The American lady got on the Taiwan to US leg of my trip, where I stopped to change planes. She spoke fluent Chinese, even reading it in her spare time, which there’s plenty of from Asia to the US, even with a tail wind. If you were blindfolded I doubt that you could’ve picked out the non-native speaker from the group. I felt sorry for her. She may have even been a native speaker, for all I know. That would be insult to injury, because no matter how good she spoke, the flight attendants would always switch back to English the first chance they got, even though they probably knew no more than a hundred words of English each and the American lady probably had a Ph.D. in Chinese language. That’s just what they do. Welcome to Thailand. A South American flight attendant once explained to me, in Spanish, that they’re trained to look at people to make a determination of what language needs to be spoken. She did that after telling me, “I assume you don’t speak Spanish,” to which I promptly answered, “porque no?” Of course she was right if referring to native language, which does tend to follow traditional racial and facial patterns, which works until someone finds himself on the wrong side of a line, or until a person speaks multiple languages, the more diverse the more bizarre. I felt sorry for the American lady regardless, Chinese to the end, making calls in Chinese while the plane was still taxiing on the runway. I would’ve liked to have gotten more of her story but wo bu shi zhongguo ren.
Would multiple languages imply multiple personalities? Could you invest your identity in more than one or two languages even if you wanted to? Score one for Chomsky. French-speaking Belgians like to refer to the Flemish (Dutch)-speaking areas as something totally distinct culturally, though as a matter of historical fact, the ‘Dutch’ are merely Franks who remained un-‘Romanized,’ in a poorly-documented process that continues to this day, though Belgium itself was born in the early 1800’s European confusion of Spanish succession and Napoleonic conquest. If there is indeed a cultural difference between Germanic Franks and Germanic Dutch, then it could certainly be reflected in the language whether or not a direct result of it. Score one for Sapir and Whorf. Notwithstanding their linguistic imaginary Maginot line against the creeping onslaught of English in Quebec and elsewhere, the French are guilty of the same in Belgium where the line of ‘Romanization’ crawls northward, claiming Brussels already with no end in sight. What would Chomsky say about that? Feel free to comment, Noam, or I’ll vent my spleen about you making me parse sentences as a grade-schooler. How many of you even knew that Chomsky used to be a linguist? I suppose political commentary pays better, considering that foreign language is more typically the realm of hotel clerks, taxi drivers, and ladies of the evening looking for pick-ups with stick-shifts. Thus some of the best-educated people in the world know the fewest languages, it being a muddy field without even the most rudimentary maintenance, while a tribal person may know five or six, being largely unconcerned with technical perfection, and more focused on the means to an end. Certain sounds bring a certain result; that’s the important thing.
Thais seem to think language is a racial thing, largely disallowing it in a person of foreign extraction unless it appears that they may be ‘half-breed Thai.’ Not only do they allow that, but revel in some of the unique combinations that might arise. Those chosen many, both bastard and legit, find ready work in the entertainment industry, singing and dancing and acting in soap operas. In a sense Thailand is almost like a giant breeding experiment, not unlike the produce section in your local ‘fresh market’ or Big C. There you’re likely to find at least three or four varieties of ordinary fruit like papaya, orange, banana, pineapple, and mango in addition to exotic mangosteen, jackfruit, guava, tamarind, custard apple, durian, litchi, and others, some of which you might find in Spanish or Latin American markets, but likely never in the ‘super’ markets of Northern Europe or the USA. Top-of-the-line oranges are invariably the ‘honey’ line, juicy and thin-skinned with no fiber but very sweet, like honey I suppose, until they go bad. Any comparison to Thai women would probably be inappropriate here. If faced with a foreigner speaking Thai well with no obvious genetic relation, Thais will even be satisfied conceptually if the foreigner has a Thai wife, as if traits that couldn’t be passed along blood lines might instead be passed along in other bodily fluids. In reality the typical Thai woman is frequently hostile to her partner speaking the local language, as inexorably linked with status as it is and the Thai obsession with such. Even when sympathetic the Thai woman herself might hardly qualified to teach beyond the elementary level to which she herself has probably studied, maybe not enough to satisfy a Westerner truly looking to master a language. Modern ‘pop’ Thai has so much English in it that speaking Thai correctly frequently involves learning how to speak English incorrectly.
I’ve often wondered if my slowness in picking up the French language was because I just wasn’t ‘French’ enough. In reality it probably has more to do with finding a French-speaking place that I like enough to hang around and learn the language. It’s hard to learn the language of a place you don’t especially like. There are very few places in the world where French, and French only, is spoken, especially since its quirkiness inspires simplified pidgins around the world, not necessarily mutually intelligible. French-as-a-second-language is only partially effective, also, since it’s the ability to comprehend the speech of others that is the true measure of one’s progress. Speech fluency itself is totally subjective, and subject to shifting motivations. If a Thai bar girl decides she doesn’t want to condescend to speak Thai with old man Chomsky, then he effectively can’t speak Thai, no matter how much he may indeed know, no matter that he may indeed be the ‘smartest person in the world.’ Many women also may see it as their duty to adopt the language of her husband when they’re from different backgrounds. Maybe that’s the ‘something borrowed’ being talked about. In Thailand if a girl has a checkered past and would rather play chess the acquisition of a foreign husband and/or some English language is one way to turn a pawn into a queen in a country where such things carry high status. In many other countries it would carry low or no status. In Asia ‘marrying up’ seems to have a long history which remains unchallenged to this day, whereas in the West such notions are largely discredited. About the time American women were declaring that they don’t want to be sex objects any more, Asian women were declaring, “We do!” The rest of course is history.
It’s hard to shut a foreigner out verbally, of course, when he can understand every word the locals say and jump into their conversation any time he wants. I personally like to watch the evening news to test myself and my comprehension in countries where I want to learn the language. The language of news is correct, well spoken, and getting the content itself is a motivation factor. The scuttlebutt was that Margaret Mead in fact couldn’t speak Samoan worth a damn, so what does that say? If true does that diminish her work? Do the sexual mores of Samoa depend on her command of the language? Take a lesson from the taxi drivers- if you see a short cut, then take it. What the American lady maybe didn’t realize is that to a Chinese person all languages are Chinese, whether the words are or not, nouns and verbs like meat and vegetables prepositioned into word-ordered recipes, chopped and stir-fried in a blazing hot wok, sparks gently slapping your face in light hot licks, and then emptied in front of your face on to the plate, a little pool of oil draining off to lubricate the rice. It’s all digital now; anything is possible when you can count to ten in base two and get 1010 without a bunch of ritualistic magic squiggles intervening. The complicated old conjugations and declensions are a thing of the past, outmoded formulas ‘going Chinese’ for greater speed and adaptability, isolating and analytic, every word equal and multi-tasking. English has long led the Germanic languages in this direction, as French has somewhat less for the Romance, coincidentally each the strongest nation in its linguistic family. Does heterosis, hybrid vigor, occur in language? Let’s ask Noam.
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