Language: December 2008 Archives

"Mahmoud is een wonder!" Anne teased him at the moment when comprehension dawned: the lightbulb went off and Mahmoud got it: heel goed! I can tell you that I need a few more miracles if I am going to pass de examen in Januari.

I agree with Amin, who said "remembering" when we were discussing our various challenges with learning Nederlands last week:

"Heb ben jullie problemen?"
"Amin hebt een probleem speciale!"
"He's so young for Alzheimer's!"
Maar Amin is niet alleen.
Me too. :-/

Marinela answers questions on my behalf when I am too confused! (Even though a few weeks ago she was, like, uh, "How many different ways are there to say the time?!") Bouchra lets me look at her huiswerk. Excellent examples of teamwork! Topi is my role model: she thinks for awhile to see if she can figure out what Anne is asking, then she asks, "Wablieft?" Come again? Yea, and if you repeat what you said about zeven times maybe I will get it. Misschein. (sigh)

The propaganda about America and the European Parliament that I distributed for fun is obviously not enough. Papa Obama or not: ik weet het niet = nul! And I'm referring only to the vocabulary - the grammar is totally guesswork as anyone with a smattering of Nederlands is painfully aware. :-/

Marsi - even though she abandoned us to jump to level 1.4 (!) - has dropped in twice: once with candy from Sint Niklaas and just before the break (eergisteren) with cookies she says she baked herself. Uh huh. (Mahmoud had to be convinced to share them with the rest of us . . . ) Meanwhile, Tolu tells me I look like a teenager (?!) and Patricia says, "Steph is a teenager." The nerve! :-)

My accent is also awful. Tim had to ask me, "Wat?!" after nearly everything I tried to say in Nederlands. "You think I can jump that high?" I asked him. "I hope so," he replied, fervently. Jammer! I did give Susan a double take when I pronounced "Daag" properly - a feat I am not sure how I accomplished and probably cannot repeat. Marsi will never let me live down that I said smakelijk is the opposite of moeilijk. (The right answer is gemakkelijk.) [You understand why she is amused: easy, not tasty, is the opposite of difficult.]

The three days I was absent hurt. Gewledig! Big time problem. Although I did realize our infamous soap opera was poking fun at Amerikanen, even before Anne reminded everyone that I'm American. ;-) Neemt u mij niet kwalijk! We're not all bad! Then the soap turns and makes fun of itself, touching on very politically incorrect topics with the kind of humor that would not find its way into most language classes in the United States. The videoprogramma generates a special voor buitenlanders (that's us in this level one course: strangers from another land) to address kultuurimperialisme and profile the karacter op de Belg.

positief karacteriesteken op de Belg:

• diplomatic talent
• anti-authoritarianism
• respect for privacy

with accompanying negatief karacteriesteken op de Belg:

• indirect communication (niet zo open)
• separated (individualistic rather than communal)

All of this talk of stereotypen led our conversation back to kultuurshok. I realize part of my trouble with the trams and trains is that I am used to driving - which requires paying attention. When someone else is 'driving,' my mind goes elsewhere - with a book, writing, or daydreaming - then whooooooooooooooosh those stops just fly right on by! I'm amused by the supremely ordered traffic lights - specifically designated signals for automobiles, bicycles, and pedestrians - which nearly everyone obeys! There is no "language of klaxons" as Mahmoud labeled the incessant honking he, Amin, and Patricia miss from Egypt, Iraq, and the Dominican Republic. The food, we agree, is good and (!) - nearly everyone has a dish or several that they miss from home. Except for Bouchra. No kultuurshok. Grrl got it all together.

:-)

There is "the problem no one talks about," one Member of the European Parliament (MEP) explained, referring to the lack of relationship between MEPs and the interpreters. This gap poses a barrier for developing the kind of rapport that makes simultaneous interpretation most effective.

There is also the reason for using simultaneous interpretation which is "so obvious it doesn't need to be said," according to another MEP. Everyone, he elaborated, "argues better in their mother tongue." I remain puzzled, however, at (what seems to be) an unquestioning acceptance of trends minimizing the need for interpretation. If - as so far everyone I have spoken with agrees - people do argue better in their mother tongue, why is there not an argument on behalf of building the capacity of interpretation services in order to facilitate people's best intellectual engagement?

Of course many MEPs are fluent enough in another language to communicate well, certainly well enough to express disagreement and offer their own ideas. No doubt some MEPs can also negotiate fine points and discern subtleties of inference leading to the identification of commonality and thus the generation of consensus. But, alongside the polyglots are equally smart monolinguals and those with various degrees of language fluencies who are forced to go along with using a second or third language because (as the story goes) there are not enough interpreters to go around. (And, the rest of the story rationalizes, more interpreting would cost too much. Not to mention, dang it all, interpretation takes so much time!)

The negative framing of simultaneous interpretation is perpetuated in another lauded commentary on the European Parliament (EP). Six Battles that Shaped Europe's Parliament, by former EP President Julian Priestley, describes the requirement of twenty-three working languages as

an objective constraint that "acts as a deadweight imposing on [the European Parliament's] organization, timetable and finances a number of inescapable consequences" (emphasis added, 2008, p. 80).

Deadweight. The cultural and linguistic inheritance of Council Regulation No. 1 of 1958 is framed not with joy, gratitude, nor celebration; rather the requirement of linguistic diversity is presented as a heavy and cumbersome burden - an obligation, a negative, constraining limit.

Imposing. Priestley contextualizes his comments of Regulation No. 1 as the matter of working languages being an area over which the EP has "little or no discretion" (p. 2). The October 2008 issue of "The EP Staff Magazine" grants a bit more prestige to this bedrock regulation, although in a backhanded way:

Looking back, it is not insignificant that the regulation laying down the official languages was the EU's first - "Regulation no. 1 of 1958 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community" (OJ L 17, 6.10.1958, p. 385). ~ "Speaking each others languages." Newshound, No. 28, p. 14.

Inescapable. "Transitional arrangements," Priestley explains, "have had to be agreed for certain less-used languages out of sheer necessity (there are simply not enough Maltese or Irish linguists to cover all the different activities" (p. 2-3). There are not now enough trained professional interpreters, however this does not need to remain the case - capacity can be built through the deliberate construction of a language-training infrastructure.

Consequences. The rationalization of professional scarcity is a hidden undercurrent of the vast public promotion of "multilingualism" in the European Union. The Newshound team defines multilingualism to mean "the ability to use two or more languages" (p. 14). By circumscribing multilingualism to refer only to the knowledge of more than one language, a discourse trajectory is promoted which silences the other crucial component of maintaining linguistic diversity: the skills of using simultaneous interpretation to communicate within difference. Don't get me wrong: I am all for language learning! However, an exclusive emphasis on such a narrow form of multilingualism is more a move toward sameness than it is a proactive strategy for retaining linguistic distinction.

In this view, language itself is perceived as a problem: an inert mass imposing inescapable consequences. The discourse engaging the problematic of language poses a restricted definition of "multilingualism" as the solution. The power of the discourse is such that this solution is generally understood as the singular answer. Because of the way the problem has been posed, no other answer is conceivable - at least, not as long as one stays within the boundaries of the discourse. Because of the power of the discourse, the answer conveys a common sense assumption of the nature of the language problem - conversely, then, the answer shapes the question, limiting possibility. This is, I propose, not insignificant.

Thanksgiving in the Verenigde Staten is a holiday and a protest. The mood at the dinner hosted by the American Club was celebratory, although rumblings went round during an aggressive invocation I admit I could have done without. I was also a bit disappointed that no mention was made of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai - they suffer (in part) for their friendship with us, no? Granted, I was affected because of personal connections and an upcoming trip. Otherwise, with the exception of the one-dimensional pumpkin pie (!), the company was outstanding and the meal delicious (especially the mushroom and green bean side dish and the perfectly-roasted turkey).

Conversations were typical I guess? Politics. Who's traveling home for the holidays, who has family traveling here. Why. Why not. Food. Wine. Needing to buy a t-shirt. I got really jazzed when John started to talk about his work as an engineer, especially when he said:

THAT, my friends, is a metaphor for the language-based concept of indexicality!

John makes mongo agricultural equipment. The design gets done somewhere in the US, the product testing gets done somewhere else (I forget), and then John gets to do the actual production. Just like machine shops where I have occasionally interpreted, a significant engineering challenge is to design and build the machine that makes the tool which can generate the exact part which is needed for the machine to be able to do what it is designed to do. That isn't all we talked about, we also broached working in seven dimensions (and here I thought I was doing good by adding a fourth!), and John and Kathy went totally off on the Bernouli Principle, which, btw, doesn't apply in supersonic space.

A few days prior to Thanksgiving, I had begun collecting links and thinking about what I might write. The draft I started was titled, mistakes are for learning. The list I compiled of situations we still need to heal included a story on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's opposition to American Indian Rights, the illegal occupation of Hawai'i by the U.S. since 1898, books accomplishing more than bombs in Pakistan, the need to work for peace in the Middle East, and the problem so many people still have with lesbian and gay rights.

The whole eclectic collection went out of my head instantly when a pal posted a twitter feed on Facebook as the terrorist attacks in Mumbai commenced in the wee hours of the morning. While relieved that my friends and their friends and families are all ok, I continue to consider that the more people I know the smaller the world becomes. I ache for the people who've lost loved ones, and for the families of the terrorists - not all of whom can be happy at what their children have done. Amitav Ghosh has written a thoughtful, clearheaded critique of the rush to compare these attacks to 9/11, reminding us that "9/11" refers

also to its aftermath, in particular to an utterly misconceived military and judicial response, one that has had disastrous consequences around the world.

Consequences. This brings me back around to that concept, indexicality. And the metaphor of a machine shop.

An index is the part of a word or phrase that points to something. Indexing is a referential act, a component of how we make meaning together, the core of what is understood when we achieve understanding. The notion of an index implies time, is perhaps even predicated upon time - at least if we understand time in a granular fashion, as a kind of motion that builds incrementally upon itself, accruing into sediments of meaningfulness. (See, if you can, this BBC documentary, Do You Know What Time It Is? by Professor Brian Cox)

So here's the deal, as I see it. Our language really matters. What we say has substance. Our words effect the world. We elected Obama: he and his team are leading with language. Yes, they are putting together a centrist adminstration, but think "center" as in core. I've rarely been prouder to be American than in being part of Obama's election, but we've got to get past the self-absorbed ways in which we sometimes celebrate being American as if the identity came to us pure. It did not. What is special and unique about America is that despite the terrible tragedies of our history, we absorb the lessons and move on. Now, 'moving on' means dealing well with the two extremes of radical diversity and horrific disenfranchisement. The former we must preserve and the latter requires redress.

The core must be solid; the boundaries must be clear. We - every single one of us who believes that there is a chance to finally turn the tide, as Ghosh says, in a long, long battle - we must use the words that signal a future that embraces everyone, instead of words "inviting" those who disagree to step outside the room. It is up to us to listen to the words and phrases of Obama and his team and make them, similar to the language of mathematics, "mean what they say, and say what they mean" (p. 14).