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  Babel

  Babel

  Around the world in twenty languages

  Gaston Dorren

  Copyright © 2018 by Gaston Dorren

  Cover design by Keenan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Profile Books

  Published simultaneously in Canada Printed in Canada

  First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: December 2018

  ISBN 978-0-8021-2879-9

  eISBN 978-0-8021-4672-4

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

  Atlantic Monthly Press

  an imprint of Grove Atlantic

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  groveatlantic.com

  18 19 20 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Language is such an intimate possession, something that one possesses in the same measure that one is possessed by it. Language is bound up with the foundations of one’s being, with memories and emotions, with the subtle structures of the worlds in which one lives.

  ________________________

  Alok Rai, Hindi Nationalism

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Twenty languages: half the world

  20 Vietnamese | 85 million

  Linguistic mountaineering

  19 Korean | 85 million

  Sound and sensibility

  18 Tamil | 90 million

  A matter of life and death

  17 Turkish | 90 million

  Irreparably improved

  16 Javanese | 95 million

  Talking up, talking down

  15 Persian | 110 million

  Empire builders and construction workers

  14 Punjabi | 125 million

  The tone is the message

  13 Japanese | 130 million

  Linguistic gender apartheid

  12 Swahili | 135 million

  Africa’s nonchalant multilingualism

  11 German | 200 million

  An eccentric in Central Europe

  10 French | 250 million

  Death to la différence

  9 Malay | 275 million

  The one that won

  8 Russian | 275 million

  On being Indo-European

  7 Portuguese | 275 million

  Punching above its weight

  6 Bengali | 275 million

  World leaders in abugidas

  5 Arabic | 375 million

  A Concise Dictionary of Our Arabic

  4 Hindi-Urdu | 550 million

  Always something breaking us in two

  3 Spanish | 575 million

  ¿Ser or estar? That’s the question

  2 Mandarin | 1.3 billion

  The mythical Chinese script

  2b Japanese revisited

  A writing system lacking in system

  1 English | 1.5 billion

  A special lingua franca?

  Sources and further reading

  Acknowledgements

  Photo credits

  Index

  Back Cover

  Babel

  Introduction

  Twenty languages: half the world

  COUNTING THE WORLD’S LANGUAGES is as difficult as counting colours. There are scores of standardised languages, such as English, French, Russian and Thai; making a tally of them is as easy as counting the colours in a Mondrian painting. But most languages have never been standardised. In many areas, there is only a multitude of local varieties, and deciding where one language ends and the next one begins is as hard as distinguishing individual colours in a Turner painting. So there can be no definitive total. That said, 6,000 is a common estimate for the number of languages spoken and signed in today’s world – an average of one for every 1.25 million people. Such amazing diversity – what a Babel we live in!

  Or do we? Here’s another statistic: with proficiency in just four languages – English, Mandarin, Spanish and Hindi-Urdu – you could smoothly navigate most of the world, without any need for an interpreter. Hindi-Urdu and Mandarin are widely understood in the two most populous countries on earth, Spanish will serve you well in much of the Americas and English is the nearest thing we have to a global linguistic currency. So much for Babel, one might think.

  The world’s biggest languages, which are the subject of this book, are causing the decline of hundreds, even thousands of smaller ones. This is a tragedy, as smaller languages fall out of use across every continent, wiping out valuable knowledge codified in words, stories and names – Alok Rai’s ‘subtle structures of the worlds in which one lives’. At the same time, the dominant languages in themselves represent more linguistic, cultural and historical variety than is commonly realised. The contrast makes Babel a bittersweet book: the twenty tongues portrayed herein are delicious and dangerous in equal measure.

  Between them, these languages are the mother tongues of no less than half the population of the world. Take second-language speakers into account, and the numbers are much larger still. Again, the figures are debatable, but it’s safe to claim that at least 75 per cent of people on this planet are able to communicate in one of the Babel Twenty. A less pertinent but more exact figure would be this: over 90 per cent of humankind live in countries where one or more of the twenty are routinely used by central government.

  How have these big languages risen to their current station? Individual stories differ, but most have this in common: they are lingua francas – languages that bridge the gap between people with different mother tongues.

  Two of Babel’s lingua francas – Swahili and Malay – first thrived as trade languages. Later on, several governments embraced them as languages of administration, but even today they’re spoken more as second languages – useful gap-bridgers – than as mother tongues. But the primary creator and carrier of lingua francas has always been imperialism – Persian, Portuguese and English all outgrew their cradles in this way. Other Asian languages went through similar episodes: Arabic was spread by the caliphate, Mandarin by successive Chinese dynasties, Turkish by the Ottomans and Vietnamese by the kings and armies of the Việt people. Like Portuguese and English, other European languages also piggybacked on colonial empires. Spanish and French were spread by sea, and Russian overland. Nor has history changed its ways – or so the people of South India feel, as they vehemently resist the advancement of Hindi as the all-Indian language.

  I have mentioned thirteen languages so far. The remaining seven are German, Japanese, Javanese, Korean and three languages of South Asia: Bengali, Punjabi and Tamil. To categorise these as lingua francas would be a stretch. What they have in common is that they happen to occupy compact but densely populated regions.

  If the Babel Twenty have triumphed in different ways, that’s only the beginning of their diversity. Unsurprisingly, all languages are different in the words they offer, t
he grammar they employ and the sounds they travel on. Their writing systems are not just alluringly varied in appearance, but also profoundly dissimilar in their functioning. People have different collective feelings about their languages: we find veneration, pride, protectiveness and sometimes indifference, but also, especially among second-language speakers, resignation and even loathing. Languages are put to different uses: most, but not all, are popular with governments and businesses; some have long and rich literary traditions, others less so; some will be maintained by migrants for several generations, while others are soon given up. All languages display internal diversity, but the patterns differ: usually, there are regional varieties; sometimes, there’s one for speech, another for writing; or one for formal conversations, the other for informal chats; or different varieties for speaking to one’s social superiors, inferiors or peers, et cetera. In other words, apart from being a unique system of communication, each of the Babel Twenty also has its own language history and its own linguistic culture. They are worlds unto themselves.

  In the following twenty chapters (plus one bonus semi-chapter) I will peer into one of these worlds, starting with the smallest of the bunch and working towards the biggest, the world’s ‘linguistic superpower’. But while each story will focus on a language, it will also focus on an issue, on one particular feature of that particular language. For instance, what does it actually mean for Russian to be ‘related’ to English? How do non-alphabetic scripts, such as those of India and China, do the same job as our twenty-six letters? If Belgium and Canada have trouble keeping the linguistic peace, how do multilingual countries such as Indonesia manage? How did tiny but colonial Portugal spawn a major world language – and why didn’t the Netherlands? Why do Japanese women talk differently from men? And how did this book gain the author two Vietnamese nieces?

  About Babel – some (im)practicalities

  Each chapter begins with a short profile of the language under discussion: its various names, its linguistic pedigree, the numbers of speakers, some basics about grammar, sounds and the writing system as well as information about loanwords (which are the main sources of borrowing and which words English has adopted from this language?). The numbers, of course, are questionable, as language statistics are highly erratic; I’ve consulted many sources, ignored the implausible outliers, averaged the others and rounded the outcome to the nearest catchy figure.

  It’s hard to represent the unfamiliar sounds of foreign languages without making use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, which can be opaque for non-specialists. I’ve tackled the problem in two ways. In most cases, I’ve tried to approximate the pronunciation of the foreign words by referring to either English spelling conventions (e.g. by using /ee/, as in bee) or some ‘continental’ spelling (where the same sound would be represented as /i/ or even, in passages where vowel length matters, /ī/). In a few cases, where this wouldn’t work, I’ve included references to my website (languagewriter.com), where under the menu item ‘BABEL’, there’s a page with sound files.

  When citing words, phrases or sentences as examples, I’ve tried to be typographically consistent in the following way:

  BABELI Small caps: words in foreign languages. But for legibility, whole sentences are quoted in italics.

  Babel Italics: English words, but also sentences in other languages. Italics for emphasis are used too.

  /baybl/ Slashes: phonetic approximations.

  ‘Babel’ Inverted commas: English translations of words.

  (Babel) When English translations are placed in parentheses, no inverted commas have been added.

  Precisely half of the Babel languages are written in a script other than our Roman alphabet. Words in Russian, Mandarin and so on have been transliterated or transcribed. More than one system is in circulation for each of several languages, so if you feel that Korean, Japanese or Arabic words in Babel look somewhat different from what you were taught, this may be the explanation.

  I’ve taken great pains over the many foreign words cited in this book, but it is nonetheless likely to contain spelling errors, especially in the non-European languages. I would be grateful for any corrections that readers might send me (through the contact page on my website – languagewriter.com); they will inform later editions and translations. Meanwhile, let’s appreciate such errors for what they are: evidence that we live in Babel still.

  Gaston Dorren, 2018

  20

  Vietnamese

  TIẾNG VIỆT

  85 million speakers

  Around 75 million native Vietnamese speakers live in Vietnam, where it is the only official language; half a million in Cambodia. Some 2 million Vietnamese live in the US and substantial numbers in France, Australia, Canada, Germany, the Czech Republic and the UK. There are 5 to 10 million second-language speakers, mostly ethnic minorities, in Vietnam.

  Vietnamese

  SELF-DESIGNATION TIẾNG VIỆT, sometimes TIẾNG VIỆT NAM or VIỆT NGỮ

  FAMILY Vietnamese is far and away the most widely spoken member of the Austroasiatic family, which also includes Khmer, the national language of Cambodia. More than 100 smaller Austroasiatic languages are spoken by minorities throughout Southeast Asia and eastern India.

  SCRIPT Roman alphabet, with a remarkable number of diacritics (accents). Until the early twentieth century, a character script based on Chinese was in use.

  GRAMMAR See main text.

  SOUNDS See main text.

  LOANWORDS In prehistory, agricultural terminology was adopted from the neighbouring Tai languages. A huge number of words from Chinese languages were borrowed over a period of some two thousand years, up until the mid-twentieth century; according to estimates, 30 to 60 per cent of Vietnamese vocabulary is of Chinese origin. During French colonial rule, scores of French words were adopted and adapted to the Vietnamese sound system and spelling. Today, English words trickle in. For examples, see main text.

  EXPORTS English mainly uses Vietnamese words to refer to elements of Vietnamese culture. The best known may be pho (PHỞ), a popular broth-based dish. During the Vietnam war, some Vietnamese words temporarily trickled into American military jargon, such as di di (ĐI ĐI) for ‘go away’, Quan Canh (QUN CẢNH) for ‘Military Police’ and so mot (SỐ MÔT) for ‘the best’, literally ‘the number one’.

  ACCENT OBSTACLES Vietnamese has strong regional variety in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary, though not in grammar. For the language student, this is a major obstacle: it’s easy to tell the major accents apart, but more difficult to understand them, especially the ones spoken in the south. Indeed, even northern native speakers have trouble dealing with some of the less familiar southern dialects. The recommended standard pronunciation is a mixed bag of some southern and rather more northern characteristics.

  20: Vietnamese

  Linguistic mountaineering

  I’M HALFWAY THROUGH my three-week stay in Hanoi when I hear myself say: ‘Bác học tiếng Việt một năm và ruỗi – no, wait: rưỡi – rồi nhưng chưa có thể nói không được!’

  The words come out haltingly, but I see Loan, my teacher, nod, so I may indeed be saying what I’m trying to say: that I’ve been studying Vietnamese for a year and a half now and I still can’t speak it. Have I really managed to get that across? If so, I’ve just produced my longest – and most paradoxical – Vietnamese utterance so far.

  Loan (pronounced ‘lwahn’) is silent for a second or two. Then she shakes her head. ‘Let’s correct that.’

  I ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach and try to make my answer sound light-hearted: ‘Why? You feel I’m wrong in saying that I can’t speak the language?’

  ‘The sentence has several errors,’ and she starts listing them. ‘Now say it again.’

  ‘Bác học tiếng Việt một năm rưỡi rồi nhưng chưa thể nói được.’

  I like studying with Loan. Not only does she speak good English (though that may be a double-edged sword), but she’s al
so lively, fun and full of enthusiasm for language study, both her students’ and her own. We’ve been to a museum, a bookshop and an eatery together, and she’s even introduced me to a few of her friends. But while she’s a dedicated teacher, there’s no denying that she can be a little stern. Rather than praise what progress I may make, she firmly believes in the motivational force of her disappointment, saying things like, ‘Why don’t you know that word, bác (uncle)? We read it only yesterday!’

  ‘Undoubtedly, but I can’t possibly memorise every single word we come across, cháu (niece), or even half of them! Learning Vietnamese vocab is khó khăn – it’s difficult!’

  ‘You should, though. You’re such a good student!’

  I sit up.

  ‘But it’s true that your conversational skills haven’t improved much.’

  I slouch.

  ‘Yet they have somewhat. And your pronunciation certainly has.’

  But not right now, it hasn’t, because the rare compliment leaves me speechless. That’s how we roll, my twenty-year-young Vietnamese teacher and I.

  But why am I here in the first place, 6,000 miles away from my friends and family, struggling with a language that, except for the odd expat, only the oddest foreigner ever ventures into? What made me do it? The answer is: this book did.

  The Temple of the Jade Mountain in central Hanoi. For centuries, most writing was done in Classical Chinese. An adapted version of its script was also used for Vietnamese.

  As I mentioned in the introduction, one would need to learn twenty languages to be able to speak to half the world population in their mother tongues. Some people have actually pulled that off. I once shook hands with the American polyglot Alexander Argüelles, who speaks sixteen or seventeen of the Babel languages and many more that aren’t in the top twenty. Personally, I’ve studied seven of the twenty at some point in my life (English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian and Turkish), resulting in levels of familiarity ranging from fluency to (more often) mere acquaintance. The idea of having a go at the full set of twenty did briefly tickle me. But I soon realised that I would never even cover the basics of them all within a time frame that my publisher, my bank account or, indeed, my life expectancy would allow. So I decided to try just one – but a challenging one.