The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages

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Danes love punning and wordplay (ordspil), and there are many opportunities for it in Danish. I haven’t delved into Danish etymology, and have just tried to be sensitive to semantic similarity, to find in this first category some words of possibly related meaning: blad (leaf, magazine), kort (map, card), fuld (full, drunk), have (garden, oceans), regning (arithmetic, bill). If pronunciation always closely follows spelling, this category is empty for Bisayan. Different sound, Same sign, Same meaning

These differences cannot be detected in print, and are A2 on the Loom. Again, such differences can signify something about the speaker, which may in turn modify the meaning of the message itself. It is divided into four parts. Part I is a “natural history” of language. Part II covers the “hybrid heritage” of English as a language which straddles the Germanic and Romance branches of the Indo-European language tree. Part III covers language problems and planning movements. Part IV is a “language museum” of comparative vocabulary tables. Subah (सुबह, pronounced Su (same as Sue) — Buh (same as huh)) and Savera (सवेरा, pronounced Savērā — Sa — veraa) both mean morningLike other languages in the modern Philippines, Bisayan is now written in the Latin alphabet, which supplanted an earlier pre-colonial indigenous alphabet. There is no standardised orthography for Bisayan, but my source disagrees with the statement (made without reference on Wikipedia) that spelling in print follows some standard pronunciation: for example, she says, newspapers from different parts of the language area feature different spellings for the same words, reflecting differences in pronunciation. Any differences in pronunciation should properly be reflected in corresponding differences in spelling, she says, and vice versa. Bodmer also knew seventy years ago that children do not learn new languages any more easily than adults, but this also remains a popular misconception. I personally think this idea prevails because it lends an obscure layer of magic to the act of learning a language – the idea of a preternatural skill only the very young possess, perhaps because they are closer to their origins or something equally silly. This excuses adults who have failed to learn, and more importantly excuses the techniques that have failed to teach them! Joy and Wonder One example of different pronunciation of a word with the same spelling and meaning which is found within British English is the word ‘the’ which is pronounced with a short vowel before consonants, and a long ‘ee’ before vowels (e.g. pronounced with a short ‘the’ for mouse, but a long ‘thee’ for elephant). Same sound, Different sign, Different meaning Nayan (નયન, pronounced nayan), Netra (નેત્ર, pronounced Nētra) and Lochan (લોચન, pronounced Lōcana) all mean eyes In Spelling Variants in British English (1986), Sidney Greenbaum estimates that about 4% of spelling variants occur within standard British English. Within this same standard version, differences are often found with loanwords, including learned and technical vocabulary borrowed from Latin and Greek, and reflect different ways of adapting the borrowed word to English: absinthe/ absinth. Other examples can be found in archaic words, arguably no longer in common current usage: ought/ aught (meaning zero, nothing), aye/ ay (signifying assent). Some are current but varying in relative frequency over time: abetter/ abettor (one who assists a crime), avertible/ avertable. Others are found in less formal registers: aunty/ auntie. Greenbaum concludes: ‘There is probably greater uniformity in spelling than in any other aspect of the English language [yet] the spelling of standard English is by no means almost invariant.’ (5)

For our current purposes, words can be thought of as having three dimensions: sign/spelling, sound/pronunciation, and meaning. Each of these three dimensions can be either the same or different, leading to a “2x2x2” matrix. This is a survey of the resulting matrix of homographs, homophones and synonyms across several languages. (1) People still tell me they cannot possibly learn a language because they took classes in school and failed to become fluent (although they usually also admit they passedthe classes, which should be evidence enough that something is wrong). Bodmer knew what was wrong seven decades ago, noting the drudgery of the so-called ‘direct method’ of language instruction, which bans the use of the native language. There is zero evidence that this approach works, while there isevidence that it actually inhibits learning. Yet here we are, still following the same approach. Heteronyms share only the written sign, and differ in both pronunciation and meaning: lead (noun, verb), wind (to coil, air movement), row (a line, to fight), minute (a duration, tiny), close (to shut, near), desert (arid region, to leave). (8) Different sound, Different sign, Same meaning

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Having said that this category is a mostly trivial case of words with differences in all three dimensions (10), it is significant in that it does comprise all words not sharing the same sound, sign or meaning – i.e. the rest of the language. Interestingly, WWII and the Balkan wars in the 90’s were what encouraged me to start learning languages in the first place. I wanted to read the original documents and journals and newspapers and try to understand why wars happen and where the hatred for other human beings comes from. There are still several armed conflicts happening all over the world, and the racist propaganda against immigrants in several countries, including both my home and adopted countries, is what keeps me learning languages – so that one day I can help those immigrants, and especially refugees, adjust to their new lives and fight against the discrimination. Perhaps I am a bleeding-heart liberal when it comes to the underprivileged (especially the poor who are usually immigrants) but rampant inequality among groups of people is heart-breaking to me; and even though it sounds trite and clichéd, I still believe that learning foreign languages plays a large part in making the world a better place.