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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about…
The book Languages are Good for Us by Sophie Hardach,
narrated by Laurence Bouvard
A link to the Spotify audiobook is in the description.
Sophie Hardach is a German novelist who writes in English, which, of course, made me want to listen to this book! If you don’t know, I’ve been experimenting with writing in Italian since May last year. She is married to an English man and is bringing up a child as bilingual.
So, the author spends quite some time talking about prosody at the beginning of the book. Prosody is the study of a language’s rhythm and melody. This is, of course, the first thing a child hears in the womb and helps it to determine the language of its mother. It made me smile to learn that studies have been done to see if babies make sounds to these particular rhythms and it was found that when a baby cries it does so in accordance with them. Wow!
Another thing that stood out to me, related to language learning. When speaking a foreign language, the weirder you sound to yourself, the more natural you will sound in your target language. Basically, you need to exaggerate all the sounds of the language in a way that almost feels uncomfortable to you in order to get it right. And I agree. The more you force yourself out of your own accent and into that of the other language, the better it is. Is that uncomfortable? Well, yes, in the way that you almost feel like you’re making fun of the language by doing it. But exaggerate away, ‘cos that’s how the language truly sounds. However, just a word of advice. If you’re doing that in English, don’t copy the accent of the royals. That really isn’t how most of us sound.
The book continues with tracing the roots of writing from Cuneiform on tablets. The author muses on the fact that these tablets have survived for a long time and suggests that what we write now, on flimsy paper, will disappear much more quickly. Yes, I agree, but writing is even more at risk of disappearing, I’d argue. Much of it exists in digital form alone and we all know how fast technology changes. It won’t be possible to keep our ‘ancient writings’ alive in their original form, because all technology eventually dies a very unceremonial death. So, will everything from these days be lost? It could very easily happen and our culture and language may be a black hole for those in the future, assuming, of course, that we survive as a species. How to decipher these ancient tablet symbols was also discussed. Did you know that symbols generally point in the way that the text is read? This script that I’m reading now does that. I’d never thought of that before, but now that I know, I can’t help but see it.
There’s a lot of detail here and some interesting little snippets of ancient writings, from regular people as well as rulers. Multilingualism was important for status and for general living. That’s not so much true in the world these days, I don’t think, what with automatic translation by our algorithmic artificial intelligence buddies, however bad the results might be. Especially for those whose own language is English.
Rather than go into the ‘science’ of how languages have evolved, the author takes you on multiple journeys of how words travelled from one culture to another, changing a little here and there. There are many interesting snippets in these journeys. Foods, animal names and many other words are covered.
The development of the English language is also discussed, from a period when many people in this fair land spoke multiple languages, through necessity to be understood - a time when the native language, or languages of these islands were not spread worldwide, which is a far cry from where we are today. Many English speakers don’t bother to learn languages. Why would they? Everyone speaks English! Well, they don’t. Not really.
The role of interpreters in multiple cultures is discussed and there’s a discussion on how pidgin and creole languages are created. We get to know how the brothers Grimm went about collecting their faerie tales, about saving the Inari Sámi language in Finland and the richness of Inuit or Yupik languages for describing things that we, in most of the rest of the world, would have no use for.
Then, there’s a whole section on multilingual creativity, where, of course, my ears really perked up. The author doubts that being multilingual makes you more creative, but that it can make you artistically and emotionally more fulfilled. I had to think about this for a while and I think I agree. I mean, one of the reasons I started trying to write in Italian was because of the whole AI generated writing explosion and a feeling of ‘what is the point’. Writing in Italian gave me back the desire to actually write, so in a way it made me more creative and that has led to me being more artistically and emotionally fulfilled. I’m not sure this is exactly what the author meant, but it’s what it meant to me.
There’s also a secton on the realities of being in a multilingual family and trying to ensure a child has the opportunity to speak both the languages of their parents. There were a few things in there that I’d never considered. It’s not all plain sailing.
So, many things. This is a book of stories and all of them are interesting and probably things most people wouldn’t have heard before. It brings to life the idea of languages and words travelling around the globe in a way that’s very easy to digest. There are so many different topics discussed that you are unlikely to get bored, but you get just enough detail to feel satisfied. Don’t forget, there’s a link to the book on Spotify in the description.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, adiós, hwyl and bye for now.