many Tims, favorite word, tower of Babel

[asakiyume]

many Tims
The other day I saw the two neighbor girls onto the bus as both parents had to leave the house very early. I went over at 7:15, and they were still in their bedroom playing an imaginary game together. They are nine and eleven years old (or maybe eight and eleven; not sure), and it was the most charming thing to hear them talking and dramatizing together so happily.

"There's many Tims; what do you expect?!" --that was the one line I wrote down from their game.

And they were so good about getting themselves organized and out the door on time. Their parents should be proud.

favorite word
The ninja girl tells me that one thing her students in Japan like to ask her is what her favorite Japanese word is. By this they don't actually mean just any old random-ass word; they're really meaning more like favorite concept, but they ask in terms of favorite word. She said she usually turns the question back to them and asks them what their favorites are, and it's interesting to hear what they say: they are concepts that are very approved of, admired, promoted, etc., like 一所懸命 (isshokenmei: all one's might/effort) or 思いやり (omoiyari: considerateness, attentiveness, thoughtfulness). You couldn't ask the question "what's your favorite word?" in English to get answers like this; you'd have to make it "What's your favorite virtue?" or something.

Tower of Babel
And that got me thinking how we can understand the story of the tower of Babel as a blessing that God gave people rather than a punishment. When everyone was working together on the tower of Babel--and incidentally, all speaking the same language--they were single minded. One language, one idea. But when the tower was broken and they all found themselves speaking different languages, suddenly they were multi-minded. Many languages, many ideas. Many ways of expressing how it is to be human. And, when we learn each other's languages in a world of many languages, we're expending effort to understand each other--not just "see through another's eyes" but "borrow another's tongue." If we all spoke the same language, we'd lack that diversity and that opportunity to make an effort to understand one another.

Comments

[sartorias]

That's so interesting! (Ditto the root kanji/hanzi)

[asakiyume]

It's always interesting to see the gradient of meaning between Japanese use of the characters and the Chinese use!

[ranunculus]

I remember learning some words in Tarascan as a child and having difficulty translating them on the playground. Another child asked: "but what does it mean" and I replied with something like: "well if you combine these two words and meanings you get close." The other child couldn't understand why I couldn't give a one word answer.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, I think that's common with people who haven't thought much about languages--they sort of think it's like just changing fonts. This is how the word looks in Helvetica, but how does it look in Papyrus? But languages are sooooo not like that.

That's cool that you learned some Tarascan! What prompted you to learn?

[ranunculus]

My parents were working in Central Mexico and I went with them. It was about 1/4 of the year every year from age 9 to 14. I have zero aptitude for languages or I would speak fluent Spanish and Tarascan. As it is I can order food in Spanish and say the word for tortilla in Tarascan. I tried hard but that isn't my skill. However I do remember the feeling of not being able to translate a concept.
Here are links to two posts I made back in 2012 about the time I spent in Mexico and what my parents were doing down there. https://ranunculus.dreamwidth.org/411228.html
https://ranunculus.dreamwidth.org/418605.html

[asakiyume]

Oooh, thank you for the links! I'll go read.

[amaebi]

Thank you!

[amaebi]

I'm also curious how you happened to learn some Tarascan-- both what motivated you and by what mode you learned.

[amaebi]

It's so comforting to me to hear about your neighbors' improv story making games.

About Babel: I couldn't agree more if I had a dump truck. The number of times I've heard monolingual anglophone USians prove that this or that is The State of Nature in terms of US wording or grammar.

And I periodically remember how, when I was six, I got worried about how poems could be translated-- surely, I thought, a word for the same entity/action/concept wouldn't rhyme across all languages? (Obviously I had strong ideas of What Poems Were, too.)

[asakiyume]

Awww, but how perceptive you were to realize that a word likely *wouldn't* rhyme in another language! And I totally understand child-you's preoccupation. Something doesn't need to rhyme to be a poem, but in a poem that rhymes, the rhyme is very important, and what to do about it **is** a concern.

[amaebi]

I think I was a lot more monolingual than I was perceptive. At least I was other-language *aware*: I knew that my father only began to learn English when he started school, and I'm afraid I pestered him for Slovenian he could remember almost none of.

ETA: I wonder, though, why my wrong-grounds question doesn't apparently typically occur to my fellow-monolinguals.

ETA2: Thinking about my childhood and languages I now realize for the first time how much I hungered to learn at least one more language I was as quite young person in Southern Illinois. Huh.

[asakiyume]

Wow, you are just second generation! Very cool.

Re: your ETAs, people are just very, very different, right? There is a plenitude of things that preoccupy people or make people curious or that people enjoy, and other vast swathes they're not thinking about.

[amaebi]

Depends on how you count generations, yes: my father was born in the US, but his father was born in Slovenia.

True dat about different interests: I am, for example, notoriously car-blind: I can tell different cars' colors, but seldom keep track of models or even their display logos.

[wayfaringwordhack]

I resonate with your thinking about the tower of Babel and also see blessings and provision where many people see punishment or small-mindedness. The step it takes to go from seeing something as a Bane to a Blessing is not always easy, but it is a worthwhile one to take, says she, speaking from a lifetime of experience. ;)

[asakiyume]

Oh believe me, it's currently taking me a lifetime too. But every time something makes that switch, I'm grateful.

[sovay]

You couldn't ask the question "what's your favorite word?" in English to get answers like this; you'd have to make it "What's your favorite virtue?" or something.

I wonder what you would get if you asked people (in English) what their favorite concept is.

[asakiyume]

Blank stares?

I think if you asked "What's your favorite virtue?" you might get answers more in line with the answers the kids who ask this question are after, but "What's your favorite virtue?" sounds so prissy in a way that "What's your favorite word?" doesn't.

[mallorys_camera]

Yes, yes, yes! That's what I like best about languages! That they don't run along precisely parallel tracks (i.e. the same concept but different phonetics.) That you can, in fact, wrap your head around thoughts you would otherwise find impossible to conceptualize in your native tongue.

[asakiyume]

(I do know about those errant parentheses!)

I don't know that I believe that there things that can only be thought in certain languages--my instinct is that people can find ways to express their feelings regardless of their language (obviously I can't know for sure...)--but I do definitely think that some notions or concepts are more elegantly or clearly expressed in certain languages, and that certain cultures explore those things more than other ones do--give the ideas more space and breathing room.

[mallorys_camera]

Naming things succinctly, though, is one of magic's tools, isn't it?

And magic is all about manifesting things that weren't there an instant before.

Take the Portugese word "saudade" (famous from all those bossa nova tunes!) It means more than just nostalgia. It means nostalgia with a certain fatalistic edge because however much you may long for that one lost thing's return, it will never return, so your longing is bittersweet, a constant feeling of absence, a yearning, a secret hope...

Sure, you can say that in English!

But that one word saudade is so much more eloquent. 😀

[asakiyume]

TOTALLY agree with you on this. And when I was writing my previous reply, I was thinking about saudade too :D

[mallorys_camera]

Great minds that think alike always think of saudade! 😀

[asakiyume]

The international saudade awareness committee needs us to run their social media campaign ;-)

[amaebi]

And to echo a wise but somewhat unpleasant econometrics prof of mine, sometimes changing notion makes a big difference-- allows one to reframe and move onward in new ways.

So even in maths.

The Tower of Babel

[smokingboot]

I like this very much and agree with it.

In more caustic moments I have thought that the difference is not failing to understand each other, but understanding each other all too well.

But on better days, it is easy to see that multi-mindedness is a strength,not a weakness. We are not meant to be a hive mind.

Re: The Tower of Babel

[asakiyume]

Sometimes I like daydreaming about hive minds! But yeah; it's not how we're made.

[amaebi]

Online friendly acquaintance the writer Susan Campbell related a conversation between her twin grandchildren. One had grounds for suspicion that the other had used her toothbrush, she taxed him, and he replied, "So? We shared a womb."

[asakiyume]

After that intimacy, any reservations about sharing do seem overly fussy!