{"id":538,"date":"2017-10-17T23:33:19","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T03:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/?p=538"},"modified":"2017-10-17T23:36:21","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T03:36:21","slug":"whats-in-a-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/2017\/10\/17\/whats-in-a-language\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Language?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Random observations from 12 years (so far) of learning, speaking, and coaching in 3 languages and bumping up against others:<\/p>\n

Languages are hard.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They just are.\u00a0 Of course there are harder ones and somewhat less hard ones and insanely difficult ones, all relative to the language(s) you already speak and how similar or different the one you\u2019re trying to learn is to the one(s) you already know.\u00a0 But they\u2019re all hard.\u00a0 Think about everything you can communicate with your native language\u2014thoughts, feelings, opinions, satire, hypothetical situations, deep spiritual truths, complicated strings of events, cause and effect, detailed instructions, technical knowledge in your field of expertise, etc., etc.\u00a0 Now think about getting to the place where you can communicate all of that in another language, naturally, accurately, and effectively.\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Languages take time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You might run into one language-learning program or another that promises to teach you another language in a matter of months.\u00a0 And some of those programs might even succeed in teaching you lots of words and phrases\u2014plenty to get you through a trip where you need to say things like \u201cMy name is Bob\u201d or \u201cWhere\u2019s the bathroom?\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m hungry.\u201d\u00a0 But think again about everything you can say in your native language.\u00a0 To get to real fluency, to that kind of fluency, takes a minimum of 2 years of full time study even in the \u201ceasiest\u201d languages.\"\"<\/p>\n

Languages are beautifully complex.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Again, think of your native language.\u00a0 Think about all the nuances.\u00a0 The way it can make you laugh or bring a tear to your eye.\u00a0 Chances are you\u2019ve taken it all for granted up to this point.\u00a0 But languages are covered in God\u2019s fingerprints.\u00a0 The Creator designed human beings to communicate.\u00a0 That\u2019s a big part of what it means to be made in His image.\u00a0 And because languages are spoken by people who are created in God\u2019s image, I would venture to say that every single one of them is fully adequate (and beyond adequate) for every kind of communication.\u00a0 Even creole languages, if they are spoken as anyone\u2019s native language, will quickly develop into rich, full-blown, complex systems capable of expressing anything that needs to be expressed.\u00a0 God just made their speakers that way.\u00a0 If there\u2019s something that can\u2019t yet be expressed, it\u2019s probably just because it hasn\u2019t been important in that culture up to that point.\"\"<\/p>\n

Alright, this seems like a good place for an example.\u00a0 Say you learn a language spoken by a group of semi-nomadic people for whom the ability to move quickly has always been very important (and even crucial to their survival at times.)\u00a0 They don\u2019t have a word for patience (though the concept can be explained using other words.)\u00a0 They do a lot of hard, physical work to survive.\u00a0 Their language has close to 20 different words for the one action of \u201ccutting\u201d something, depending on how the action is done, the shape of what is being cut, etc.\u00a0 Most of these words are not interchangeable or generic, as I may or may not have learned from experience by the confused looks on faces when I tried it.\u00a0 A lot of other action words in the language are this way too\u2014way more diversified and specific than English action words.\u00a0 So which language is richer in vocabulary?\u00a0 English, or this one?\u00a0 Which is more or less precise? Both.\u00a0 And neither.\u00a0 It all depends on what you\u2019re talking about.\u00a0 And that\u2019s just one example, in the area of vocabulary (there\u2019s way more than that to a language\u2014but that\u2019s a subject for another blog post.)\"\"<\/p>\n

All that to say, languages are incredible.\u00a0 They\u2019ve taught me so much about God\u2019s creativity, and I know I\u2019ve barely scraped the surface.\u00a0 Whatever language (or dialect of a language) you have the privilege of speaking or studying, know that it is beautiful and accurate and complete.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter whether it is spoken by \u201ceducated\u201d people or illiterate ones, jungle-dwellers or metropolitans, there is nothing \u201csimple\u201d or \u201cbackward\u201d about it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a creative masterpiece, and deserves to be treated as such.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Random observations from 12 years (so far) of learning, speaking, and coaching in 3 languages and bumping up against others: Languages are hard. They just are.\u00a0 Of course there are harder ones and somewhat less hard ones and insanely difficult ones, all relative to the language(s) you already speak and how similar or different the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":316,"featured_media":349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[448],"class_list":{"0":"post-538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-ethnos360","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}