Language

I mentioned in my last post that “two weeks to find a rare book and to have it delivered from over 4000 miles away isn’t too bad at all!” I still stand by that. However, it’s even better for it to only take 8 days total to go from looking for a rare book to having it arrive at your house; my copy of Russisch ohne Mühe arrived today, and I’m ecstatic. It does indeed seem far superior to the “new and improved” Russisch ohne Mühe Heute, just as I’ve read in language learning forums.

I’m quite ecstatic about the book, as well as the quick delivery. While I touted the wonders of the internet (which I still hold to be true, mind you), I was secretly concerned about something more “worldly”: international shipping hell. I’ve heard my fair share of horror stories about packages that were supposed to hop the pond, and I was really hoping that my book’s voyage didn’t become one of those stories. Obviously, it didn’t.

Lastly, my family thinks I’m a total geek (which I agree with), and perhaps mildly insane (which I can’t totally argue with, at least not all of the time). There’s something über-geeky about excitedly saying, “Excellent! My German-based Russian text has arrived!” Oh well.

Yesterday while at church with my mom, I was thinking about the fact that many religious people know little to nothing about other religions. If asked why they have no interest in other religions, they’ll often respond with something that runs like, “This is the right religion for me, I know it, I don’t need to look any further.” This doesn’t make much sense to me. 

Let’s make a comparison between religions and say, language. Let’s start that comparison out with a quote from Goethe:

“Wer keine fremde Sprache spricht, kennt seine Muttersprache nicht.”

My approximate translation of this would be: “He who does not speak a foreign language, does not know his native language.” I think the same could be said of religion. If you’re not familiar with other belief systems, are you sure you really understand yours?

As a further example, I suppose one could compare religions (crudely, I know) with that favorite standby of many: food. Suppose you get someone who has never had steak, spaghetti and meatballs, or pizza. You set a plate down in front of him with a steak; he eats it, and proclaims that it’s the right food for him, his favorite out of the three. But obviously, that can’t be right. How can he possibly say that if he hasn’t even tried the other two foods?

Certainly, I’m not saying that everyone who is religious to any degree should be a scholar on all religions (or even one). But I do think that to really understand one’s own path, one needs to at least have a vague idea about the road map that others are using. It’s hard to say that you’re sure your map has the right directions if you’ve never looked at any others.

Perhaps I’m being naive, though. The real truth as to why people don’t investigate other religions, unless they’re experiencing doubt about their current one, is probably that they think that all other religions are wrong. Their religion is the One True Religion, the only one that holds the (right) answers to all of the mysteries of the world. As Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out:

“If there were a verb meaning ‘to believe falsely,’ it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.”

I was thinking earlier today about Battlestar Galactica, that favorite sci-fi show of mine that won’t be back until January. (Can you tell that I’m bitter?) I was thinking specifically about language in the show. It occurred to me that the Colonial Fleet is attempting to find Earth, where the Lost Thirteenth Tribe settled, right? Before I go any further, take a look at this, from Wikipedia:

Perhaps the most prominent religious component is the series’ overarching theme: the human survivors’ search for Earth. That search is motivated by ancient religious texts’ references to a 13th tribe of humans that established a civilization on a distant planet called Earth. Various religious relics and ruins, both on the 12 colonies and elsewhere in the galaxy, provide clues to Earth’s location.

This is what I’m getting at: I assume that, at some point or another in the series, the Colonial Fleet will reach Earth. If the 13th Tribe made it to Earth and then proceeded to live their lives for a few thousand years, the language they used would have developed, changed, evolved. Even if the 13 Tribes had all originally spoken the exact same language, by the time the Colonial Fleet arrives at Earth, the language should have diverged, following different developmental paths. Take the Scandinavian countries, for example. Norway, Denmark and Sweden are practically on top of each other, and look how Old Norse developed into the similar but different languages of Norwegian, Danish and Swedish^[1] However, it’s not even made clear as to whether or not the 13th Tribe was ever with the other 12 Tribes, so we don’t even know if they spoke the same language.

When the Colonial Fleet reaches Earth, if the 13th Tribe is still there, living out their lives, how will the communication between them be portrayed? Will the 13th Tribe speak the same language as the Colonial Fleet, just with different idioms and perhaps a slightly different vocabulary? Will they speak exactly the same way as the members of the Fleet speak? Will they speak some foreign language, which must be translated before the Fleet members can understand?

I suppose I could be considered a nitpicker, but this really does bug me. Obviously, since the show was made by English speakers with an English-speaking cast, the language that the people of the fleet speak is English. But are we to assume that it’s really “English”, or a different language altogether? Considering England is on the planet Earth, which is what the fleet is trying to find, how could the language the fleet speaks be called English? You have to have an England before you have an English language. So, let’s assume that really, the fleet isn’t speaking English. They’re speaking, let’s say, Caprican. It wouldn’t make any sense for the fleet to arrive at Earth, only to find that the inhabitants speak Caprican instead of English (or French, or German, or… you get the idea).

There’s one last facet of this that I see. One could argue that all 13 Tribes spoke the same language originally, and that the language - whatever it may be - hasn’t changed at all. That argument, however, kind of slaps one of the major themes of the show right in the face: evolution, namely, the evolution of the Cylons. If the show is based on robots evolving to look and behave exactly like humans, how could the makers of the show even entertain the idea of saying that the original language of the Tribes hasn’t evolved at all?

Any ideas on this? How could the makers explain this in a respectable way? And by “respectable way”, I don’t mean by essentially ignoring the issue, like they did in Stargate SG-1.

1. Actually, Danish and Swedish come from the East Nordic language group, whereas Norwegian comes from the West Nordic group. [More here.] That being said, I still think they’re a good example of how language changes over time. [↩]

I blogged at Language Geek a few days ago about a huge amount of Russian language learning material that is available for free from the Princeton.edu website. I’ve started working through the lessons, and in lesson 2, at the end of the lesson PDF file, there is a box containing some information about Star Wars and the Russian language. I thought it was interesting, so I figured I’d share. For some reason, the Cyrillic text isn’t wanting to be copied out of the PDF (I keep ending up with a string of question marks), so I just took a screenshot of the PDF:

(Click for full size)

Heh.

A friend of mine emailed me today with a few personal updates. Also in the email was this:

Since you study Russian, I was wondering what actually attracts you to it and to the people and the country. I can imagine someone studying a language on a purely theoretical basis, but it makes more sense if you actually admire or like the culture behind the language. Just thought of this while watching the news actually: Putin, Yeltsin, the protests, the riots in Estonia… It’s all very fascinating.

He also mentioned that the answer to that could prove to be an interesting blog post, and I agree, so here we are.

While I’d love to say that I have a solid reason for wanting to learn Russian - admiration of their culture, preference towards a communist state, plans of visiting Russia in the future - I’d be lying if I said I had such a reason. I began studying Russian right around the beginning of 2007, when I received a copy of The New Penguin Russian Course as an early Christmas gift. That doesn’t really help much in regards to why I started studying the language, though, because I specifically asked for that book as a gift. Now that I try to think back and remember of any particular thing that said “learn Russian!” to me, I’m coming with a bank.

I suppose it’s just a variety of things that led to my studying it. For one, I’m just a language geek in general, and enjoy learning languages. I’ve been studying German for about 4 years now, and felt that it was time that I try to add a second foreign language into the mix. I know one influencing factor was my interest in World War 2. Due to the Russians playing such a large role in the war, I was interested in learning more about them in general (because I knew next to nothing about them). I guess this desire to learn more about Russia and its peoples simply bled off into the language department. When I decided to learn Russian, it wasn’t a thought out, planned course of action, but more of a “hey, what the hell, why not?” thing.

While I hadn’t thought of this reason specifically, I’m glad I selected Russian. As I progress in my study of it, I’m finding that I enjoy the language, particularly how it sounds. I’m also glad that it’s a Slavic language, because by learning it, I’ll have given myself a good base to learn other Slavic languages, if I were so inclined. I don’t know how knowing it will help me professionally, or if it will at all, but I can’t help but think that knowing even the basics of a fairly difficult language will help me at some point, somehow.

When I get a decent base down for my Russian, I’ll probably start working on Spanish. For that language, I do have a reason: it’s practical for where I live. Spanish is the most often spoken foreign language in the U.S., and I’d say knowing some of it would help me career wise. If nothing else, it would let me communicate with all of the Mexicans who have appeared in my town during the past 5 years or so.

So, to give a short answer to my friend’s question: no particular reason. I just kind of decided to learn Russian. (Regarding politics though, communism doesn’t look too bad, on paper, anyway. It’s never actually worked like the theory prescribes, though, so we have no historical example to judge.)