Tag Archives: language

I’ve decided to write a post in Chinese, just to see if I can

Go to the bottom to see my English translation of what I was trying to write

这些天我觉得我的学中文的时间无用。在高中学，我四年学了中文。大学的时候我在学了四年的中文。可是在美国我不可能用这个语文。我的同工不说，我的新闻不用，每一个我的美国的生活的东西是英文的，不是中文的。

可是我特别长的时候学了中文。我特别努力。我想用我的技能。我可以写一下，我可以说一下，可是听，看，都难死了。

我不知道要是这个是真的中文还是写错了的gibberish。我不知道很多有用的词，可是我怎么可以学新词？我已经说：我没有说中文的朋友，新闻，东西。

我试了一下看中文书。太难了，我的中文不太好。我不觉得太高兴了，也是写这个东西不太好的意思。下次我一定必须写关于别的话题。

These days I think my time studying Chinese was useless.  In High School, I studied Chinese for four years.  When I was in University I studied four more years of Chinese.  But in America I can’t use this language.  My coworkers don’t speak it, my news doesn’t use it, everything in my American life is English, not Chinese.

But I studied Chinese for so long.  I worked so hard.  I want to use my skills.  I can write a little, I can speak a little, but listening and reading are both too hard.

I don’t know if this is true Chinese language or incorrectly written gibberish.  I don’t know a lot of useful vocabulation, but how can I study new vocabulary?  I already said it: I don’t have friends, news, or things that use Chinese.

I tried a little to read Chinese books.  Too hard, my Chinese is not too good.  I don’t feel too happy, also writing this stuff isn’t too interesting.  Next time I definitely must write about a different topic.

Post 6

So all the previous posts were written during a single long plane ride. What am I going to write about now?

I’m always somewhat interested in how many elements of ancient languages can be seen retained by modern ones. The ancient Near East god Mot was the god of Death, and his name is strikingly similar to the modern Arabic word موت (mowt) meaning death. The words Jesus said on the cross (eli eli lama sabachthani) are conjugated much in the way that modern Arabic is as well. If “el” means god then “eli” means my god, and any modern Arabic speaker would understand if even if they would use a different noun for god. I learned to say lematha for “why” but lama seems recognizable as لما which would also mean why, and sabachthani is conjugated just as a modern word would be, except with a “tha” instead of a “ta”.

It’s somewhat striking to be able to find little bits and pieces of old languages that are still legible in this way, and it shows us just how much languages stay the same even if they change. Perhaps it’s also interesting to me because as a native English speaker I feel like we’re used to thinking about our language as being very very “new.” The “English” of Beowulf seems almost unrecognizable to a modern and bored schoolchildren still struggle with Shakespeare. Yet occasionally some ancient bits of Latin, German or French can be seen to contain a word or two which is recognizable due to its English descendant.

It’s an idea I’ve toyed with but don’t have any data for: is it measurable how fast languages changed in the past and are changing today? Has English changed particularly quickly in the last millennium, or are we English speakers just filled with exceptionalism? And if it did change faster than other languages, has that change slowed due to global English? Or has it sped up? I would hazard a guess that all languages have slowed their rate of change since the invention of movable type and later the radio. Moveable type fossilized many spellings and letter shapes that had before been more fluid. And radio itself probably smoothed out the differences between accents as everyone heard many of the same songs, the same broadcasts, the same speeches no matter where they lived. Likewise the ability to record our speech gives us a link to the past that other generations don’t have, and those influences probably slow the changing of our language even more.

I’d like to know how the rate of change of languages is calculated, and how that rate has changed, and what changes it. When the Greeks conquered the Near East they brought with them a lingua franca that would later be known as “Koine.” Did an influx of Near Eastern speakers cause this language to change faster than if it had stayed in Greece? Or did its status as a language for everyone cause it to change more slowly, since everyone had to understand each other?

If anyone knows where I can learn more about this, hit me up.