2019 looks like it’s going to be a good year for drinking games.
I can see how someone might mistake Donald Trump’s tweets for ingenious trolling. But I think that’s sort of like watching a bull in a China shop and pointing “See?! He was targeting the Dresden-ware!” Everything gets stomped. We need a drinking game where people have to drink whenever Trump says something assholish, clueless, or tells a lie. Everyone would be in a Kavanaugh-eque coma and we might not notice what’s happening to us.
At least he didn’t say: “How about those Mongols? They were some great people, the Mongols. They make the finest horses. They helped restructeur China really bigly. They dealt from great strength. Genghis Khan is a real great guy.”
Yet.
“A Big Leap Forward” did he really say that?
From [wik]:
The Great Leap Forward (Chinese: 大跃进; pinyin: Dà Yuèjìn) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China (CPC) from 1958 to 1962. The campaign was led by Chairman Mao Zedong and aimed to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. However, it is widely considered to have caused the Great Chinese Famine
when:
Estimates of deaths due to starvation range in the tens of millions.
My dad used to sometimes say, “other than that, Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?” But he never would have said it to the real Mrs Lincoln.
Ouch! Now I’m not sure whether it’s a smart thing to admit this in the comment section of this blog, but this time I actually didn’t know any better than Trump. Which is a big ouch, I like to consider myself as better educated than Trump. I mean, I have learned about the famine that happened in China, but I had no clue that what caused it was called “The Great Leap Forward.” My excuse is going to be that I didn’t learn Chinese history in English, “The Great Leap Forward” must have been translated somewhat differently in Latvian, thus making me miss the connection.
I’m predicting for an encore he will claim Jared has solved the Middle East peace problem once and for all with a tweet that contains the words “final” and “solution”.
Well generally both obviously, but in this case I’m pretty sure clueless.
Leva I couldn’t tell you when I learnt about it, but I don’t think it will have been at school, more likely to be in articles about the experiences of people who survived.
I saw that quote and ALSO twigged to the “big leap forward” phrase.
This fucking guy.
When he says, “Level the field,” I think he means leave nothing and no one standing.
The Donald has shown that he can’t distinguish between the Balkans and the Baltics. And he thinks or at least thought that “Belgium is a beautiful city.”
It is highly questionable that his mind ever registered the “Great Leap Forward” as a phrase from Chinese history.
I didn’t catch it right away either. I blame it on being born in 1986, so by the time I was old enough to understand what China was the perception had shifted from ‘scary communist land’ to ‘the place where our cheap stuff comes from’.
Those bold red letters were enough for my brain to make the jump from generic Trump speak to actual history though.
This is why we have professional diplomats. People who have dedicated a big chunk of their career to a single country, and who can catch these things. International relations should not be left to one elderly narcissist with an itchy Twitter finger.
I suspect he did half-remember it as having something to do with China, and may have even felt proud of himself for dredging them up. But the details that the consequences were horribly devastating were lost, like words being said to him that aren’t about how awesome he is.
Jazzlet @#3
At school I did learn a little a bit about Chinese history. Not much, though; for us the subject that was called “History” ought to have been called “European History” instead. Most of what I have learned about the Communist China was from a history book that was in French. Thus me learning about this topic in Latvian and French ended up with me being completely unable to recognize the same phrase in English.
Translation is tricky. Some phrases are translated in such a way that I can immediately recognize them across all the languages I speak. For example, “Cultural Revolution” is kultūras revolūcija in Latvian, Kulturrevolution in German, révolution culturelle in French, rivoluzione culturale in Italian. Since both words are present in pretty much every Indo-European language, translation is so direct and straightforward, that I cannot miss it. Other times translations are not identical and less obvious. For example, “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question” is die Endlösung der Judenfrage is German. I learned about German history in German. I know I must have heard the words “The Final Solution” somewhere in English, because otherwise I wouldn’t have figured out on my own that the official English translation for Endlösung is “The Final Solution.”
By the way, appearing totally clueless is a pretty damn common occurrence for polyglots. My worst mistake in this regard happened when I was living in Germany and speaking in German with some locals. I accidentally used the word “Führer” is the wrong context, because at that time I didn’t know any better (“Führer” is the German title of Hitler). Whoops. Shit happens. The good thing is that usually people don’t criticize me for such mistakes. Everybody seems to be so impressed by me knowing many languages that they don’t mind me embarrassing myself whenever I don’t know some language perfectly and mess it up.
Leva @#10
Well as someone who struggled with both French and Latin at school I am always impressed by peoeple who grew up speaking any other language and have the basics of English, let alone the fluency that you and other posters on here have. I have found that I understand more written French that I expect to, but there is no way I would try to comment in French, it would just be a mess. That means I am more than willing to forgive any errors from non-natal speakers, the thing I don’t always know is when to offer correction, as I don’t wish to insult.
Everybody seems to be so impressed by me knowing many languages that they don’t mind me embarrassing myself whenever I don’t know some language perfectly and mess it up.
Hey, I live in Canada. We expect people to occasionally mangle whatever language they are speaking. And that goes for native speakers as well as people just learning the languages. Generally speaking, as long as you can get the idea across it is acceptable.
I still remember the time that I (a 40+ year old male) reported that I was pregnant. OOps. Clearly my French was not all that good. And then there was the Master’s Degree versus Mistress misunderstanding. But that was in France.
I took a couple semesters of Chinese history in college.
Some day I mean to do a review of Ray Huang’s “1587, a Year of No Significance” which is a fascinating and brilliant book (it was one of our class texts) Basically, the central conceit of the book is that this particular year marked a number of insignificant events which, taken together, mark the beginning of the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Other than that, I don’t remember much because it was a lot of interdependencies and cascading failures.
jrkrideau@#12
I laughed as I read this one.
Here’s another one of my mishaps.
In Russian there is a verb писать. Spelling remains the same, but, depending on how it is pronounced, the same verb has two different meanings:
1) “to write” писа́ть [pˈьsatˈ]
2) “to urinate” пи́сать [pˈisətˈ]
In Russian, verb conjugation and tenses are more complicated than in English. In some forms also the spelling of this verb changes depending upon which meaning you want to use. The problem with these two verbs is that they are pronounced differently from each other, but they are also so damn similar that a person who is learning Russian as a foreign language is likely to get it wrong.
I wanted to say “I wrote a text.” Instead I said “I peed a text.”
Back then there was only one native Russian speaker in the room. She handled the situation gracefully. She didn’t say anything at first, but a moment later she pulled me aside and explained the difference in a lowered voice. If she hadn’t said anything, I would keep on making the same mistake again. If she had explained it loudly, I would have felt embarrassed. This incident happened over ten years ago, back then I was still a child, I hadn’t yet gotten used to handling public embarrassment. Nowadays I no longer care much. I had to accept that if I want to use other languages, I’m going to routinely embarrass myself. I have gotten used to all sorts of crap (largely thanks to homophobes), so now it takes a lot to make me uncomfortable.
Jazzlet @#11
It depends on the person. Some people don’t like having their mistakes corrected. Others do. Personally, I’m interested in not making the same mistakes again and again, thus I appreciate corrections.
Where I come from, everybody speaks at least two languages. Three is average and the norm. I don’t personally know a single Latvian who knew only one language. It’s that rare.
There are less than two million people who speak Latvian. Only a few books get translated into Latvian. It’s possible to get through school by knowing Latvian only, but it’s inherently impossible to get university education without knowing other languages. Even if your university lectures are in Latvian, you will still have to read textbooks in foreign languages. You will also need foreign language sources and references for your graduate thesis. Personally, I wrote my bachelor’s and master’s theses in German (my sources being German, English, and Latvian). It’s also impossible to get a well paying job without knowing foreign languages. Are you a mechanic who services some machinery? The chances are your instructions’ manual won’t be in Latvian. Are you running some retail business? You can expect your suppliers not to speak Latvian. Here speaking several languages isn’t perceived as an accomplishment, it’s just a basic necessity and something everybody does.
Personally, I perceive Latvian as a pretty useless language. Having a near useless native language puts me at a disadvantage, it’s akin to being born with a learning disability—I am forced to work harder than everybody else just to compensate for it. Learning my first foreign language, French, was hard as hell. I hated it. But I didn’t have a choice. Even as a child, I was regularly reminded by my parents that I won’t get anywhere in life unless I learn foreign languages. So I did. The thing is, learning your first foreign language is so much harder than learning your 5th one. Over time I got to the point where learning foreign languages became an enjoyable hobby for me. So there definitely was at least this one benefit to having a useless native language—I was forced to learn a few other ones. It’s like people who are born with disabilities and work hard to compensate for them until they get so far that they actually surpass average people who never had to pay attention to this specific skill.
Yet I’m still bitter. I know many people are sentimental and nationalistic, they cherish their small languages. Their native languages are part of their identity. That’s fine; other people are free to disagree with me. But I’m different in this regard. I’m not sentimental, I couldn’t care less which language was spoken by my ancestors. Having a useless native language still puts me at a disadvantage. My mother was also a polyglot. She didn’t need to teach me Latvian as my native language. She did this just because she was nationalistic. And thus she saddled me with this stupid disadvantage. Even now, after all these years, I still don’t know English and German (the languages I actually find useful) as well as I know Latvian. And when it comes to competing for jobs, I’m up against native English speakers, thus I simply need to know English just as well (if not better) than most native speakers do.
Learning foreign languages can be fun. I’d be perfectly happy to learn a small language for the same reasons why some people decide to learn Tolkien’s Elvish language or Klingonese from the Star Trek universe. But when parents decide to teach their children some small language as their native one, then they really put their child at a disadvantage. I know many people will disagree with me here, after all this one is a matter of opinion with no objective truth. There are people who are nationalistic and sentimental, which makes them value their native languages. I don’t.
I know that I could get over my bitterness if I managed to learn English and German so well that I surpassed the average native speaker. I’m working to get there. Probably I’ll manage.
By the way, “surpassing the average native speaker” is actually a pretty low bar. Many people don’t know their native languages very well. I have worked as a text editor in Latvian, and it’s incredible how many spelling, punctuation, style and occasionally even grammar mistakes native Latvian speakers make on a regular basis. Probably the underlying source of my bitterness is my interest in being a writer. I have tried writing poetry and stories. There’s no use writing in Latvian. I would have to do that in English or German instead. And being better than the average writer who gets to write in their native language, now we are talking about things getting challenging.
By the way, my name is Ieva with “i” not Leva. In Latvian, two vowels in a row are used to indicate a diphthong. In this case [iɛ] as per IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) spelling. This one’s a sound that doesn’t exist in English.
Ieva @#14
Apologies for getting your name wrong, I mistakenly assumed it was a lower case l, though why you would have capitalised your surname but not your first name I don’t know. That of course is a confusion that can only happen in san serif fonts. It saddens me that san serif fonts have become so prevalent, they are proven to be more difficult to read, especially when reading large blocks of text.
I can see the point of teaching a small language along side one of the big ones if the small language has a lot of cultural works written in it; Welsh has had a resurgance partly because of national pride, but partly because there is a whole Welsh literature for people to draw on. However Welsh is never the only language taught, children are always taught English as well and often other languages too. The argument I have seen in favour of retaining small languages is that people actually think differently when they use different languages, and those different ways of thnking can be useful, but I’ve no idea if there is any evidential basis for that assertion. Are you aware of thinking differently when you think in different languages?
Jazzlet @#15
Yep, I so totally agree with this one.
I already talked about this here—
https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2018/07/18/back-to-bandon/#comment-16088
I might elaborate, though. What you are asking about is called “the hypothesis of linguistic relativity,” the Wikipedia overview is here— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity Linguists (and also psychologists) have been thinking about this one for a very long time. Various researchers have also attempted to conduct experiments that could either prove or disprove this theory. This question also appeared in my curriculum back when I was studying for my degree in linguistics, it’s sort of popular for linguists to think about this one.
Anyway, how can a scientist either prove or disprove this one? The obvious answer is to look what differences languages have. For example, names for colors. In some languages “blue” and “green” are shades of the same color. In other languages it’s vice versa, for example, in Russian there are separate words for “light blue” and “dark blue.” Now let’s get a bunch of people who are native Russian speakers, then get a bunch of people who are native speakers of a language that has fewer names for colors, and conduct an experiment. Show them images of various colors and ask them to remember each color. The big question—are the people with more names for colors in their native language also better at memorizing which colors you showed them? By the way, in this experiment, the answer was yes—people have a better memory for colors if different shades have distinct names.
What else can you test? Well, there’s also the grammatical gender prevalent in so many languages (English being the exception). It’s possible to test how people perceive various objects and abstractions. Let’s take the word “key.” In some languages this word is masculine, in some it’s feminine. A scientist can get a group of native speakers of each language and then give them the following task: “Your job is to create a cartoon character that is going to be an anthropomorphic key. How will you portray it?” Will the cartoon character have a feminine or a masculine voice? Will it look slender and feminine or rugged and masculine? Such experiments have showed that how people perceive random objects or abstractions depends on what grammatical gender the word has in their language. A similar example—sun and moon gods in various religions. In Latvian pagan religion, sun is a female goddess and moon is a male god. In Latvian language sun is a feminine word, moon—masculine.
It’s reasonable to accept that the language you speak influences your thinking and perception at least in some minor ways. But is this influence significant or is it so minor that it makes no difference in real life? My opinion is that when there are some words in some language, speakers are conditioned to pay a little bit more attention to this thing. For example, in Swedish you cannot just say “grandmother,” you have to say either farmor (“father’s mother”) or mormor (“mother’s mother”). A Swedish speaker talking about their family would be forced to reveal this detail, which would be entirely missed while speaking a different language that doesn’t differentiate between both grandmothers. But does this really make a significant enough difference? I’d say no. When necessary, also English speakers are perfectly capable of telling the difference between both grandmothers.
Even if some word doesn’t exist in a language, people often understand the concept anyway. In German there’s a word Schadenfreude, which refers to experiencing joy or pleasure that comes from witnessing the suffering of another person. In Latvian there is no word for this. Yet I understood the concept (and had felt it) long before I learned German.
Anyway, personally I am aware of thinking differently when I think in different languages. There are plenty of words that don’t have direct translations. Some words are entirely missing (for example, in Latvian there’s no good word for “facepalm,” and I’m often noticing its absence). But, overall, the difference is minor and has no real life implications whatsoever. I don’t truly think differently, I just use different words and expressions. Also within the boundaries of a single language you can express one and the same idea using different words. For example, you can say “I’m happy” or “I feel overjoyed.” The meaning is the same, your thinking doesn’t change much just because you said one phrase instead of the other. With various languages it stays the same principle—those are just different ways of thinking/saying one and the same idea.
Part of “thinking differently” is also caused by the culture, rather than the language itself. I remember being told about a German translator who was translating a novel written by an Italian author. In that novel, there was a scene with several people eating pizza. The German translator changed “pizza” into “beer.” Why? Because for an Italian the word “pizza” means something different than for a German. When Italians eat pizza, for them it means a certain and specific occasion. The kind of occasion that would prompt Germans to drink beer instead. Thus, even though the word “pizza” is present in both German and Italian, the meaning for people differs. Another similar word would be “carnival.” It can mean very different things to people who grew up in various parts of the world.
There’s another factor that can diminish the real word effect of “thinking differently.” By having (or not having) certain words, a language can force people to pay more attention to specific things. It conditions its speakers to notice something. But the same effect can be achieved much more efficiently by actual life experiences. For example, my first ever scientific paper was written about light pollution. Ever since writing it, I always pay a lot of attention to street lamps. Whenever I go outside or travel somewhere, I notice street lamps. Having to write a single short scientific paper influenced my thinking (and my attention) a hell lot more than any language differences ever could.
One more thing. I have noticed that lately linguistic relativity has turned into an interesting topic for various mass media to write about. If you google for “does language influence thinking” you will find a ton of articles. Some of them are semi decent and written by people who actually research and understand the topic. Most others are just plain bullshit. Instead of scientific evidence they will give anecdotes. And they will make outrageous claims. For example, I have seen claims that thinking in a different language leads to people making different decisions; or that languages having a grammatical gender results in a more sexist society. Of course, such claims were published with no references to scientific studies. Pop linguistics can be even worse than pop psychology. Thus, if you are interested in this topic and want to learn more, pay attention to what you are reading, as there is lots of bullshit out there. Keep in mind that this comment of mine is also biased. Even if I have a degree in linguistics and I have read about the relevant scientific studies, I still wrote my own opinion about what I know about this topic. This comment is by no means an impartial overview about the existing research.