Zamenhof's work, the speech is about my hope for there to be a world-wide lingua franca that will help end conflict.