Montaigne’s Heiress

Something struck me today: in the languages I know best – French and Russian – every military-oriented word I can think of has a feminine gender.

Let me back up. English – unlike a great many other languages – does not have a system of “gender” in its words. A small example of this would be the third-person plural subject pronoun, “they.” In English, this can refer to a group of males, a group of females, or a mixed group. It doesn’t matter. In French, however, there are two third-person plural subject pronouns: ils and elles. Ils is used to refer either to a group of males, or a group of any size which has at least one male in it. (There could be a million women and one man standing in a place, and you’d refer to that group as ils anyway.) For a group composed entirely of females, you’d use the word elles.

This is a small example. Not only pronouns, but verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech have gender as well. For example, in French:

Il est instituteur. – He is a teacher.
Elle est institutrice. – She is a teacher.

Some words have only one gender – and here’s where we get into it.

In French:

l’armée
la militaire
la bataille
la lutte

These are just four words: army, military, battle, and struggle. All four words take the feminine gender.

In Russian:

армия (armiya)
воинско (voinsko)
сражение (srazhyeniye)
схватка (skhvatka)

The same four words in Russian: army, military, battle, and struggle. армия and схватка (apologies – Cyrillic looks really different in italics) are of the feminine gender. воинско and сражение are of the neuter gender.

Ok… enough of the fooling around with language. I’m interested in the reason why these words should be feminine.

That leads us into psychology. :)

It leads us into historical feelings – repressed or expressed – about female anger, I think.

I’m not going to try to break down a theory here, because I’m using this as an example, to get to the following point:

When you study a language, your worldview changes. Studying a language is not just about being able to say s’il vous plait or pazhalsta instead of “please.” It’s not just about travelling, or being able to read books in other languages. Studying other languages really does broaden your mind – but not in the way you’ve been taught.

It may be hard to visualize, but the English word is very insular. How much do you actually know about Russia, to take a broad example? Probably only what you’ve heard on the news, for example. So when you hear that Russia is in South Ossetia issuing “passports” to Ossetians, you’ll probably think that Russia is impinging on Georgian territory or something, and trying to mint new Russian tax slaves by the cartload.

What you would have actually understood, had you been able to listen to the interview in Russian with the peasant the reporter spoke with, was the Russian word propusk. Which means “internal identity document” – not “passport.” A propusk is what you are given at the gym when you buy a membership there. Anyone and their brother can take your picture, write your name and patronymic on a slip of paper, and give you a propusk. They’re the furthest thing in the world from passports. (Incidentally, this is not a simple mistake. The Russian word for “passport” is pashpart – which means the same thing as it does in English and is never considered the equivalent of propusk. The word was mis-translated for a reason.)

The world of English (and the worlds of Russian, French, etc) are insular worlds. Your movement – your knowledge – is limited by the language you can speak. It’s very difficult to go outside that little sphere of ignorance without the passkey that is a second language.

The most important thing, I think, is that learning languages allows you to understand how people think. It really does. In my head, for example, krasnye and rouge and “red” are three different colors – each influenced by the country whose language the words come from. People really do see the world – and even colors – differently, and so much is lost in the translation from krasnye to “red.”

I’ve found it enormously easier to have empathy for people when I’ve spoken their language. If I put one of you guys down in the middle of Siberia, for example, and you saw someone walking down the road… wouldn’t he seem an alien? You don’t speak his language. He doesn’t speak yours. You may as well have not seen anyone at all, you’re separarted by an interstellar distance.

But if all of a sudden you could speak Russian, and went over to him and said something like “What is your name?” (Kak vash zavut?) a world would open up. Suddenly, the fellow would be no longer strange. Either way, he’s still a human… but isn’t it just a bit easier to believe that if you speak his language?

The best thing I’ve found to come out of learning languages is not self-aggrandizement or even functional utility… but the ability to put myself in someone else’s place in a way I couldn’t conceive of before. Realizing how language and how the words of that language really limits thinking. (Why, I might ask, are cultures whose “war words” are associated with the feminine quite dominated by females, and quite violent?) Being able to separate myself from America’s “culture” and step outside it… and to realize that all countries have a similarly instilled “culture” which keeps the slaves in line is maybe the most useful of all.

Anyhow… I’m working on a system (along with other things, of course) which I hope will bring a language student up to advanced-level fluency within about 6 months of first beginning to study a language. I’ll be posting updates and trials here – and I’d be keen to know if they work for you. I’ve studied French through traditional classes for over 10 years and I am still not advanced. I think – using the training I’ve received and the experience teaching English – that I can learn Turkish in 1/20th the time. Let’s see. :)

Anyone want to learn French? I’ve almost got that system worked out.

I seem to have discomfited a few people (namely a few people whose parents knew foreign languages and did not teach them to speak these foreign languages) when I mentioned my thought that it is a crime not to teach your children any foreign language of which you have some mastery. They objected to my use of the word “crime.” I don’t blame them for their objections, but nonetheless I think that it is a crime. Let me explain:

Admittedly, this crime is the least of the many we suffered under as children. Failing to teach your children languages is not evil, whereas yelling at them, beating them, ignoring them, starving them, sexually assaulting them, and all such other things are evil – and crimes. But… it’s not just about the languages. Think for a moment.

When you were a child, your parents probably showed some interest in your education. If your parents were anything like mine, this is mostly because they could then use your high marks to inflate their ego. They did none of the work. You did all the work. Yet they took it as a source of pride for them to have an intelligent child. As if they had some virtue in the matter, which they did not.

Yet, notice this: if your parents knew a foreign language, why did they not teach it to you? Well… I have a theory. Here it is:

It would have required effort on their part.

This seems really obvious, of course, but let me flesh out the argument.

What would teaching you a language have required of them? Patience, dedication, empathy, closeness, lots of together-time, attention and care, thoughtfulness, and many other qualities. All of which – if your parents were anything like mine – they did not possess!

Teaching you a language would have required of them an actual commitment to your education and welfare. Which they did not have. Which, I think, they had the opposite of.

So not teaching you a language that they had knowledge of isn’t the cause, but a symptom of lack of empathy or care on their part. They had knowledge which they did not impart to you during a time when the language centers of your brain were wide open and ready to receive. They deprived you of an entire world of literature – and an entire world of people. They deprived you of the ability to think critically, the blessing of an open mind, and all the boons that language learning can bring. They made it harder for you, later in life, to learn a language if you so choose.

That’s among the many things in your life that they made harder.

This is one of the least egregious examples, yes, but still it’s really hard to admit: your parents didn’t give a good goddamn about you.

(There will be a part 2 of this – about the empathy that language-learning teaches you.)