Gaston Dorren's Blog, page 6

5+1 on both sides of the Channel

[image error]English verbs are strange, for a European language. In the present tense, nearly all forms are the same: I see, you see, we see, you (guys) see and they see. But just when you start thinking that the present tense is a conjugation-free zone, you get the shock of she·he·it sees, with an s tacked on. Not much of a surprise perhaps, because it’s a pretty basic fact about English grammar, but still: if you didn’t know it already, you wouldn’t see it coming.

This type of conjugation is exceptional. Most European languages are much more ornate in this department – check out Spanish or Czech, if you want to see more typical examples. The Scandinavian languages, on the other hand, so close to English in several ways, have gone one better. In Danish, for instance, all six forms are identical: the verb se (see) conjugates, or rather doesn’t, as jeg ser, du ser, hun·han ser, vi ser, I ser, de ser.

But if English is strange here, it’s not unique. At least one other European language also has five identical forms and one that’s different, and it’s a language you are not unlikely to have at least some familiarity with: French. Or to be more exact: everyday spoken French.

Written French looks like a typical European language, similar to Spanish and their common ancestor, Latin, with lots of verbal endings. Let’s take the word for ‘see’ again: je vois, tu vois, elle·il voit, nous voyons, vous voyez, elles·ils voient. That’s five different forms; only vois does double duty. But in spoken French, you will typically hear this: /je voi/, /tu voi/, /el·i voi/, /on voi/, /vou voyé/, /el·i voi/. Voilà: only the second person pronoun vous, which is plural, polite or both, commands a different form compared to the other five. Colloquial French, like standard English, has a 5+1 conjugation pattern.

Not always, granted. It isn’t true for all verbs, it’s not always true when the verb is followed by a vowel and even in informal French, the form nous voyons (pronounced /voyon/) can still be used for ‘we see’, alongside on voit (/on voi/). But if you want to summarise what French verbs are like in the present tense (and in the imparfait or past tense as well), ‘5+1’ is a fair approximation. Which is a far cry from what French grammar books would have us believe.

By the way, if you know of another language, European or not, that in its written standard or in some colloquial form has a 5+1 conjugation paradigm (or 6+1, 7+1 et cetera), please do let me know!

Around the world in eight publishers (and counting)

I haven’t blogged for a while. First, I was too busy finishing my book, Babel. Then, exhausted, I took a few weeks off (one of which I spent polishing up my French).

[image error]Meanwhile, good news kept coming in. I already knew that Babel was going to be published by Profile (UK), Grove Atlantic (US) and Athenaeum (Netherlands). Then three publishers who bought Lingo also decided to buy Babel: Pax (Norway), Turner (Spain) and Azbooka-Atticus (Russia). If I was very pleased by that, I was nothing short of delighted by the news that a Chinese and a Taiwanese publisher (Shanghai Dook and Faces Publishing) are going to bring out the book in two different Mandarin versions, one in simplified, the other in traditional characters.

My wife suggested it would be fun to make a map showing the countries where Babel is coming out, so here it is. May it require many updates!

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Between you and I

“Regarding pronouns, we do not quite see”
– the grammar pedant stated – “eye to me.”

Who’s that language? (2)

[image error]Here are some responses. I’ll add more as they come in.

To me, English is my grandparent, French is my tutor, Korean is my hero, Japanese is a good friend, and Chinese is a kindly elder.

Felicity Parry

How true: some languages represent my dysfunctional childhood dreams, others friendly strangers.

@Susanne_T123

 

Who’s that language (for you)?

[image error]In my life, languages are characters, with different roles and personalities. I’m sure that this reflects my particular experiences with each of them more than anything else, but it is how I perceive them.

What’s English to me? A smart and funny colleague, though unfortunately a bit self-obsessed. German is a close pal, Spanish a kind and valued neighbour. Dutch is my lover, Limburgish my Mum. French and I largely ignore one another, as if we never met. With all others – half-forgotten, known only by sight or complete strangers – I am on nodding terms at best.

How is this for you? I would love to know your associations and connotations with the languages you speak, or have tried to learn. Are they characters, as they are for me? Colours perhaps? Tools, tastes, textures? Or perhaps you have no idea what I’m talking about – that too would be interesting to know.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you! I will publish the answers I receive in a new blogpost.

Vietnamese (10): No such thing as Britain

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I wonder what it’s called in Vietnamese.

The difference between England, Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles is one of the great semantic challenges of – what shall I even call it? The English-speaking part of Northwestern Europe, let’s say.

If it’s a semantic challenge in English, the language of the natives, imagine what it’s like in translation, especially in languages spoken far away. In Vietnamese for instance. This has several different names for nearby nations such as the Chinese and Koreans, but no separate word for ‘Britain’. All it has is Anh for ‘England’ (or ‘English’), and the meaning of this one syllable has had to be stretched to near-breaking point in order to express all the political subtleties.

The results are remarkable:

Great Britain: Đảo Anh – ‘English island’.

Well, England occupies over 60 percent of the island. But are the Welsh and Scots going to like it?
Great Britain, alternative translation: Đại Anh – ‘Great England’.

This may cause even worse blood among the two junior partners. ‘Great England’, forsooth! The Vietnamese too consider this second best, but that’s because the same name also refers to Daying County in China.

Strangely, Brittany or Little Britain does have a Vietnamese name of its own: the French colonisers have taught the Vietnamese to call the French region ‘Bretagne’.
United Kingdom (UK): Vương quốc Liên hiệp Anh và Bắc Ireland – ‘United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland’.

This is tricky. Shouldn’t that be ‘United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland’? A bit on the long side though. For now, at any rate. Or perhaps just ‘United Kingdom’, Vương quốc Liên? I’m not sure why, but a Google search suggests this is never used. Perhaps there are some other ‘united kingdoms’ in East Asian history?
British Isles: Quần Đảo Anh – ‘English Group of Islands’ or ‘English Archipelago’.

Ireland has long disliked being subsumed under the term ‘British Isles’; being considered part of the ‘English Isles’ will go down no better there, I suspect.

Finally, you may wonder about the terminology for American English versus British English. The Vietnamese are well aware of the difference. They label the language (tiếng) of the New World Anh Mỹ, the other… Anh Anh.

Vietnamese (9): Back from Hanoi

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Turtle Tower (Tháp Rùa) in Hoàn Kiếm Lake, central Hanoi

For three wonderful weeks, I’ve explored a few neighbourhoods of Hanoi, tasted local cuisine, enjoyed the balmy weather, met several lovely people – and studied the Vietnamese language. Studied hard, and loved almost every moment of it. Yes, the food was distinctive and delightful, but one can only spend so much time eating. That left me loads of time for other delights: those feeding my linguistic hunger, which borders on the insatiable.

‘So can you chat with the Vietnamese now?’ The answer is simple and disappointing: no, or as close to no as makes no difference. I can definitely read a lot more than before, I may be able to express a few more things than I used to, but when it comes to listening – an essential ingredient of any chat – I remain an embarrassing underachiever.

No surprise there, for this is my traditional weak spot: my listening skills always lag far behind reading and speaking. Spanish too sounded like an impenetrable wall of sound at first. But at some point I began to recognise the acoustic bricks and learnt to plant my fingers ever more firmly in the mortar joints between them, which finally enabled me to crisscross the wall like a gecko. Practice and perseverance did it. I don’t expect my Vietnamese will ever be as good as my Spanish, but I should be able to get beyond the wall-of-sound stage. Unfortunately, I haven’t found the mortar joints during this first stay.

Before leaving, it was my intention to offer you a real-time blow-by-blow account of my discoveries and frustrations, in a whole series of fascinating blog posts. But what with seeing my teacher, doing homework, organising my daily life, going to the gym, seeing a few sights and sharing stuff on Facebook (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), I never got round it. But I promise I’ll still share the experience with you: I’ve already started writing the chapter on Vietnamese for my next book, BABEL, which is planned for October. I intend to put up parts of the chapter here on the blog, and perhaps some other posts as well.

For now, let me say thank you to the people who made my stay in Vietnam a memory to cherish: especially my host Phong and his wife; my teacher Loan; and my online teacher Huyền and her boyfriend Óscar, who I finally met in the flesh.

It would of course be silly to thank the many dozens of people I had fleeting interactions with or the thousands that I passed in the street. Yet it is significant that the thought to do so occurs to me nonetheless. The thing is, I liked the atmosphere of Hanoi in a way and to a degree that I’ve never experienced in similar-sized cities where I spent a few days (Manilla, Nairobi, Buenos Aires), weeks (Istanbul, Quito, Moscow) or months (Lima). Hanoi is at least as noisy and as smelly as any of these, and probably more cramped and crowded. But there’s something gentle and unflappable about its people that makes the place unexpectedly liveable. Thanks, người Hà Nội.

Vietnamese (8): My first micro conversation

[image error]Victories, however minor, are good for the morale. So I was very pleased this morning when I found I fully understood the short message sent to me by Huyền, my Vietnamese teacher (not in picture). That is to say, I knew ten of the eleven words (plus the emoji) and I could guess the other one. Guessing words from context is a common thing to do, even in your mother tongue sometimes, so I don’t consider that to be a stain.

Of course, I’d read and understood sentences before, but this was the first time someone actually communicated something to me in Vietnamese, and I got it; this was about something approaching real life, a micro conversation if you like.

Her message was in reply to my recommending a book (which I did in English, though the book is in German). She wrote back,

Cảm ơn bác vì quyển sách hay. Cháu sẽ đọc nó

Vietnamese (7): How one language can help another

[image error]I discovered something amazing during last night’s lesson with Huyền, my Vietnamese teacher. We were discussing my pronunciation of the sound written as ư, which I’m not familiar with from other languages. I have trouble vocalising the ư in a way that’s clearly and consistently different from the common or garden u (/u/, as in boot). Several sources, including Huyền herself, had suggested all kinds of tips and tricks for ‘placing’ the vowel properly in my mouth, such as these:

‘Try to say something in between /i/ (as in beat) and /u/.’
‘Say it like an /u/, but with a broader mouth, spreading the lips.’
‘Say it like a schwa (as in the article a, pronounced without emphasis), only higher up.’

Nothing helped, and the ư remained problematic. But last night I realised that my teacher speaks not only Vietnamese, Mandarin, English, Spanish and Catalan (!), but also German, and I wondered: how has she ever managed to wrap her oral muscles around the German ü sound? I mean, the ü is easy enough for me because I’ve learnt it on my parents’ knees, but it’s notoriously hard for those who don’t have it in their first language. So tell me, Huyền, how did you do it?

‘Oh, instead of ü I just say the Vietnamese ư’, she replied casually. ‘Works every time. Never a problem.’

‘Would that work the other way around as well?’ I asked. ‘Could I just pronounce Vietnamese words with ư as if it were an ü?’

‘I guess so. Go ahead and try it.’

So instead of từ I said ‘tǜ’ and instead of sữa I said ‘sǖa’ (for the dash, read a tilde) – and she got my meaning without a hitch.

Now this is odder than it may seem, because the ư and the ü do not sound as similar as they look on the page. The main thing they have in common is that your tongue has to be high up near the roof of your mouth. But the ü is a front rounded vowel, which is to say that your tongue is pushed forward inside your mouth and your lips are in a kind of kissing position; whereas the ư is a central unrounded vowel, so your tongue is somewhere in the middle of your mouth, while your lips are in a more neutral pose. Quite different, in a word.

But I suppose their redeeming commonality is that they’re both clearly unlike the u. And apparently, as long as that’s the case, listeners will perceive both ư and ü as ‘something like u but different’, and you get away with saying either of them. (Unless a language has two vowels somewhere in that area, that is, such as Turkish – or so I would expect.) So you can cheat and still be understood – or rather, be understood better .

All’s fair in love, war and language-learning. In Vietnamese, I’ll be a cheat.

***

On a practical note: I do these Vietnamese lessons through Italki, one of the digital platforms that bring together language learners and teachers. In my experience (which is limited: just five or six lessons so far, all from the same teacher), it works very well. Even with a ‘small’ language such as Vietnamese, you can choose from among a good number of teachers, who have different qualifications and charge different rates. I’m happy to study with Huyền: she’s reliable, patient, good at her job and fun to talk to. Her knowing all these other languages is a nice bonus. (Neither Italki nor Huyền is sponsoring this message.)

And just in case you’re wondering how my Vietnamese is coming along: not too badly, thank you. I mean, I’m still firmly in the lower A1 range, but I do perceive that I’m making these tiny steps forward. Some words and phrases actually begin to feel familiar. I’m hopeful that spending three weeks in Vietnam will make me soar to the level of a linguistically challenged two-year-old.

Is half the world economy ours?

[image error]English is often called the world language, and not without reason, yet outside the Anglosphere and parts of Europe, it’s only spoken by an elite. Which makes me wonder: what proportion of world GDP accrues to the minority of the world population that speaks good English?

The question immediately runs into an operationalisational quagmire. Or to put it in language that does not contain the abstract suffix ‘ation’ twice in one word: it’s practically impossible to determine how many people speak English, and there’s bound to be no data whatsoever linking the number of English speakers in each country to their slice of the national pie. However, this need not stop us making a rough and ready estimate. I’ve tried to do just that, and my provisional and highly questionable ballpark statistic would be that 10% of the world population accounts for half of global GDP.

But some linguistically-minded economist, or vice versa, may have come up with something slightly more reliable. Do any of you know of such an effort? I’d love to hear about it!