Are We Different People in Different Languages?
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A friend of mine is a foul-mouthed dirty scoundrel when he speaks Portuguese with Brazilian friends (where he grew up for half his childhood), a normally-swearing Texan cowboy when he speaks with American friends (where he went to college), and a swear-words-have-never-touched-my-lips gentleman when he speaks received pronunciation with his British friends (other half of childhood in London).
He's the same person... but entirely different people.
Another anecdote, when I taught English in Brazil, I had one adult student, a lawyer, who was entirely serious and down-to-business with a deeper voice when speaking her native Portuguese, but in English she spoke like a little girl, at a much higher pitch, and a much sunnier personality.
But on the other hand, another very multi-lingual friend of mine is exactly the same person in every language -- same attitude, same swearing, same everything.
So not sure what it says about your personality... or personalities... :)
As far as I know, everybody behaves differently towards old school friends than towards later friends, colleagues at work, their spouse, and so on.
How can we eliminate this effect? A study would need to observe the same group of people, all multilingual, in different langauges. It would be interesting to see whether these behave differently depending on the language (or mix of languages) they use.
But I personally doubt it. I believe it is "just" the people.
We all speak (and behave) differently when we are with our parents, our colleagues and our friends - and arguably online, even when speaking in our native tongue in all these (and other) scenarios.
That is not to say that certain languages don't lend themselves better to certain forms of expression, but I'm not convinced your anecdotes support that argument.
All my friends were Japanese until middle school, and my social life was dominated by Japanese. Definitely didn't fit into American elementary school at all and was a problem student.
But then I stopped going to Japanese school in HS, and then figured out how to excel in American school, met likeminded friends for the first time, etc.
Then I went to work at a Japanese megacorp in my early 20's.
It's a strange mix of time spent using the language.
In a vacuum, it's a net positive to be able to understand an additional language very well. But I've felt that my life would be easier in Japan if I were "more foreign", since I wouldn't be subjected to the expectations of a domestic person while actually internally being a foreigner.
Also I'm convinced that had I spent the resources that would put towards Japanese into English, I would have become much more proficient at English earlier in my life. That would have translated into better verbal test scores, and may have meant I wouldn't have had such a hard time in my younger years in school. Then again plenty of solo-English speakers of the shy nerd bretheren have problems at school of not fitting in, so this isn't only a language issue.
Honestly it's just a grass is greener type of situation. It's brought me great advantages (I wouldn't be doing my current company without this advantage, and I genuinely think the language is a beautiful and sonorous one, and the cultural traditions are admirable), but it's also held me back in many ways compared to my 100% American English peers as well.
Practically every English speaker I know who speaks Japanese well has a HUGE mode shift when changing into and out of Japanese.
And it's oddly specific to Japanese. It doesn't seem to be a language difficulty issue as this doesn't seem to hold for the people who speak Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese) or Korean.
It's the old mistake of taking correlation for causation.
Not necessarily parents, colleagues, friends but cultural differences between countries/regions. I'm a Swiss living in Colombia. When I speak Spanish here my talking style differs quite a bit from home, because I'm adapting the local customs. But I'm still me. I can't think of anything I would do or not do, deem good or bad, just because I'm using another language.
Where language comes in is more in personally projection. Because of different forms of expression which are not 1:1 mappings and also because I'm not as eloquent as in my native tongue, you might think I have different personalities.
On the other hands I have several Finnish personality "traits" although I don't speak the language. But my mother is from Finland and I grew up with plenty influence of her culture.
I suspect, that if the language spoken has influence on the personality it is rather small or entirely emergent from the associated culture and time of life we learnt/used it.
(1)http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/08/176064688/...
I think of languages as musical instruments. Of course nearly anything can be played on nearly anything, but the character of each is entirely different, and the way one plays or composes for each is going to differ significantly.
I'm still me when speaking different languages, but each language I use is going to convey that differently, and bring out different sides of my nature.
For example (generalization incoming) in Portugal the farther north you go, the looser tongues get. People from Lisbon (central Portugal) and down south are far more proper and don't curse as much.
Two American cyclists were cycling in Europe.
Someone flagged them for help. He spoke to them in German.
The Americans indicated they did not understand.
He then tried French. Then Italian. Then Spanish. Then Portugese. Then Russian.
Finally, the person showed his irritation and took off looking for someone else who could help him.
One America turned to the other and said "Do you think we Americans should learn more languages?"
The other scoffed "Why? Look at this dude. He knew so many languages but it didn't help him, did it?"
The advantages gained by say a French speaker learning English are huge. An English speaker learning French, or even Mandarin? Really not so much. This attitude of "those Europeans are so much more intelligent than us, look at all the languages they know" really needs to die. They know English because they need it and it gives them an advantage. Or often just because they want to watch popular TV shows.
BTW English is the most commonly language spoken in Europe as well. The days of Europeans learning the languages of their neighbours is largely over; Norwegians and Swedes, Germans and Dutchmen are much more likely to converse in English than to know each others languages. In your hypothetical scenario, the person would have almost certainly tried the national language first, then English.
Not right now, I can easily see that being different within the next century though. Probably too late for us, but not for our children and grand children.
There's also the uncomfortable fact that many Chinese people just think it's funny that a foreigner speaks their language, or they feel like they have something over you because you have to talk to them on their terms.
(I say this as a Mandarin learner, btw)
More immediately, Chinas population will peak in 15 years or so, which means its labour pool is already shrinking. Many East Asian countries are facing the same issue of course (South Korea, Taiwan) and Japan is dealing with it already. But these countries are all high income democracies - how will a middle income dictatorship deal with a rapidly aging population? How can they push through that to become even more economically productive, as you envision? I don't see it.
Chinas official GDP figures are hugely questionable btw, at least one province has been caught fabricating data http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-18/chinese-province-ad... [2]
I don't know why so many people seem to extrapolate Chinas rise in the past few decades out indefinitely into the future. I don't see it ever becoming a high income country - at least not under its current system.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#Populati...
[2] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-18/chinese-province-ad...
Take a quick look at the Alexa top 500 sites.
This is where I got it from. If you have a better source I'd like to see it.
China has nearly a billion regular internet users and there are over a hundred million overseas Chinese speakers. Finding a "source" on the internet is great and all but at least run it past a basic sanity check.
Given the enormous population gap, how could Russian possibly have more of an internet presence than Chinese?
Mine are about the language of web sites. Yours is about the language of web users.
So yes, an orange is different to an apple. I agree.
Your "stats" were calculated from total domains and the data from Alexa. While Alexa is good for the highest traffic sites, not that many Chinese internet users install an Alexa toolbar and not that many web masters install any of the tracking tools Alexa pulls from. The Chinese internet is fairly unique, has different search engines, has social media sites and has different analytics providers.
FWIW: I have worked in both US and Chinese tech companies and have familiarity with both ecosystems.
- I used a search engine to find the breakdown of websites by language, and quoted from it.
- You disputed it, telling me to look at the Alexa top 500 sites (which is a completely different stat).
- You then gave me another source, which is the language spoken by internet users. Again, a completely different stat.
- You now tell me that my source is useless, because the data is from Alexa - which a few minutes ago you were telling me was a better source of data (even though it was for a different stat).
- Now you're trying to convince me that the percentage of websites that are in Chinese is higher based on your feelings and intuition.
This is tedious. Either provide me with some concrete stats, or admit you don't know - but that you suspect it's higher.
If you are determined to believe that only 2% of all web content is in Chinese and that Italian and Portuguese are more common site languages, then so be it. I'm done on this thread.
Completely worthless.
I never said I didn't believe my data was flawed, or that I am determined to believe the 2% figure. But you have consistently failed to provide any evidence to the contrary.
OP had a link that proved you wrong, if you think you are right, either link somewhere else or just say your gut feeling is the original link is incorrect but can't prove it, stop linking totally off topic stuff it drives people nuts.
OP was incorrect in that the link is websites, not webpages though :)
Source: I'm Norwegian.
So, I am an American who lived in Sweden for roughly 4 years, long enough to consider myself mostly fluent (reading novels, talking about relatively high level political science questions in Swedish, etc.) and only agree partially with the comment above yours. Norwegians and Swedes would speak in their native tongues regularly but a lot of the time, especially if either person was from a region with a distinct accent (Skåne, i'm looking at you), they would transition to English.
As for Danes, that is a different boat. Their written language is extremely similar to Swedish but their pronunciation is far more guttural and hard to understand for many Swedes. I went to Copenhagen with a bunch of Swedes and they spoke almost exclusively English to the Danes.
With a view to stamping out the dialect? You're a real 08er, indeed. :^)
"Scandinavian" languages, please. Or even mainland Scandinavian, to distinguish from the (not very mutually intelligible) insular Scandinavian in the Faroes and on Iceland.
> I did know quite a few Danes
That last word is the explanation. :-) More below.
> I assumed the differences between the three big norse languages were roughly equal.
Swedes and Norwegians have little trouble talking with one another in their own languages. Norwegian written language looks more similar to Danish (indeed, bokmål is highly similar) in that a Dane would have no trouble reading Norwegian or vice-versa. Written Swedish differs in more than just the last three letters of the alphabet.
Spoken Danish is a whole other animal. It works out when people try to speak as standardly as possible. Norwegians and Swedes (except some from the very south of Sweden) will struggle with ordinary spoken Danish, and are even likely to turn on subtitling when watching Danish TV shows (likewise there will be Danish subtitling of some Swedish shows).
In some technical settings you'll see more use of English among Scandinavians because there is a non-commonality of terms, and of course it is simply more polite to talk in English when talking someone whose only common language (or indeed only language) is English, and it is especially Danish to do so in order to avoid excluding anyone.
That may have coloured your impression.
Learning a language:
- still opens up parts of the world for travel or living.
- can give you a different mindset/toolset, think a functional programming language vs an OO one albeit not quite that drastic.
- is good for the brain going into old age
I haven't heard any intelligence arguments before, that just seems like an insecurity, and not a reason to learn/or not learn a language.
Quantity !== Quality
As someone who can read/write in three western languages, I trawl the relevant part of the internet for answers instead of being stuck on the English-speaking only or having to relying on still unreliable automated translators.
By the way a good share of the corpus for things like physics have been written in other language than english before english was the international trade language. So I guess there is an incentive to learn language like german, french or latin.
PS. It makes me wonder how much of it has to do with Russian cursing being more "colorful" for a lack of a better word and more diverse than in English. You can make a dictionary of Russian curse words which will rival English lol. I'm exaggerating of course, but it's a pretty massive vocabulary of vulgar terms.
There was no such opposition in my consumption of English language movies and music.
Words like "fucking" etc. are more engrained in everyday language and life in the English-speaking world and are used by mostly everyone. For instance, one of my professors who has a great sense of humour is known for dropping the f bomb during his lectures. This is always followed by the burst of laughter by us students. I cannot imagine the same situation and reaction happening with one of the Russian equivalents for F word if the university professor would use it publicly.
Russian curse words do sounds more rough and offensive to me, but I think it has to do with culture. I think there is a greater separation between the slang/curse language and "elevated" language in Russia than in the English-speaking world.
I swear in my native language too, but I perceive it very differently in English. If someone calls me a "twat" or something like that, I'd probably not even register it. Also, I think of certain words (for example "nigger", "paki") like completely meaningless words, not that I ever used them.
I guess this probably has to do with English speaking societies being, generally, way more prudish than French or Portuguese speaking societies.
I think this is due to early childhood condition we received. You're also from a "good family", aren't you? The kind where swearing anywhere around adults would earn an immediate reprimand and lecture about good behavior, and you were told very early on that other kids who swear are bad apples?
And both languages have many curse words that technically mean the same thing.
I also got very weird looks from students in the US when I started cursing in English there... Like I was summoning a demonspawn.
It was funny to hear little kids and old ladies loudly swearing in English in regular conversation because the German equivalent wasn't offensive.
I found that the worse curse words in German were usually religion-oriented (crucifix!), and wouldn't even be considered remotely offensive in English.
In short, yes, speaking a different language can very much affect your personality. But it is not just the language, it is the culture that you express that language within, and also how the structure and vocabulary of that language itself reflects the culture in which it is used.
My favorite thing in France was when I would learn some new word or concept and I would "get" how to use it in French, but I couldn't fully and perfectly translate it to English because of how it just doesn't work quite the same within our culture.
e.g.: "C'est normal." It seems like an easy translation, but it requires a real understanding of the differences between French and English/American cultural views of conformity to really be able to see how it doesn't translate quite correctly. It means sort of "how things should be" or "as expected", but even that isn't quite correct, because the "should" is so implicit and assumed in a way that we don't assume in English.
I am not fluent in French, but I know that just because English has a word that looks like a Latinate one, it doesn't mean we use it the same way. In English, "normal" has two uses. First, it has a kind of insulting meaning, like "boring", "average", etc., as is often captured when people say things like "I don't want to be normal, I want to be unique." When we use it more straightforwardly, we tend to limit it to medical or scientific situations: "My blood pressure is normal." So it feels a little stiff.
Another thing to think about is whether a word's meaning is bent by its sound. In English, "normal" is stressed on its first syllable. NORmul. It kind of just stops there and stands, boringly. But isn't in French it stressed on the second syllable? NurMAAAAAL. It kind of trails off, and by doing so, seems at least to me to convey the meaning of "Oh whatever, c'est la vie, that's just how it goes". So you have to use an English word that also trails off, like goes.
You are right about intonation of 'normal' in French, though spoken French is always stressing the last (pronounced) vowel of every word by default.
"For me, language was a kind of initiation into multiple realities."
This is how I feel about learning a second language. I feel that I'm opening a door to a land of adventure that had previously been closed.
I find learning Han characters the height of tedium. I'll happily deal with any non-latin phonetic alphabet - but logograms do my head in. There's very little insight to be gained there IMO.
I suspect all this linguistic baggage slows down communication and must have some impact on business. Compare it to English - it's so much easier to just get things done when you speak it.
It worked out to be a success, and when I was a kid in the 80s I can't remember anything else than the new system, except perhaps on film and maybe by some rather old conservatives.
Interestingly, and somewhat both ironically and telling, younger people, those younger than 30 perhaps, have reinvented a NEW formal address ("Ni" [you]) that was previously considered to be rather rude. I must say that although I'm not old enough to really know the old system, I still get a bit annoyed by just that failed attempt to be polite.
When I learned German, French and Spanish I struggled with gender specific features in them.
When I learned English, I struggled and still struggle with the use of articles, like the "the".
Languages reflect and reinforce culture and mindsets. I am a different person in each language.
Reading translated books is a great mental and cultural exercise.
Elena Ferrante reads better in English than the original Italian.
Jhumpa Lahiri reads better in English than Italian.
Russian also uses names for this purpose, since we have first + last + patronymic, various combinations of those when addressing someone denote various degrees of familiarity and deference. E.g. first + patronymic is respect for authority or seniority (but sometimes used jokingly); last name alone is very impersonal; first name + plural you is respectful while asserting equal authority; and first name + singular you indicates a more personal relationship (friend or at least close acquaintance). Some combos, like last name + singular you, are outright insulting in and of themselves - curiously, historically that was the combo used by aristocracy to address inferiors. And as conversation develops, it's not uncommon for people to start with the most formal form of address, and gradually dial it down by mutual consent, often implicit.
And, because of all this, addressing someone by name repeatedly over the course of the conversation is more common in Russian than it is in English - because of all that extra meaning attached to it.
Another subtlety is an explicit and implicit addressing style unification among unequal participants.
I. [explicit] When you are referring to superior, using the aforementioned "f.n.+patronymic", he is expected to return you in the same way, even (or especially...) in the case of student-professor interaction.
II. [implicit] You are still expected to use formal addressing, when addressed informally by superior - but when that expectation holds, it is actually considered unacceptable, or bad style at least, for superior to use such addressing; unless you're in the student-professor relationship with the superior, or you're working in some shitty-unwitty paperstocking dogfood reselling organization, or you're unskilled/simple-skilled labour in a government institution. Rephrasing, superior should make sure that you both use the same addressing style (ie. as in I.).
To see why, consider that in Korean schools, people use different registers when talking to someone one grade older. There are situations like "Joon is one year senior to me, but he's actually friends with my friend Min, who entered this college a year before me, and Joon was born on January of 1980 while I was born on November 1979; so how should I address him?"
(And it certainly contributes to the large number of old male asshats who think they can treat a store clerk like his personal servant, just because the clerk is forty years younger.)
The sooner we get rid of this ridiculous system, or at least drastically simplify it, the better, IMHO.
My speech is much more colorful (I don't mean in a dirty foul-mouthed way) in Bengali than any of the other languages I speak - I can express nuances while maintaining a style that I cannot in another language I speak without losing either the style or the nuance. I find Hindi is also very expressive that way. For the lack of a better word, I feel I'm unable to be equally "juicy" in English. Of course, I'm not a native English speaker so probably the limitation is me and not the language.
Separately, something I've long found interesting: sarcasm (the way we understand the concept in English) doesn't really come across in Bengali. I don't mean that Bengali people are incapable of sarcasm, but almost invariably, the Bengali speakers I know only make sarcastic comments in English, never in Bengali.
Or, to put it more accurately: there is a way of expressing ironic sentiment in Bengali, but it's very different from how we'd think of it in English, both textually and in the delivery.
Regarding sarcasm: I think it is pretty stinging in Bengali if you are using the power of old/rural idioms/phrases (you can find numerous examples in works of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay or contemporary 1900-1930s literature where the characters are in a confrontational setting). I also grow up in company of my grandparents so I learned a bunch from them. They are concise, entertaining and leave the target squirming if well used. However I think that in today's urban Bengali society, you are considered unsophisticated if you use them so we are losing such an interesting aspect of Bengali.
In English or Japanese, I feel liberated and free to say what's on my mind. So I definitely agree with this article's premise. I do believe that the feel, tone, nuances and the "taste" of a language defines its adopting culture and society, more than the other way around.
This is how I feel about foreign languages as well. Things don't feel as "heavy" somehow. In my native language, official things sound very official, strict and serious, in English it's just the meaning, factually.
Or for example when I read English technical (CS, math) books it evokes the same feeling that I took from Numberphile, or online tutorials etc, while the equivalent book in my language would sound and smell like school and obligations instead of exciting and fun things.
People who speak negatively tend to be negative people. I find the opposite to be true as well, as long as the speech is genuine. Someone "faking" their optimism could of course be a really negative person, regardless of how they speak. I think believing what you say plays a big role.
I find myself complimenting others and thanking people for things more frequently in Japanese. Not just as a formality - but because it seems so much more natural than in English.
And I think it is very important that any person who speaks only one language does their best to embrace another culture and learn a second. It will change how you think about many things.
In that, as one becomes fluent in new language, different centers of the brain (perhaps entirely different from those used for developing one's mother tongue) are activity. And literally new brain tissue grows in these regions. So when these newer centers are activated... in part, it's literally a different "you" that's being engaged.
Just another among the many side benefits of becoming bilingual.
I find when people speak a language other than their mother tongue, their voice is higher from the concentration it takes to make the second language. Also, I do agree--when you speak a language your personality is affected by the culture of the language you're speaking. One personality for English, another for Russian--in my case.
Huh! I've wondered about this. I'm male, and my voice is much higher when speaking my girlfriends language - who unsurprisingly has a higher pitched voice than me. I figured it was just because I mimic her to pronounce things, but that actually makes sense as well.
Here is a translation of a classic buddhist sūtra in Latvian: http://www.ugis.info/?t#sutra_
> You will simply have no words to express what you need
That is a challenge that all translators face, no matter the language pair. There are no direct equivalents of "अभिधर्म" or "Ānanda" in any of the Western languages either, be it Latvian, English or Welsh. Incidentally, both Lithuanian and Latvian happen to be closer to Sanskrit than the latter. Again, I don't quite see the point you're making. Care to elaborate?
Tibetan རང་དབང is translated to English as "independence", when in fact it is itself translation of Sanskrit स्वतन्त्रः, which is in fact "self-empowering reliance", a bit different thing.
Latvian for "independence" is "neatkarība" which itself is wrong pair, because "independence" means not being dependent, and therefore free, while Latvian word means more like "impossibility to take by force". So it might be incorrect to use it in translating Tibetan term. What may be more suitable is to use 'patvaldība', but it is more about power, than reliance.
FTFY.
"Ne" is a negation (= "in" or "not"), whereas "atkarība" is simply "dependence". Thus, (in)(dependence) is the equivalent of (ne)(atkarība). I don't see where you got it to mean "impossibility to take by force". Independence can be lost, it's not an impossibility. Source:
https://translate.google.com/#auto/en/neatkar%C4%ABba
http://www.tezaurs.lv/?w=neatkar%C4%ABba#/sv/neatkar%C4%ABba
Interesting, the Latvian word feels like a cognate of Russian непокорённость (nepokoryonnost'), which means something like "ability to resist conquest". I wonder if kor/kar is the same Balto-Slavic root, or is this a false cognate?
Please check your sources and brush up on whatever rudimentary Latvian skills you still posses. You will certainly not master the language by defaulting to what is, in essence, chauvinism. Rest assured, we can read between the lines of what you're implying ["Russian language superior! We have big words, words for everything! The best words!], but it's just not gonna fly here.
"This is a major reason why the Daodejing, to take a famous example, is impenetrable to a few, enigmatic to many more, and highly allusive for everyone, and has been the subject of well over 150 translations of it in English alone."
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-translate-interpr...
There is a movement to "purify" Russian language of loan words, which sounds silly: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/20/russia...
> Dude, you really need to learn some languages.
Please stop posting uncivilly to HN. Several of your comments are interesting but that doesn't make it ok to be rude. We ban accounts that do that repeatedly.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13766510 and marked it off-topic.
UPD: Example of sweet positive character of Latvian. Latvian for "How do you do?" is "Ka labi iet?", means literally the same, but asking person is also telling that he is sure that everything is OK and somehow cheers up spirits of the respondent in this short expression.
UPD2: For those native Latvian speakers who care to read Russian and they are many, here is study summing up the first 400 years of Latvian books https://dspace.lu.lv/dspace/bitstream/handle/7/2152/Konferen... And you know, in 1956 there were 7.9 million books printed in Latvian language (!). Quite a figure for a nation of 2.5 mln people.
UPD: On other side of the coin, translation of iPad user instruction from English to Latvian is a breeze. All terms meet their pairs in translation.
@tikums. Of course they are. Read Aurobindo Ghosh, for English equivalents. I know, its a popular Latvian meme, that Latvian is close to Sanskrit.
Latvian as a language never lived better under the USSR, because Russian revolution performance was much ensured by Latvian soldiers hired by Lenin, and that was never forgotten. Among the highest Soviet officials there always been Latvians. Boris Pugo being the last.
Learn your own history from professionals, not from tabloids full of hate speech.
UPD: By the way, its Latgalian that is PTE. Latvian is simplified Latgalian. It may look as a bit of exagerration, but truth is worth discovery.
And you very well can fix officially your Latgalian identity in Russia, surprise! Isn't it strange?
Is he, though? http://univie.academia.edu/EdgarLeitan says "University of Vienna, Department of South Asian, Tibet and Buddhist Studies, PhD Student"
Nothing personally against him, but "South Asian, Tibet and Buddhist Studies" is pretty far from Indo-European linguistics. Also, it's not unusual that native speakers have craziest ideas about their own languages. You don't automatically gain a deep insight into the history of your language just by being a native speaker.
"Latvian as a language never lived better under the USSR". I've seen such a rich cultural heritage from the Latvian Soviet Republic era. Have a look at wonderful things like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kzsO_w8XIQ . Often a very poor cultural landscape afterwards.
But one can't deny russification during the Soviet era. 10.5% to 34% (1934-1989). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Latvia .
And clearly there is a minority of Russian speaking people in Riga neither able nor willing to speak even the most basic Latvian. Clearly, there are idiots on the Latvian speaking side too. I'll spare you the anecdotes.
But when it comes to cursing, they all seem to use Russian :-)
"hero" - I smiled here! :-)
Are the main characters in books, plays and movies called "heroes" in Latvian? I ask because it is so in Polish. In English a book has a protagonist, while in Polish it's the "bohater" ("hero") of the book.