|
The English-Learning and Languages Review Æ Homepage |
Make as many free copies of this
page as you like, but see the conditions at the end.
Learning Vocabulary 1
Amorey Gethin and Erik V. Gunnemark
This web page is an
edited extract from The Art and Science of Learning Languages, by Amorey
Gethin and Erik V. Gunnemark, published by Intellect
in 1996 (http://www.intellectbooks.com)
The Editor invites articles in response
to this page and to Learning Vocabulary 2, itself a critical
reply to
Learning Vocabulary 1.
1 Languages are translations of 'life', not of
other languages
Learning a language
is observing it; that is, simply noticing what words mean what, and how
the words are used together to produce broader meanings. Children have two
great advantages in this task. First, they are allowed to take many years to
learn their language, a length of time that older children and adults cannot
usually allow themselves for learning a foreign language. Secondly, they do not
have one language already, so they cannot get muddled by it, and they
appreciate, without thinking, something that is fundamental to the nature of
all languages: they are not translations of other languages; they are direct
'translations' of reality, of things, feelings, ideas, actions, of human
experience.
The
result of this is that at one level all languages are in principle exactly the
same, that is to say, they are sets of meanings, collections of words for
directly representing the world. Note 1
2 Every language is
different and divides the world up differently
But it also means that every language is in a sense completely
independent of all other languages. Each language divides the world up in its
own way, a different way from other languages. One can see this at the very
simple level of single words. For instance, Italian has two words:
sapere and conoscere,
where English has only one:
know.
On the other hand, English has two:
do and make,
where Italian, like many other languages, has only one:
fare.
This does not mean that when you have two words
it does not matter which you use. Each word has its separate meaning, as we can
illustrate with
do the washing up
and
make a plate
But Italian-speakers use fare for both. In the same way, Italians
use sapere when they are talking about knowing
facts or truths - for I did not know she was here they would use sapere - and conoscere
when they want to express the sense of being acquainted with somebody or
something - for I know her well they would use conoscere.
So we can see that know has at least two different meanings.
There are untold thousands of cases like this
throughout the languages of the world. English can use the same word to describe
a person who is annoyed because his neighbour has a
nicer house, and a person who is upset because he thinks his wife is interested
in another man: jealous. But Swedish, for example, calls one avundsjuk and the other svartsjuk.
However, it is by no means always as simple as that. In Swedish, for instance, bra
as an adjective has the sense of good, but bra as an adverb means
well. On the other hand, of all the things English simply calls good, some would be called bra in Swedish but
others - such as food - would be called god.
3 Prepositions don't
fit from one language to another
Prepositions are famous for being used in their own special and
'different' way in each language, and cause great difficulties to students all
over the world. If you look up the Spanish word por
in a Spanish-English dictionary, you will almost certainly find that the first
word given is by; and, vice-versa, if you look up by you will
find por. Yet for a sentence such as
She's walking about IN the garden.
the Spanish would be
Está paseando POR el jardín.
In the same way, if you look up the Swedish på
in a dictionary, you will find on and vice-versa. Yet the English for
Jag har inte sett henne PÅ mycket
länge.
is
I have not seen her FOR a very long time.
And although dictionaries will tell you that Italian da
first and foremost means from or by and the other way round,
She must go TO the doctor.
is
Deve andare DAl dottore. (!)
And so on. Nearly everybody thinks it is the
other people's language that is peculiar. But the true moral to be drawn is
that you must recognize that every language works in its own special way, and
if that's peculiar, then your own language is just as peculiar as any other.
4 Words in one language do not usually mean exactly the same as
words in another language
It is also important to understand that there are not many words in a
language that mean exactly the same as words in another language. (This
naturally does not apply between languages that are very close to each other,
such as the Scandinavian languages, or Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian. But
there we are really talking about what are effectively the same words.)
If we imagine a word in one language (let's say
English)
and a word in another language (let's say Russian),
it is very rare for their meanings to fit exactly like this:
It is much more likely that they will be related to each other something
like this:
Now, there may be a second English word that covers part of the Russian
word that is not covered by the first English word. But again, it won't cover
the 'missing' part exactly. There will also very likely be a part of the
meaning of some Russian words that cannot be covered by any English word –
perhaps even not by any other word in any language in the world – and
vice-versa. Notice that there are large parts of the English words which are
not covered by the Russian word. Perhaps there is another Russian word that can
do that, but maybe only partially.
Gentle is in fact an example of a word that possibly has no
exact equivalent in any other language. It can of course be translated, but
only in a very rough and approximate way. The first thing to notice is how gentle
has to be translated in one context by a certain word and in a different
context by another word. (In some contexts it might even have to be translated
by a combination of words.) Its most likely appropriate Russian equivalent is
given below for each of the following sentences:
|
1 |
He is a very gentle person. |
myágkiy |
|
2 |
He gave her a gentle smile. |
lyubéznyy |
|
3 |
She gave him a gentle push. |
lyógkiy |
|
4 |
He was rowing against a gentle current. |
slábyy |
|
5 |
Can't you give him a gentle hint? |
tónkiy |
|
6 |
She laid it gently on the table. |
ostorózhno |
|
7 |
The tap on the door was so gentle we |
|
Seven different Russian words are thus used for the same English word,
and further uses of gentle in other contexts might require further
different Russian translations. And there is almost certainly a part of the
meaning in gentle that is missing in all translations, whatever word is
used.
Gentle is perhaps a rather extreme case. But
there are huge numbers of words in the world's languages that have this same
unique character, even if not always so clearly.
5 Whole expressions, too, are different in
different languages
Again, different languages express the same combination of ideas in
different ways:
|
English |
I have been here for two hours. |
|
|
Italian |
Sono
qui da due ore. |
= Am here since two hours. |
|
Japanese |
Koko-ni ni jikan imas. |
=
Here two hour-period am. |
|
|
|
|
|
English |
She
is six years old. |
|
|
Italian |
Ha sei anni. |
= Has six years. |
|
Japanese |
Kanojo-wa roku sai desu. |
= She six age is. |
|
|
|
|
On the
|
|
|
|
English |
This is Maria. |
|
|
Italian |
Sono Maria. |
= Am Maria. |
|
Japanese |
Maria desu. |
= Maria is. |
We can see here not only that some languages sometimes leave out meanings
that other languages have to put in, and vice-versa, but also that different
languages 'think' about the same reality in different ways. We see here that
Italian, for instance, "has...years", whereas English says
"is...years old".
6 Do not learn by
translating into your own language
That foreign languages work differently from your own is the first and
most basic thing to observe and remember about them. Do not try to learn them by
constantly translating them. We have just seen, in the previous sections, the
immediate practical difficulties involved in translation and how the same word
in one language may have to be translated into another language by different
words in different contexts.
But the difficulty is also more basic. If you
always try to turn the foreign language into your own you will never truly
understand it, and you will certainly never master it and be able to use it
naturally and fluently. This is because translation goes right against the
basic nature of language that we explained above. Translation is never truly
'true'.