From the Archives- My 175th post

This post was written when I was about to give my final Arabic languages exams... Today I am learning a new language and am heavily borrowing from my experiences while learning Arabic...

Thoughts on learning a new language

Why this lull….

For last seven or eight days I have not written anything in my blog… one of the regular visitors asked me the reason…

So here is the reason. I am having a very important exam lined up on 26-28 of this month… this exam will test my skills in the Arabic language… my ability to translate to and forth, my skill of writing meaningful passages and my skill to conjure up meaningful conversation in Arabic. A tough ask, I must say, from a person who studied Arabic for two years while working for his daily bread.

The silver lining, though, is that I need only 60 percent marks to pass… and my skills in some parts of examination are very good… this will enable me to sail through.

Arabic is one of the richest languages… I am astounded by the scientific nature of this language… if you encounter any word, there is a very subtle manner in which you can deduce its rough meaning… and reading it in context, armed with the rough meaning, would enable you to reach the right meaning of the word. It is part of Semitic language family… that includes Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic (practically dead, was the language of Jesus) and Amharic (spoken widely in Ethiopia)…

Semitic language family is one of the many families of language… the idea of a family being… that there is a very close resemblance between all the languages in one family. So check out the resemblance between Arabic and Hebrew… (Salaam in Arabic becomes Shalom in Hebrew… and if you see how it is written… you will be amazed to notice the similarity)… So if you know one language in the family, then picking up another is not all that difficult. In fact, I will try to learn Hebrew after learning Arabic…(I met a Japanese girl in Jerusalem, who knew quite a bit of Arabic and was trying to learn Hebrew… she suggested me to take up Hebrew… and that after learning classical Arabic, I can learn Hebrew on my own).

India is blessed with a linguistic diversity which is unparalleled. We speak more than 25 prominent languages… out of these at least three have international clientele- Hindi or Urdu or Hindustani, Tamil and Bangla. Not many countries are endowed with this amazing diversity.

Say in USA… one would find predominantly English speakers, some Spanish speakers, some French speakers and some speakers of indigenous languages in Alaska. Russia is more endowed… Russian, Mongoloid languages… and some people speaking languages of Turkic group or Uralic group… China, despite its smaller size, is bit more diverse. Most speak Chinese, with some people speaking language of Turkic origin, some speaking Mongoloid languages and some speaking Tibetan family of languages.

Cut to India… practically every state has his or her own language… some states have more than one. But there is something unique in this diversity. India has more than a few Language groups in its fold… Indo-Iranian is one of the most dominant. Similarly Dravidian group is dominant in South India (also spoken in Northern and Eastern parts of Sri Lanka and parts of Balochistan)… we also have a big chunk in the northern and north eastern part that speaks language of Tibetan-Burmese origin. Add to this Urdu, that is predominantly used for colloquial purpose… can qualify as an amalgamation of Turkic, Indo Iranian and Semitic language. And not to forget that we are the largest population in the world speaking an Anglo Saxon- Germanic language called English. So practically, 4-5 language families have representation in India.

Now people have different views on the diversity… some feel that it is a roadblock in nation-building… some salute the diversity… I view it as a very selfish human being… what benefits can accrue from this linguistic diversity.

One benefit, without a doubt, is the richness this linguistic diversity provides to the pop culture… Good literature is being churned out, not so much in the most dominant language of India… as in less dominant languages like Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya and Bangla. The best selling newspapers are not only in Hindi- but also in Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam. The best television news channels in India are not in English or Hindi… but in Malayalam (see the quality of footages of Kairali and Asianet, and you will agree with me). Best movies are made not in Hindi but in Malayalam, Tamil and often in Bangla. This enrichment could have been forever lost if we were speaking only one language.

Another benefit is that it can help us in creating a Linguistically-literate society. We can start churning out people who have a very strong propensity to absorb new languages… How???

Scientific researches have shown that once a person knows 2-3 languages… it becomes incrementally easier for him to learn a new language. So a person who knows four languages will easily learn the 5th, whereas the one who knows only one will require a lot of effort to learn the 2nd. The practical examples are all around me… In the first semester of Arabic, I had a Canadian girl in the class- she knew Russian, English, and French…(three language of three different families), her performance in the class was way ahead of anybody else.

What happens? The more languages you learn, the more sensitive you become towards the linguistic diversity. So you start appreciating the fact that in Arabic… the majority of sentences start with verbs and not nouns or pronouns (like in Hindi or English)… or the fact that Arabic is a phonetic language… and how you make a particular sound makes a lot of difference in Arabic. Contrast it with Hindi, which is based on the kind of sound which is made… and not on how that sound is made. (Am I making sense, well give me benefit of doubt, I am no linguistic expert). The moot point being that more language you know, more sensitive you are towards inter-language variation and therefore more open you are to learn a new language.

Now that we know this- what do we do with this information? Well, apply it.

I believe that we will be doing a great service to our future generation if we make them start early in the pursuit of learning more and more languages. Some years ago, a three language formula was given by some politicians… it was a wonderful idea… let us start imparting three languages in our schooling system. The only idea being- let all these three languages be of three different family languages. One can be the mother tongue; other can be English and third can be a language of different linguistic family….

So a person in Uttar Pradesh will study Hindi or Urdu as his first language, English as second… and any of the Dravidian or Tibetan-Burmese language as his third language. Similarly a person in Tamilnadu can study Tamil as his first language, English as second and any Indo-Iranian or Tibetan-Burmese language as his third language.

This will do a lot of things… one it will go a long way in nation building… today one of the biggest problems we face is the linguistic and regional chauvinism… a North Indian doesn’t know how to differentiate between Tamilian and Kannadiga… and a South Indian doesn’t know how to differentiate between a Punjabi and a Bihari. Once we start knowing each others language… we will understand the beauty of their art, culture etc. (Most South Indian I have met think a Punjabi is very aggressive and rustic… similarly a lot of North Indians think that South Indians are too self centered and introverts… imagine if we read the best of Punjabi literature or we see the partying scene in Chennai… wouldn’t it shatter these unwarranted stereotypes)

Two we will be creating a vast group of linguistically empowered people…. People who can learn any language in the world… (Believe me; if our economy goes on growing at 9-10 percent every year for next 10-15 years, we will need such people). And if we start today, we will be ready within next 10-15 years.

Thirdly, if we would have started earlier… Arabic as a language wouldn’t have posed so much of a challenge for me…I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a language in which sentences start with a verb. Or the fact that the Ka sound in Hindi can be phonetically produced as Ka and Qa, and that in Arabic both are different. No one corrected me when I pronounced Waqt (time, in Arabic and Urdu) as Vakt. (The best example, however, is that Qalb in Arabic is Heart, whereas Kalb is a Dog)

Finally, Noam Chomsky says that "languages vary little in their deep structures; though there may be wide variability in surface manifestations"… knowing more than one language enables us to know this deep structure and be prepared to deal with the variability in surface manifestations….

This has a deeper and philosophical meaning, we all humans are same.