Footnotes to a Conversation, March 20, 2023
“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
Linguistics
There is so much more to learning a language than simply learning words, verb tenses, and grammar rules. That’s the start, but there is so much more to discover. Here are just a few examples.
The French love abbreviations. So Carcassonne becomes Carca, les actualités (news) becomes les actus, and un appart for un appartement. You aren’t wrong if you use the entire word, but you’ll sound less like a local. [French Together]
Social etiquette is also key, and I still mess up on this point. I say bonjour to sales clerks and people I pass on the street, but I forget to say au revoir when another customer leaves a store or restaurant. And I’m always forgetting to switch from bonjour to bonsoir at the appropriate time.
Picking up some colloquialisms is great, but you have to be careful. Slang or swear words when you have an obviously foreign accent won’t go over well. However, you can pick up on some common expressions. Yes, the French really do say ooh la la so you can too! But my absolute favorite new expression is British and it also expresses surprise – oh, my giddy aunt. Isn’t that fabulous?
Even punctuation can change in another language. For example, the French leave a space before a question mark or a colon. Were you aware of that ?
Children who speak Welsh, Spanish, Czech, and Finnish will probably learn to read more quickly than English-speakers. You can be dyslexic in one language but not in another, so children with learning difficulties could benefit from learning a second language early on. It all depends on the language. English is challenging because the way the word looks may not be the way it’s pronounced. However, children learning to read Japanese will have visual clues or signs that consistently represent the same syllable. [BBC]
“He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.” – Goethe
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.
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