Thoughts on learning a new Language- Revisited
A few days ago I was remembering my first day in Egypt… when I was walking alone on the road, trying to search for Indian Embassy… and how, despite being a couple of steps away from me… Indian Embassy seemed to be a far-off place and its search seemed almost endless.
That day, broke a myth… that English was omnipresent and omnipotent… hardly anybody on the roads of Zamalek… where crème-de-la-crème of Egyptian society lived… knew English. And that English, after all, was just one of the languages of the world. Slowly and surely, I came to know about the expanse of Spanish… of how more countries in the world speak Spanish and not English… I came to know about Arabic… which has been the raison d’etre of transfer of all oriental knowledge to the occident and perhaps a catalyst to the Renaissance.
Anyway… few days in Cairo and I remarked… that it feels like somebody has stolen two senses from me… my sense to speak… and my sense to hear… for all I could speak seemed gibberish to others… and all they spoke was gibberish to me…
Despite these few days of senseless (no pun intended), it’s no wonder… that after an year and a half… I not only backpacked through Egypt…chatted with the locals in colloquial Arabic… but also traveled all alone… in Syria, in Jordan, in Palestine... with an ease that is possible to locals only.
Anyway, I am learning a new language these days… Persian. Persian, again, is an important language… Iran, Afghanistan, parts of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iraq… and some parts of Pakistan… either speak or understand Persian… Afghanistan, for instance, speaks Dari (a variant of Persian) and not Pushto (as we would like to believe)… Pushto, though, has its own importance… it is the lingua franca of Pushtoon people… of whom just one-third live in Afghanistan… and two third in Pakistan.
My teacher, an elderly gentleman, is a teacher in a prestigious local school… he is a Sufi by beliefs, and a great poet. He was introduced to me by a friend of mine… who is a student in that school. More about my teacher, later.
Persian uses the same script, as that of Arabic; however, it introduces three new consonants into the script… “Cha” as in Chad… “Dja” as in Ahmedjinejad… and “Pa” as in Pakistan. (It also introduces another consonant Gaa, but that I think is also available in Egyptian Arabic... and therefore is not truly unique) It also changes the pronunciation of many Arabic sounds… so a “Tha” sound as in Othman becomes “Sa” sound… as in Osman.
Knowing one language makes knowing another language easier… well that’s true… now learning Persian is incrementally easier for me… I am able to relate Persian grammatical rules and formations with that in Arabic… so a “Nihad” is “Mubtada” and “Guzara” is “Khabar”…
Anyway, I love this language… which till now has appeared to be a bridge between Arabic and Sanskrit… a lot of words and formations from Arabic… and a number of words sounding similar to Sanskrit. History tells us that when the Aryan migration started from the Central Asia… a stream of the migrants went to Iran… and another stream to India. Thus, we can argue that Sanskrit and Persian had a similar heritage.
A question arose in my mind… which language of the two… Sanskrit and Arabic… is Persian more closer to… more I look in to the vocabulary of Persian… more I feel that Persian is closer to Arabic… and yet something tells me that Persian bears an uncanny resemblance to Sanskrit.
I asked this to my teacher…
Well, my teacher is a great linguist… he knows Persian, Pushto, Balochi, Urdu… and add to this wee bit of Arabic, Seraiki, Punjabi, Sindhi, English and Hindi. Though, he admits, that knowing all of them is no difficult task because most of them are of one family and are easy to follow.
So… he gave me a new insight into linguistics…he said when comparing two languages… go to the most basic words of those languages, words used for father, mother, brother, sister, wife, son, daughter… these words are very unique to a particular language… and don’t transform with super-imposition of new cultures…
His way to analyze languages struck a chord in me… say for instance, if we look into Spanish and Arabic... we would be actually overwhelmed by the stark similarities between the two languages…. However, the family of Spanish and Arabic are as different as chalk and cheese. So how similarity does arose… perhaps because of the strong historical interactions between the Arabia and Andalusia… similarly, perhaps, similarities between Arabic and Persian arose due to strong cultural linkages between the two… during the Islamic age… however… when you look for words for Father and Mother... Padar and Mader in Persian and Abb and Amm in Arabic, and in contrast Pitra and Matra in Sanskrit.
Languages are an amazing paradigm to look into human civilizations… one way of looking into the domination of English in the global popular culture is the dominance of two English speaking powers, one after another, Britain and the US. The perhaps, there was a time when Arabic would have dominated the global culture…
As for me… I pledge to gather at least working knowledge of the languages where I live… Arabic, Persian… god knows which language awaits me next.
I didn’t learn grammar very well… either of English or of Hindi. Sadly in India, Grammar is often thought as an unnecessary add-on… but now having learnt Arabic Grammar… I can correlate with Persian Grammar at a stupendous pace… Grammar is the most basic tool of learning any language…
It is perhaps like numbers, which are necessary to learn Mathematics… numbers may be called by different languages, but once learnt in any language… they make Mathematics comprehensible.
That day, broke a myth… that English was omnipresent and omnipotent… hardly anybody on the roads of Zamalek… where crème-de-la-crème of Egyptian society lived… knew English. And that English, after all, was just one of the languages of the world. Slowly and surely, I came to know about the expanse of Spanish… of how more countries in the world speak Spanish and not English… I came to know about Arabic… which has been the raison d’etre of transfer of all oriental knowledge to the occident and perhaps a catalyst to the Renaissance.
Anyway… few days in Cairo and I remarked… that it feels like somebody has stolen two senses from me… my sense to speak… and my sense to hear… for all I could speak seemed gibberish to others… and all they spoke was gibberish to me…
Despite these few days of senseless (no pun intended), it’s no wonder… that after an year and a half… I not only backpacked through Egypt…chatted with the locals in colloquial Arabic… but also traveled all alone… in Syria, in Jordan, in Palestine... with an ease that is possible to locals only.
Anyway, I am learning a new language these days… Persian. Persian, again, is an important language… Iran, Afghanistan, parts of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iraq… and some parts of Pakistan… either speak or understand Persian… Afghanistan, for instance, speaks Dari (a variant of Persian) and not Pushto (as we would like to believe)… Pushto, though, has its own importance… it is the lingua franca of Pushtoon people… of whom just one-third live in Afghanistan… and two third in Pakistan.
My teacher, an elderly gentleman, is a teacher in a prestigious local school… he is a Sufi by beliefs, and a great poet. He was introduced to me by a friend of mine… who is a student in that school. More about my teacher, later.
Persian uses the same script, as that of Arabic; however, it introduces three new consonants into the script… “Cha” as in Chad… “Dja” as in Ahmedjinejad… and “Pa” as in Pakistan. (It also introduces another consonant Gaa, but that I think is also available in Egyptian Arabic... and therefore is not truly unique) It also changes the pronunciation of many Arabic sounds… so a “Tha” sound as in Othman becomes “Sa” sound… as in Osman.
Knowing one language makes knowing another language easier… well that’s true… now learning Persian is incrementally easier for me… I am able to relate Persian grammatical rules and formations with that in Arabic… so a “Nihad” is “Mubtada” and “Guzara” is “Khabar”…
Anyway, I love this language… which till now has appeared to be a bridge between Arabic and Sanskrit… a lot of words and formations from Arabic… and a number of words sounding similar to Sanskrit. History tells us that when the Aryan migration started from the Central Asia… a stream of the migrants went to Iran… and another stream to India. Thus, we can argue that Sanskrit and Persian had a similar heritage.
A question arose in my mind… which language of the two… Sanskrit and Arabic… is Persian more closer to… more I look in to the vocabulary of Persian… more I feel that Persian is closer to Arabic… and yet something tells me that Persian bears an uncanny resemblance to Sanskrit.
I asked this to my teacher…
Well, my teacher is a great linguist… he knows Persian, Pushto, Balochi, Urdu… and add to this wee bit of Arabic, Seraiki, Punjabi, Sindhi, English and Hindi. Though, he admits, that knowing all of them is no difficult task because most of them are of one family and are easy to follow.
So… he gave me a new insight into linguistics…he said when comparing two languages… go to the most basic words of those languages, words used for father, mother, brother, sister, wife, son, daughter… these words are very unique to a particular language… and don’t transform with super-imposition of new cultures…
His way to analyze languages struck a chord in me… say for instance, if we look into Spanish and Arabic... we would be actually overwhelmed by the stark similarities between the two languages…. However, the family of Spanish and Arabic are as different as chalk and cheese. So how similarity does arose… perhaps because of the strong historical interactions between the Arabia and Andalusia… similarly, perhaps, similarities between Arabic and Persian arose due to strong cultural linkages between the two… during the Islamic age… however… when you look for words for Father and Mother... Padar and Mader in Persian and Abb and Amm in Arabic, and in contrast Pitra and Matra in Sanskrit.
Languages are an amazing paradigm to look into human civilizations… one way of looking into the domination of English in the global popular culture is the dominance of two English speaking powers, one after another, Britain and the US. The perhaps, there was a time when Arabic would have dominated the global culture…
As for me… I pledge to gather at least working knowledge of the languages where I live… Arabic, Persian… god knows which language awaits me next.
I didn’t learn grammar very well… either of English or of Hindi. Sadly in India, Grammar is often thought as an unnecessary add-on… but now having learnt Arabic Grammar… I can correlate with Persian Grammar at a stupendous pace… Grammar is the most basic tool of learning any language…
It is perhaps like numbers, which are necessary to learn Mathematics… numbers may be called by different languages, but once learnt in any language… they make Mathematics comprehensible.
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