Language: Japanese
Writer's Background: I started teaching myself Japanese August of 2016, and I eventually wrote a children's book in the language, which I plan on publishing soon. Over the summer, I travelled to Japan for the first time and really started to understand some of nuances of the language in a conversational setting.
Language is one of those things that no matter how you flip it, it’s an essential part of our lives. Not only does it allow us to communicate with others, but in a way, language is the set of goggles that we use to experience the world around us. This includes the way we see ourselves, others, and the small nuances of life. One instance of this is color names in different languages. The most interesting thing is that in almost every society, red is the first color to be named and blue is the last color to be named. Because of this, in some societies, it is almost impossible for an individual to recognize the difference between two shades of green. This is a prime example of just how powerful language and can be and how something as simple as color names can completely change an individual's perception. Well, taking this into consideration, I began to wonder if language acquisition (learning a new language) can affect the way that I thought about things. I soon realized the answer to this question is yes.
Around this time last year, I started teaching myself Japanese. Because I was teaching myself, it wasn’t enough to simply memorize the vocabulary. I needed to understand the ins and outs of the language completely. Starting off, I began learning some basics. For example, in Japanese, the verb is always written last in the sentence. I thought, “Mmmm, that’s kinda odd...I guess you have to listen to the entire sentence to understand….” Then I read, “There are many particles in Japanese that don't have meaning but are used to mark the subject, place, etc.” “That’s interesting…” Then, I was met with this translated sentence:
It is an apple.
In Japanese this same sentence can be written as りんごです (ringo desu), its direct translations being “apple is.” Now, like a native English speaker like me, you may be looking at this translation confused. There seems to be something missing for the Japanese sentence more than the English one. You might go even far enough to say that the sentence sounds “dumb” because of the structure and lack of context. But in theory, which of these sentences actually is “dumb?”
Let's back down to the elements of both sentences to get a better understanding. There are four words in the English sentence and two of which are not in the Japanese translation. For the most part, every word in the sentence gives us an extra tidbit of information:
Is: the verb of the sentence/ lets us know that the apple is what is being referred to and it is actively present
An: tell us that there is one apple being talked about
Apple: this is the noun of the sentence and tells us what we are talking about
As we can see, the words such as “is,” “an,” and “apple” add additional information to the sentence. However, in some situations, this information may be unnecessary, such as the word “an”. If I'm talking to you in person, you would obviously know that there is an apple because you only see one apple. But, the word in the English translation that baffled me the most was the word “it”. Since English is my first language, I couldn’t possibly imagine the sentence without the word “it”. But, if I were asked to explain why it is necessary in the sentence, I would struggle. We have to ask ourselves, what does the word “it” tell us? More specifically, what does it mean? Don't worry, I’ll give you time to think about it…
Honestly, I'm not sure what the word means. The only information that this word gives us is that it tells the person I'm speaking to that “the noun I am referencing exists, and this noun is something we both acknowledge.” Yes, this description is extremely vague and doesn't provide that much information to the conversation. So let’s think this. English is a language that has developed and changed over centuries, yet it still uses that word that gives little to no context or meaning to a sentence, whereas in other languages, “it” doesn’t exist at all. So, do you still think that English is as logical as it seems? What other parts of language just seem out of place? AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?
Herbert-Bey is a junior from Atlanta, GA attending Atlanta International School.
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