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The Empire of the Word Strikes Back
By Mark | September 28, 2007
I just finished re-reading Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler, a history of language spread. Specifically, it traces the spread of the big language “empires” and their succession. I found it to be excellent, as it was a great combination of history, culture, religion, and linguistics (I have almost no experience with linguistics, mind you). It was so good, I read it again. I have a strong affection for small, minority languages, which is odd since I speak only one language fluently (English) and my conversation skills are in languages that are majority languages in their spheres of influence (Spanish, Tagalog/Filipino).
I tried to learn Basque/Euskara during a recent trip to Europe, which is an incredibly complex language to learn. It is an agglutinative language, which means that to construct a sentence you create a verb root and affix terms to it. These affixes that are added create some very complex terms. What I did learn got me an in with some of people in Gernika and Baiona, though. There’s nothing like cursing out of context to make people relax. What I also found interesting is that Tagalog/Filipino is also agglutinative, which means that I may have a shot at learning Basque/Euskara after all. Since I can understand Tagalog, I may have the proper “substrate” to learn other agglutinative or synthetic tongues. By “substrate” I mean the underlying mental farmland that is created when you learn to speak as a child; it is not an uncontroversial linguistic idea, but basically the idea suggests that the kind of languages you can learn as an adult, and their ease of uptake, it affected by the kind of languages you learn when your brain is young and pliable. For example, I may never be able to learn Chinese easily, because I think in a very Indo-European way. Anyway, I should work on the two other languages I know before I try and add another.
A disclaimer: my Spanish/Castellano is okay, but it’s a goal to work on it more. Reading Spanish-language newspapers and ordering food is the extent of my practice these days. If anyone want to exchange Spanish emails with me, I’d appreciate it.
Another, more interesting disclaimer: My familiarity with Tagalog/Filipino is really strange; I can understand what is spoken to me, but I cannot for the life of me respond in kind. Watching my parents and I talk is like watching Chewbacca and Han Solo talk. They speak one language at me, I speak another back.
My mom: “Gruuuungh! Ertiahewnu era doot doot!”
Me: “They’re out of 2%. Should I get skim, or whole?”
My mom: “Blooorgah! Feenal nep nep irta booff!”
Me: “Really? I didn’t know they made 1%.”
If anyone out there would like to actually speak and not simply listen in Tagalog, that’d be nice, too.
Topics: Books, Language | Trackback | Comments RSS
September 29th, 2007 at 1:25 am
Very nice… so do your parents speak Shyriiwook and you speak Galactic Basic? or vice versa?
October 1st, 2007 at 8:16 am
I will be picking up this book very soon as I love the migrations of people and how language went along - I specifically want to know about the Finns and Hungarians and why they both sound like they’re from the same part of the moon.
October 1st, 2007 at 9:08 am
Actually, Beau, both Finnish and Hungarian are also agglutinative languages, and they are coincidentally the only official European Union languages that are not Indo-European in origin.
Basque/Euskara is not Indo-European, but it is not (yet) a fully recognized official language of the EU. You’ll be interested to know that Irish/Gaelic IS an official EU language.
October 1st, 2007 at 12:57 pm
<Insert comment about post> Oh, and congrats on passing the bar!
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Dittos Barzelay entirely!!!
October 5th, 2007 at 6:33 am
The reason Irish is recognised as an official EU language is that it is the national language of a member-state (Ireland). Basque is only granted the status of a regional language, as neither Spain nor France have given it any status at the national level.