Yesterday, like any other day on my hour and a half drive home, I was listening to my usual Italian radio food and wine podcast. This podcast is right up my alley - it talks about a variety of topics topics, from how to taste wine to genetically engineered food to the dangers of aspartame to suggested foods to detox after the holidays. I get a lot out of these listenings and learn useful and useless facts like Stevia is 300 times sweeter than sugar and aunts can carry up to 50 times their body weight. Often, however, listening to a radio show in another language and culture reveals to me another set of assumptions about the world that is different than mine. It never ceases to amaze me that so much that we consider "truths" are actually just reflections of our world view - and how that is reflected in language.
Yesterday the podcast was about Guatemalan rum. The hosts, who were interviewing a woman who did not speak Italian from Guatemala about her production of the sweet liquor, began the podcast with the usual simple Spanish. Hola! Bienvenido a Decanter! After a bit of the general Spanish welcome, one of the hosts (who could at least speak Spanish proficiently enough to translate the guests responses into Italian) commented on the Italian way of attempting to speak Spanish. He said something along the lines of Come on, let's not do like the Italians always do by just adding -s at the end of the words to speak "Spanish". This comment was taken lightly by the other host and the show continued on, but for me it raised a red flag. What? I thought to myself. Add an -s? This statement, presented as a truth, was not a truth for me. In the US, I'm accustomed to hearing people speaking "Spanglish" (which can at times be quite offensive) by adding an -o at the end of words - Why-o don't-o you-o comprehendo? If someone came up to me and said Whyes don'tes youes understandes?, I would be confused why this person was making everything plural, but not the fact that they were speaking made up Spanish would not even cross my mind. How interesting - another instance of culture and language's inseparable connection - a world view reflected in a linguistic element.
Small revelations like this make me realize how much the world's citizens would benefit from truly learning another language. By this I do not mean just studying its grammar and structural application, but how the language is used by its people - its' pragmatic elements, its culture, its living, breathing reality. If languages classes were like this, or if people took learning language like this, or if people just even understood this, maybe we would have less cultural misunderstandings. Less people might harbor hatred for those who are different. Maybe we would have less wars. It's a lofty vision to think that world peace can come from one person learning language, but as we say in English, you've got to start somewhere.
Yesterday the podcast was about Guatemalan rum. The hosts, who were interviewing a woman who did not speak Italian from Guatemala about her production of the sweet liquor, began the podcast with the usual simple Spanish. Hola! Bienvenido a Decanter! After a bit of the general Spanish welcome, one of the hosts (who could at least speak Spanish proficiently enough to translate the guests responses into Italian) commented on the Italian way of attempting to speak Spanish. He said something along the lines of Come on, let's not do like the Italians always do by just adding -s at the end of the words to speak "Spanish". This comment was taken lightly by the other host and the show continued on, but for me it raised a red flag. What? I thought to myself. Add an -s? This statement, presented as a truth, was not a truth for me. In the US, I'm accustomed to hearing people speaking "Spanglish" (which can at times be quite offensive) by adding an -o at the end of words - Why-o don't-o you-o comprehendo? If someone came up to me and said Whyes don'tes youes understandes?, I would be confused why this person was making everything plural, but not the fact that they were speaking made up Spanish would not even cross my mind. How interesting - another instance of culture and language's inseparable connection - a world view reflected in a linguistic element.
Small revelations like this make me realize how much the world's citizens would benefit from truly learning another language. By this I do not mean just studying its grammar and structural application, but how the language is used by its people - its' pragmatic elements, its culture, its living, breathing reality. If languages classes were like this, or if people took learning language like this, or if people just even understood this, maybe we would have less cultural misunderstandings. Less people might harbor hatred for those who are different. Maybe we would have less wars. It's a lofty vision to think that world peace can come from one person learning language, but as we say in English, you've got to start somewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment