Viswanathan K's Thoughts

There are two types of systems used in languages to give directions, writes Guy Deutscher in Through the Language Glass . First , the one most of us know ( egocentric ), i.e., directions wrt the individual. Turn left . Half a kilometer ahead . All directions are from the perspective of the individual. It is easy to understand why this is so popular – you don’t need a map or a compass, it feels so intuitive.   Except that, ( second ) many languages specify directions in geocentric terms. In those languages, directions are specified as north, south, east, and west, not left or right! Which languages are these? Many native languages of Australia, South East Asia, Mexico, Nepal and Madagascar. “We have simply mistaken the familiar for the natural.”   The obvious feeling would be that geocentric terms can only work for groups that stay in small areas all their life. When they tested this hypothesis by driving some natives far from their native areas, places they had ne...

In Through the Language Glass , Guy Deutscher looks at areas where languages differ. An area where culture dominates are the relationship words. Most Indian languages, for example, have different words for older/younger relatives and maternal/paternal side relatives. Not so with English. Why? Cultural differences.   Another area where there seems to be no pattern across languages is grammar. Word ordering is radically different across languages, the ordering of one can feel back-to-front in another.   A widespread belief is that the languages of “primitive” people must be as simple as their societies. Deutscher blames this misconception on the “sources”, i.e., “from Tintin to Westerns” where the natives speak in that rudimentary “me no come, Sahib” way. The problem of course is that the assessment is being made based on how they speak the language of the white man, a language with which natives have limited familiarity. Just check out how an English speaker talks in Ge...

The largest Austronesian language is Malay (#9, 275 million speakers), spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. Gaston Dorren’s Babel on Malay focuses on Indonesia because it is a segue into an interesting question. In countries with multiple pre-existing languages, which one dominates? Is there a pattern? (In case you were wondering, Indonesia, spread over a thousand islands, has over 700 languages. Yet, the adoption of Malay as the official language has never created problems.)     Group 1 are countries with one clear dominant language e.g. Saudi Arabia, the Koreas, Bangladesh. These are no-brainers in the choice of language. At the other end of the spectrum is Group 4 – a lot of languages, with one as the largest spoken one but nowhere near an absolute majority e.g. Philippines and many African countries. Here, any one language is unlikely to dominate since the others can unify in protest. They usually pick a former colonial language as the VIL (Very Imp...

Africa has a huge number of languages, but most of those languages are used in a limited locale only, writes Gaston Dorren’s Babel . Hence the need for a lingua franca - a common language between speakers whose native languages are different. Enter Swahili (#12, 135 million speakers). Very few of those (just 15 million) are native speakers though; the overwhelming majority of speakers use it as the lingua franca! Earlier, it used the Arabic script, but after European colonialism, the script has changed to Roman.   Africa then is a continent where almost everyone knows a minimum of 3 languages – the mother tongue, a lingua franca, and what Dorren calls the VIL (Very Important Language). The VIL is the official language of the country, education above primary school is in the VIL, and urban folks use it a lot. The VIL is almost always a foreign language – English, French, Portuguese or Arabic (introduced much earlier, but still, not a native of the continent).   Why is...

There are around 6,000 languages in the world, writes Gaston Dorren in Babel . His book covers the top 20 spoken languages in an unsystematic manner. Understandable, since nobody can analyze so many diverse languages in the same way. That approach results in very different info about the languages. ~~   He tried learning Vietnamese (#20, 75 million speakers). Strangely, it uses the Roman script, even though 30 to 60% of its vocabulary comes from Chinese! It has an abnormally high diacritics (symbols on top of letters e.g. ć, ĉ, č, ē etc). Unlike English, its spellings match the pronunciations – thanks to all those diacritics. Like many East Asian languages, it is highly tonal (different vocalizations can change the meaning of words significantly). And like many Asian languages, there are lots of different personal pronouns – use the wrong one and you are being disrespectful. ~~   At #16, with 95 million speakers, comes Javanese . Never heard of it? That’s probabl...

The EU has 28 partner countries that speak “an unwieldy 23 languages” , as the Economist puts it. Some guy suggested that every Euro kid should learn two foreign languages. Others felt that everyone should just switch to English. Some of the arguments against English were interesting and informative, not jingoist: 1)       The language spoken by the maximum number of Europeans is, hold your breath, German! In 4 countries, German is an official language. 2)      French has just as many native speakers as English, and is official in 3 countries. 3)      And most embarrassing of all, Britain will soon be holding a referendum whether to quit the EU altogether! 4)      The EU’s official motto is “united in diversity”, a promise to not crush every member “under a homogenising wheel”. (Wait a minute, unity in diversity? Don’t we have a copyright on that slogan?) Now doesn’t all this make you...