Footnotes to a Conversation, August 1, 2022

Multilingual Confusion

There are words that I find hard to pronounce – they are so similar in both French and English, but there are subtle differences in spelling or pronunciation – quay and le quai or prioritize and prioriser (notice that extra syllable in English – very confusing). I also slip very quickly into French when trying to speak in Spanish. Apparently, I’m not alone in confronting this sort of problem. So, why do multilingual people make these kinds of mistakes?

“It turns out that when a multilingual person wants to speak, the languages they know can be active at the same time, even if only one gets used. These languages can interfere with each other, for example intruding into speech just when you don't expect them. And interference can manifest itself not just in vocabulary slip-ups, but even on the level of grammar or accent. ‘From research we know that as a bilingual or multilingual, whenever you're speaking, both languages or all the languages that you know are activated,’ says Mathieu Declerck, a senior research fellow at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels. ‘For example, when you want to say dog as a French-English bilingual, not just dog is activated, but also its translation equivalent, so chien is also activated.’”

The brain must actively inhibit the alternate languages, and when the control system fails, we make mistakes. [BBC]

For the Love of Words

My family laughs because I find it almost impossible to enter a bookstore without buying a new book of poetry. I’ve accumulated a huge collection, but each book is different and special in its own way (says an unrepentant lover of books). As a writer and someone who speaks and reads 3 languages to varying degrees, poetry satisfies my fascination with words and how they can be used to convey both ideas and images in a very compact format.

My latest purchase is In a Time of Distance & Other Poems by Alexander McCall Smith (author of the Mma Ramotswe Botswana books). It was an impulse purchase as I only read his one series of books, but there are poems about travel and journeys and animals so it’s a good fit with my personal interests. One of my favourite poems (so far) is The Train Arriving at Platform Two about approaching King’s Cross Station in London. It’s a journey I’ve done many times and his description rings true. He describes

 “A London sky, pale blue, unclouded,

Poked into by arrogant buildings,

Products of an architectural ego

Craving attention like a teenager.”

The poem speaks to the size, the anonymity, and the lack of humanity of large urban metropolises:

“This city says: come join my multitudes,

There is not water nor air enough

For all of you, but come to this spectacle

And marvel, spend your money,

And return to a place where others

Know your name, your looks,

And all the failings you’d prefer

Not to tell us about”

Chortle, Bling, Profanitype

“Coining words is like sex in that it’s necessary to our species … But rarely do people engage in it for the sake of keeping humankind going. We do it because it’s fun.” [JSTOR Daily]

Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.

If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.